Mediagazer: Media Madders (Jack Shafer)

9:20 PM ET, February 14, 2012

Top News:

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

NI staff demand openness over internal investigation unit — Following Sun arrests, NI staff body writes to chief executive regarding remit and scope of committee, and status of sources — The body representing News International staff is seeking an urgent meeting with chief executive Tom Mockridge …

Ed Pilkington / Guardian:

News Corp executives at risk of US prosecution for ‘willful blindness’ — American anti-corruption law holds company chiefs culpable for consciously avoiding knowledge of corrupt deeds at News Corp — News Corporation executives could be vulnerable to individual prosecution …

Discussion: Save the News, Forbes, Erik Wemple, Capital New York, Law Blog and The New Yorker Blog

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
News Corp inquiry team defends policy over police disclosures

Discussion: Media Week, The Huffington Post, The Independent and Telegraph

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
News Corp. Without Newspapers Would Be Addition by Subtraction

Discussion: CJR, AdAge, Forbes and Company Town

Financial Times:
Murdoch puts top lawyer on Sun case

Discussion: Politico

Press Gazette:
News Corp hands over journalists' sources to police

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Sean O'Neill / @timescrime: Have confirmed that senior Met officers have “reviewed” their arrest strategy in Weeting and Elveden. Dawn raids will now be the norm...

Michael Wolff / @michaelwolffnyc: I'm hearing: Trevor Kavanagh spoke to Murdoch on Sunday. So...Murdoch signing off on rebellion at Sun, while helping police?

Jeff Roberts / paidContent:

Fair Use Or Free Riding? The AP's New Attack On News Scraping — The Associated Press is becoming more aggressive in trying to rein in the information the news service scatters around the world. After helping to launch a copyright monitoring service, the AP is now suing a company …

Discussion: MediaPost, GigaOM, Associated Press, TechCrunch and FishbowlNY, more at Techmeme »

Robert Andrews / paidContent:
Interviews: Meltwater Appeals UK Web News Fees As Both Sides Claim Victory

Discussion: NPR, Guardian and Poynter

Tucker Carlson / The Daily Caller:

Media Matters memo called for hiring private investigators ‘to look into the personal lives’ of Fox employees — A little after 1 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2009, Karl Frisch emailed a memo to his bosses, Media Matters for America founder David Brock and president Eric Burns.

Discussion: Erik Wemple, Mediaite, TVNewser and FishbowlDC

Jack Shafer:

Media Madders — The “investigative series” that the conservative Daily Caller commenced this week about the liberal media watchdog outfit Media Matters for America and its founder David Brock accomplishes the impossible: It makes me sympathize with Media Matters and Brock.

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Big Journalism, Washington Post and FishbowlDC

Keach Hagey / Politico:

Fox News ‘course correction’ rankles some — As a white, male, middle-aged conservative talk radio host from Virginia, John Fredericks is something close to the Platonic ideal of a Fox News fan. — And until last year, he was one. But then Fox's treatment of the Republican primary race …

Discussion: TVNewser

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

New Service Will Stream Local TV Stations in New York — A online television company has come up with a way to stream local television stations to paying subscribers on the Internet, potentially forming a new cord-cutting threat for cable and satellite distributors.

Discussion: Market Wire, Forbes, VentureBeat, pocketnow.com, Betabeat, AllThingsD, The Verge, Adweek, Business Insider, Engadget and TechCrunch

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Barry Diller Gets Into the “Cord-Cutting” Business

Discussion: Home Media Magazine, Adweek, TechCrunch, Company Town, CNET, GigaOM, Multichannel and Epicenter

Glenn Garvin / Miami Herald:

The profound lies of Deep Throat — Kids say the darndest things. Speaking to a college journalism class last week, I learned the students had recently seen the All The President's Men, the film noir tale of the Washington Post's pursuit of the Watergate scandal.

Discussion: @davidfolkenflik, @davidfolkenflik and @kellymcb

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Ethan Bronner out as NYT Jerusalem chief — One year after the New York Times public editor recommended his reassignment, Ethan Bronner is being replaced as Jerusalem bureau chief. — Today, the Times announced that Education editor Jodi Rudoren has been named Jerusalem bureau chief.

Discussion: The Huffington Post and FishbowlNY

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Hearst to Link Digital Editions With Amazon — Is it a magazine—or catalogue? — Magazines have been increasingly blurring the line between editorial and commerce, lending their names to products and shopping sites. Now, computer tablets and e-readers are making it more tempting to bridge that gap.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and NetNewsCheck Latest

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Dan Loeb Recruits Former NBC Boss Jeff Zucker for His Raid on Yahoo — Here's Dan Loeb's formal declaration of war against the old guard at Yahoo, along with his list of allies. — The activist shareholder wants four of Yahoo's board seats, one of which he wants to occupy himself.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, CNET, DealBook and Business Insider

Tom McGeveran / Capital New York:

Some best-guesses about what BuzzFeed is up to, and why it is in fact about Arianna, a little — In all the conversation about BuzzFeed, two questions and answers get repeated over and over again. But I don't think the answers have been quite right—for a mixture of reasons, probably.

Discussion: BuzzFeed

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Free Interactive E-Book Publishing Platform—From Inkling, Not Apple — Startup iPad publisher Inkling is launching a free, cloud-based, interactive e-book publishing platform, Inkling Habitat. That may sounds a bit like iBooks Author, but a preview of the program suggests that it is indeed …

Discussion: AllThingsD, TechCrunch, Electronista, Fast Company, Sparksheet and GigaOM, more at Techmeme »

Mat Honan / Gizmodo:

Happy Valentine's Day, Tech Bloggers — There's been so much hate and self-righteous indignation in tech blog circles lately. Name calling. Ugly accusations. Petty bickering. It's even divided good friends, brother against brother. Can't we all just get along?

Discussion: ZDNet, @ryanfs, @mathewi, broadstuff and The Awl