Mediagazer: Netflix Said to Produce Second Original Series in Growing Challenge to HBO (Cliff Edwards/Bloomberg)

2:50 PM ET, February 15, 2012

Top News:

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Met probes claims that Sun paid some public officials more than £10k a year — Source familiar with News Corp internal inquiry says it has found ‘serious suspected criminality over a sustained period’ — The Scotland Yard investigation into alleged illegal payments by Sun journalists …

Discussion: ProPublica

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

U.S. litigation against Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. may not be imminent; but it's still all bad news for him — News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch is all lawyered up and bound for London tomorrow on a crisis management mission. — And with the trip, a fresh wave of speculation has gripped …

Discussion: CJR, Globe and Mail, The Lede, Save the News, Financial Times and Forbes

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Sun staff line up human rights challenge to News Corp inquiry team — Journalists approach NUJ with view to hiring leading lawyer to question legality of internal investigation — Senior journalists at the Sun are preparing to launch a legal challenge to the News Corporation unit …

Discussion: Press Gazette, Reuters, Free Press, The Huffington Post and themediablog.typepad.com

Robert Hutton / Bloomberg:

News Corp. Hacking Report Delayed by Debate — U.K. lawmakers probing whether News Corp. covered up phone hacking at the News of the World tabloid are at least two months behind schedule with their report, as they debate how critical they can be of Deputy Chief Operating Officer James Murdoch.

Discussion: Guardian

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
Sun journalists must fight for their rights - Geoffrey Robertson

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable and The Huffington Post

Katherine Rushton / Telegraph: James Murdoch name tied to News Corp scandal

BBC: Glenn Mulcaire granted evidence appeal

Victor Fiorillo / The Philly Post:

Mass Layoffs Imminent at Inquirer, Daily News? — This afternoon at 4 p.m., members of the Newspaper Guild labor union will meet with Philadelphia Media Network, the company that owns the Inquirer, Daily News, and philly.com, at least until Ed Rendell takes over.

Erik Wemple:

Inquirer's top editor speaks — Those who value a strong and independent media in and around Philadelphia have been walking around in a funk in recent weeks. That's because the journalism of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News appears to be under siege. — The culprit?

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Sale of Philly papers will test whether local owners can stay out of the newsroom — Five and a half years ago, when Brian Tierney fronted a local group that bought the Philadelphia papers from McClatchy (which bought them temporarily from Knight Ridder), media watchers worried …

Discussion: Philly.com and News Works

Will Rahn / The Daily Caller:

Media Matters tax-exempt status may face new scrutiny from Congress — Congressional Republicans are now interested in examining the Media Matters For America's tax-exempt status, The Daily Caller has learned. Doing so would cause the GOP to wade into the complex world of tax laws that govern …

Erik Wemple:
Fox News and the art of media-timing

Discussion: Mediaite, Poynter, Gawker, The Daily Caller and Big Journalism

Matthew Fleischer / FishbowlLA:
James Rainey, Brian Stetler Get the Bill O'Reilly Treatment

Discussion: TVNewser and FishbowlDC

Dylan Byers / Politico:

PolitiFact responds to Rachel Maddow — Rachel Maddow made yet another stinging attack on PolitiFact last night, calling the Tampa Bay Times' fact-checking project “a disaster” (see video). — Via email, PolitiFact editor and Tampa Bay Times Washington bureau chief Bill Adair responds to the criticism:

Discussion: The Huffington Post, @jayrosen_nyu, Mediaite and @politifact

Craig Silverman / Poynter:

Fact from fiction: PolitiFact draws ire for checking ‘Glee’ — Has the Great Fact Checking Explosion reached a new level of strangeness so soon into the election year? — Or to put it the way some did Tuesday: Has PolitFact jumped the shark? — These questions are cropping up thanks …

Discussion: Saint Petersblog, PolitiFact, Riptide 2.0 and Mediaite

David Sarno / Los Angeles Times:

Twitter stores full iPhone contact list for 18 months, after scan — Twitter Inc. has acknowledged that after mobile users tap the “Find friends” feature on its smartphone app, the company downloads users' entire address book, including names, email addresses and phone numbers, and keeps the data on its servers for 18 months.

Amy Chozick / Media Decoder:

Comcast's Net Income Increases, Lifted by Internet Subscriptions — A slowing decline in the number of customers cancelling their cable service coupled with a boost in high-speed Internet subscriptions contributed to a 26.4 percent increase in net income at Comcast, the nation's largest cable provider.

Discussion: paidContent, AllThingsD and ZDNet

Meg James / Company Town:
Comcast fourth-quarter profit jumps 26%; NBC and film lag

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, rbr.com and Home Media Magazine

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Puzzazz brings ebook handwriting recognition to the Kindle Touch — Redmond-based startup Puzzazz is bringing handwriting recognition to Amazon's Kindle Touch device. The company's TouchWrite technology recognizes handwriting and converts it into numbers and letters on the Kindle.

more at Techmeme »

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

Is Politico Looking to Revive Politico TV? — Way back in 2008, the political newspaper and website Politico announced that it was getting into the TV news business with Politico TV. — As our sister blog FishbowlDC noted at the time, the idea was to re-brand an existing program on WJLA …

Discussion: FishbowlDC

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:

Times and Sunday Times digital sales power ahead — The Times now has 119,255 digital subscribers, with the Sunday Times claiming 113,818 - according to figures issued by News International last night. — The figures show that there has been continual digital subscriber growth at The Times …

Discussion: Guardian