Mediagazer: Bradley Manning defence motion to drop charges denied at pretrial hearing (Guardian)

2:40 PM ET, April 25, 2012

Top News:

Jeremy Hunt: ‘The idea I was backing BSkyB bid is laughable’ — Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has said accusations that he backed News Corporation's bid for BSkyB are “laughable” and “categorically” denied allegations of a “back channel” giving News Corporation the ability to influence decisions.

Discussion: Forbes

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:

Rupert Murdoch: Former PM Gordon Brown ‘Declared War’ on News Corp. — Rupert Murdoch, testifying at the Leveson Inquiry — News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch's ostensible reason for appearing before a British government hearing Wednesday morning was to answer questions about whether …

Discussion: Guardian, @lisaocarroll, Media & Entertainment, Media Week, @skynewsbreak, Journalism.co.uk and NetNewsCheck Latest

Paul McNally / Journalism.co.uk:

Rupert Murdoch: Thatcher meeting over Times was ‘quite appropriate’ — News Corporation chairman tells the Leveson inquiry: 'I didn't expect help from her, nor did I ask for any' — A secret meeting between Rupert Murdoch and Margaret Thatcher about his bid for the Times was “quite appropriate” …

Discussion: Guardian, Broadcasting & Cable and Journalism.co.uk

Guardian:

Jeremy Hunt visited News Corp in US as Murdochs considered BSkyB bid — James Murdoch told David Cameron News Corp would support Tories soon after Hunt's US trip in 2009, documents reveal — Jeremy Hunt spent five days in the US holding meetings with News Corp at the same point Rupert …

Discussion: Guardian, BBC, blogs.telegraph.co.uk and Deadline.com

Iain Martin / The Telegraph:

The night I saw Jeremy Hunt hide behind a tree before dinner with James Murdoch — There are moments writing about politics when one thinks: could this actually get any sillier? Modern government is particularly prone to looking daft because it is built on two incompatible ideas, one old and the other relatively new.

Julie Moos / Poynter:

Fox News mole Joe Muto served with search warrant, Gawker doesn't expect to be served — In a series of tweets, the Gawker blogger who worked at Fox News until he was outed as a mole announces this morning that News Corp.'s legal threats were not just talk.

Discussion: Gawker, The Not-So Private Parts, Guardian, Erik Wemple, FishbowlNY, The Awl, The Huffington Post, @jeffjarvis, Inside Cable News, @juliemmoos and New York Magazine

Trevor Butterworth / The Awl:

The Latest Sad Fate of an Aggregation Serf — What's new, you might ask, in another tale of careless youth broken on the galley of journalism? Well, someone in power finally stood up—sort of—for the little guy. In a column on the resignation of 20-something Elizabeth Flock after charges of …

Discussion: Poynter and MediaShift

Guardian:

Bradley Manning defence motion to drop charges denied at pretrial hearing — Defence had asked that 22 criminal charges against Manning be dropped over prosecution's slow speed in sharing documents — A military judge has refused to throw out the charges against US army private Bradley Manning …

Discussion: Reuters

Raf Sanchez / Telegraph:
Bradley Manning trial: US government ordered to release WikiLeaks damage assessments

Discussion: Reuters

Sam Thielman / Adweek:

ABC News, Yahoo Partner on New Online News Show With Katie Couric — Katie Couric has an official ABC News show, but it's not on television. Instead, the former Today and CBS Evening News anchor will host a digital program, Katie's Take, on Yahoo, which partnered with ABC News last year.

Discussion: The Tech Trade, mediabistro.com, Mediaite, MediaPost, TVNewser and Inside TV

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

The Daily News has lost its executive editor for digital, Scott Cohen, who's headed to a news startup called Vocativ in another few weeks, Capital has learned. — Cohen is a well-liked though somewhat divisive figure at the paper, which he joined in 2008 following a stint at ABC News.

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Automattic Grows Up: The Company Behind WordPress.com Shares Revenue Numbers and Hires Execs — Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, is a quiet Web powerhouse. — WordPress now powers 70 million sites, up from 35 million sites a year ago. Almost half of the biggest blogs …

Discussion: TechCrunch

Brian Thomas Gallagher / The New York Observer:

The Story of Etan Patz: Reporters Remember the Quest to Cover (and Find) Soho's Missing Boy — Julie Patz, on the Today show, two years after her son Etan's disappearance. — On May 25, 1979—the first day his mother allowed him to walk to the bus stop alone—6-year-old Etan Patz went missing just blocks from his parents' Soho loft.