Mediagazer: Shield law could protect Fox News mole, Gawker blogger Joe Muto (Steve Myers/Poynter)

10:15 PM ET, April 25, 2012

Top News:

Shiv Malik / Guardian:

FSA considers News Corp emails — Financial Services Authority looking into whether emails from culture department to News Corp broke insider trading rules — The stock market watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, is looking at whether a series of emails from the office of the culture …

Discussion: New Statesman, New York Magazine and Deadline.com

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:
Jeremy Hunt: ‘The idea I was backing BSkyB bid is laughable’

Discussion: ProPublica and Forbes

Guardian:
Jeremy Hunt visited News Corp in US as Murdochs considered BSkyB bid

Discussion: BBC, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, Guardian, Telegraph and Guardian

Iain Martin / The Telegraph:
The night I saw Jeremy Hunt hide behind a tree before dinner with James Murdoch

Discussion: Guardian, The New York Observer and Daily Mail

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: Erik Wemple, The Daily Beast, Guardian, Jon Slattery, Guardian, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel, FishbowlNY and Journalism.co.uk

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:
Gordon Brown: Rupert Murdoch wrong to claim I declared war on News Corp

Discussion: Crikey, The Independent, Guardian and Reuters

Jack Shafer / Reuters:
Who cares if Murdoch lobbied?

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Company Town

Jeff Bercovici / Mixed Media:
Rupert Murdoch: Former PM Gordon Brown ‘Declared War’ on News Corp.

Discussion: Guardian, @skynewsbreak, Hollywood Reporter, @lisaocarroll, Forbes, Guardian, Media Week and NetNewsCheck Latest

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 Awl, CJR, @producermatthew, WebProNews, The Not-So Private Parts, Capital New York, @jeffjarvis, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post, @juliemmoos, Inside Cable News, Erik Wemple, Guardian and New York Magazine

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Shield law could protect Fox News mole, Gawker blogger Joe Muto — Roger Ailes may view “Fox Mole” Joe Muto as a disloyal, dishonest ex-employee, but Muto may be entitled to the same legal protections that prevent the government from raiding the newsroom at Fox News.

Discussion: Inside Cable News, The New York Observer and Gawker, Thanks:@myersnews

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

NBC Miami reporter fired for edited Zimmerman tape — WTVJ reporter Jeff Burnside was fired Friday after being involved in editing a tape of George Zimmerman's 911 call before he shot Trayvon Martin. Burnside, who has been with the NBC owned and operated Miami station for 13 years, still has a bio page on its website.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Mediaite, The Daily Caller, SFLTV, Riptide 2.0, Inside Cable News and Red Alert Politics

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: Nieman Journalism Lab, Poynter and MediaShift

Steven Levy / Wired:

Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter? — Had Narrative Science — a company that trains computers to write news stories—created this piece, it probably would not mention that the company's Chicago headquarters lie only a long baseball toss from the Tribune newspaper building.

Discussion: GigaOM, Betabeat, The Atlantic Wire, @jayrosen_nyu and Reporters' Lab

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

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.

Felix Salmon:

When is a scoop non-public information? — Many thanks to everybody who responded to my provocation yesterday, where I suggested that the NYT could sell advance access to its stories. John Gapper summed it up well, in a tweet: “If scoops don't matter to most readers, as the digerati claim …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, eMedia Vitals and GigaOM

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

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.

Adrienne LaFrance / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Worldcrunch wants to be the Internet's Rosetta Stone for news — As the translation-based news service Worldcrunch approaches the one-year anniversary of its launch, it's also tweaking its business approach in three key ways that co-founders Jeff Israely and Irène Toporkoff hope will help it thrive.