Mediagazer: Tom Watson Fires Back at Criticism of Murdoch Report (Mike Giglio/The Daily Beast)

2:25 PM ET, May 2, 2012

Top News:

Tom Watson Fires Back at Criticism of Murdoch Report — MP Tom Watson has taken flak for a ‘partisan’ report calling Murdoch unfit to run News Corp. Now, Murdoch's ‘tormentor-in-chief’ tells Mike Giglio that it's not about politics. — Tom Watson, the hard-charging Labour MP …

Discussion: Guardian and Guardian

Jeremy W. Peters / @jwpetersnyt:

News Corp board announces “full confidence in Rupert Murdoch's fitness and support for his continuing to lead News Corporation.”

Ryan Chittum / CJR:
The coverup culture of News Corp.

Discussion: Company Town, Journalism.co.uk and New York Times

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:
Leveson: second inquiry may not happen

Discussion: London Evening Standard and Journalism.co.uk

Guardian:
Rupert Murdoch's Fox broadcast licences targeted by US ethics group

Discussion: Guardian, The Huffington Post, Media Decoder, CREW and Tech Daily Dose

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:
Barry Diller Backs Rupert Murdoch as ‘Honorable,’ ‘Morally Fit’

Discussion: Media Matters for America, Media Decoder, Media & Entertainment, Media Week, Hillicon Valley, Guardian, Company Town, Company Town, The Huffington Post, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Guardian, Press Gazette and Guardian

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

BSkyB acquires Acetrax to be its connected TV Trojan Horse — While pundits prefer to focus on phone hacking, News Corp's part-owned UK pay-TV operator BSkyB is buying further in to internet TV. — Last Wednesday, the operator quietly acquired Acetrax, a service that offers …

Discussion: Pocket-lint and Guardian

Mark Sweney / Guardian:
BSkyB posts profit of almost £1bn

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk

Kate Holton / Reuters:
BSkyB uses record results to defend role in Britain

Discussion: Sky News, New York Times and Media Decoder

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:
Sky News is available from today in the US & Canada for the first time, via Livestation

Discussion: Beet.TV

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Time Inc. Shrinking Again — Not a good sign for the magazine business: A rough quarter for Time Inc., the world's biggest magazine publisher. — Revenues dropped 3 percent for the first three months of the year, while operating income shrank by 38 percent.

Discussion: Capital New York, Multichannel, FishbowlNY and Media Money …

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Amazon Gets Into the Sitcom Business — Amazon has been stocking up its Web-video offering with lots of old TV shows. Now it's going to start making some of its own. — The company is pulling back the covers (a bit) on its plans to produce kids' shows and sitcoms via its “Amazon Studios” …

Discussion: VentureBeat, TechCrunch, The Wrap, mediabistro.com, GalleyCat, CNET, Fortune and Home Media Magazine

Kat Stoeffel / The New York Observer:

‘Fox Mole’ Joe Muto Shops Memoir — Can't say no one saw this coming: Gawker's Fox News informant, Joe Muto, is taking meetings with publishers this week for a proposed book about his eight years inside the cable news network, tentatively titled An Atheist in the Foxhole.

Discussion: Mediaite, TVNewser and FishbowlNY

John Koblin / Deadspin:

Is An ESPN Columnist Scamming People On The Internet? [UPDATE] — A few weeks ago, ESPN columnist Sarah Phillips concluded her weekly “Junk Mail” column with a question from an unnamed reader: … Phillips responded: … Is Sarah Phillips for real? Thirteen months ago …

Discussion: LA Observed, Deadspin, Xavier, Journalism.org, The Sports Brewery, WebProNews, Awful Announcing, The New Yorker Blog, @ryanchittum, Daily Download, @weareyourfek and @nicknotned

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Tumblr Finally Wants To Make Some Money, Launches Its First Ads — Tumblr, the immensely popular but profitless blogging platform, just turned on its first set of paid “sponsor products” (Tumblr doesn't like to call them “ads"). Even though the company resisted running ads on its network for a long time …

Discussion: Betabeat, Business Insider and The Next Web

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen / MediaFile:

The irrational imitation of the online news industry — All across Europe, journalistic online startups are launching, aiming to produce and disseminate news in new ways. In our brave new world, the nimble startups of tomorrow were supposed to be overtaking the lumbering dinosaurs of yesterday online.

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Washington Post's Sunday circulation drop not as steep as it appears — At first glance, The Washington Post's numbers reported Tuesday morning in the Audit Bureau of Circulations' March report look grisly: Of all the Top 25 papers in the report, The Post has the steepest drop in average Sunday circulation, down 15.66 percent.

Discussion: Tampa Bay Times, Poynter and DCist

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Judge stays e-book class action case against two publishers — Publishers Hachette and HarperCollins slipped further away from the class action lawyer who wants them to pay over an alleged e-book price-fixing conspiracy. — In an order signed yesterday in New York federal court …

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Next-Generation Publishing Platform Hyperink Wants To Transform Blogs Into Books — YC company Hyperink, a next-generation digital book publishing platform, is debuting a new service which helps bloggers create short books from their existing content. — As we've reported in the past …

Discussion: Forbes, VatorNews and PandoDaily