Mediagazer: Report: Republicans to hammer PolitiFact units on alleged bias (Erik Wemple)

3:50 PM ET, July 23, 2012

Top News:

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

NI staff ‘appeared to have data from stolen phones’ — The Scotland Yard investigation into alleged illegal payments by journalists to police and other public officials has been extended to Trinity Mirror and Richard Desmond's Express Newspapers, the Leveson inquiry has heard.

Discussion: Press Gazette

Ben Dowell / Guardian: Phone hacking: mother of murder victim Clare Bernal sues NI

Josh Halliday / Guardian: Phone hacking: former NoW journalists to learn fate on Tuesday

Sandra Laville / Guardian: Police are using phone-hacking scandal to claw back control of information

Nick Cohen / The Observer: Persecuting the press diminishes us all

Dominic Ponsford / Editor's Blog: And then they came for me...the unprecedented wave of journalist arrests has become a threat to all of us

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

Justice Department slams Apple, refuses to modify e-book settlement — The Justice Department released a document today that characterized criticism by Apple and publishers of a controversial price-fixing settlement as “self-serving” and ill-founded. The Department also pointed to recent ventures …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Media Decoder, PC Magazine, The Loop and Daring Fireball

Greg Sandoval / CNET:
Amazon's the villain, not Apple, e-book sellers say

Discussion: Computerworld and GalleyCat

Shira Ovide / Wall Street Journal:

For the Olympics, Twitter and NBC Form Partnership — As athletes parade into London's Olympic Stadium this Friday, Twitter Inc.'s Olympic hopes will play out in a spartan office in Boulder, Colo. — There, a handful of people will spend 20 hours a day to help corral millions of Twitter messages …

Discussion: Daily Dot, PC Magazine, NewscastStudio Blog, The Wall Blog, Venture Capital Dispatch, Deadline.com, CNET and eMedia Vitals

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Twitter as media: Its ambitions grow with NBC Olympic deal

Discussion: Multichannel and The Verge

Peter Lauria / Reuters:

Exclusive: IAC takes control of Newsweek Daily Beast from Harmans — (Reuters) - The family of late billionaire stereo magnate Sidney Harman has stopped investing in the Newsweek Daily Beast Co joint venture that it co-owns with Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, according to representatives of both companies.

Discussion: FishbowlNY

David Carr / Media Decoder:

In Aurora, a Sadly Familiar Template Kicks In for the News Media — When a lone assassin sets off on a rampage, there is very little sense to be made of what takes place. But, still, the news media, responding to sincere and frightened public appetites, attempts to bring order out of the chaos.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Business Insider, Adweek and New Statesman

Erik Wemple: CNN host doesn't want bio of Aurora suspect

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

National Journal Bars Quotations Tweaked by Sources — National Journal said it would ban the use of quotations that had been massaged or manipulated by its sources, joining a growing chorus of news organizations that are objecting to a practice that has become increasingly common in political journalism.

Discussion: Poynter, Chickaboomer, The Huffington Post, New York Magazine and Prof Chris Daly's Blog

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

Zite adds LA Times, Chicago Tribune, others to its publishers program — Personalized reading app Zite is adding more publishers to its three-month-old ZitePublisher program. The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Hearst's Harper's Bazaar, the International Business Times, Entrepreneur magazine …

Discussion: VentureBeat and Zite - Blog

Max Fisher / The Atlantic Online:

CNN's Effusive Coverage of Kazakhstan Is Quietly Sponsored by Its Subject — The Republic of Kazakhstan is not the sort of country that you hear about much in American media. Newspapers and TV networks have limited space, after all, and with so much happening in places like China and the Middle East …

Discussion: TVNewser

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

How HBO Made It Look Like Critics Liked ‘The Newsroom’ — Critical reception of “The Newsroom,” Aaron Sorkin's new HBO series set in the TV news business, has been generally cool. On Metacritic.com, which averages out reviews from all over, its score is a distinctly mediocre 57.

Discussion: @arrington

David Carr / New York Times:

Yahoo's Big Question - What Is It? — What is Yahoo? — That straightforward question has so far baffled the people who run the company. — I got a taste of the fuzziness when I visited Carol Bartz, then the chief executive, back in 2010. She was funny, profane and articulate, except on the question of what the company is.

Discussion: Capital New York, The Next Web, AdAge, Forbes, Media Decoder, Los Angeles Times, AllThingsD, Business Insider and ReveNews

Alexander C. Kaufman / The Wrap:

News Corp. Promotes Peter Rice, David Hill — Peter Rice, the chairman of entertainment for Fox Networks Group since 2010, has been named chairman and CEO of the division, News Corporation announced Monday. — Rice will oversee all programming and operations for Fox Broadcasting Company …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg and Business Wire

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

NPR ombud: Editors ‘are right’ to give plagiarizing intern another chance — What we have here ... is a cultural gap," Edward Schumacher-Matos writes about Ahmad Shafi, an NPR intern who got busted for plagiarism. — Shafi worked as a “translator, occasional reporter and all-round ‘fixer’” …

Erik Wemple:

Report: Republicans to hammer PolitiFact units on alleged bias — Via the Washington Examiner comes word that Republican operatives across the land will be targeting state PolitiFact operations. The move draws inspiration from the massive document that the Republican Party of Virginia compiled …

Discussion: Poynter