Mediagazer: Fareed Zakaria: ‘People are piling on with every grudge or vendetta’ (Andrew Beaujon/Poynter)

11:20 PM ET, August 14, 2012

Top News:

Times Co. Names Mark Thompson Chief Executive — The New York Times Company has named Mark Thompson, the departing director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation, as its new president and chief executive. — Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of the Times Company and the newspaper's publisher …

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics: BBC's Mark Thompson Jumps Out of the Frying Pan and into the New York Times Cauldron

Jeffrey Goldberg / The Atlantic Online:

Fareed Zakaria Responds to the Charge of Quote-Stealing — In my previous post, I discussed an incident from 2009 (an incident I had completely forgotten about until it was resurrected by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, among others) in which Fareed Zakaria …

Discussion: Poynter

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Fareed Zakaria: ‘People are piling on with every grudge or vendetta’ — Fareed Zakaria's Washington Post column has been suspended for a month. He tells Paul Farhi, “People are piling on with every grudge or vendetta” now that Time and CNN have suspended him for plagiarism.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, American Thinker and Washington Post

Michael Barthel / Salon:

Cut, paste, plagiarize — Major media organizations had faith in Fareed Zakaria. CNN gave him 60 minutes each week — several million dollars' worth of time — to say whatever the hell he wanted, more or less. Time gave him a column, too, the one in which (as reported …

Discussion: @penenberg, @penenberg, @penenberg, @penenberg and @penenberg

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

More questions raised about Fareed Zakaria's work — Columnist and TV host Fareed Zakaria, who acknowledged plagiarizing parts of a magazine article last week, appears to have also published without attribution a passage from a 2005 book. — Zakaria's 2008 book, “The Post-American World …

Discussion: The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast, NewsBusters.org blogs, Plagiarism Today, American Journalism Review, Mother Jones, The Panic Virus and The Huffington Post

Craig Silverman / Poynter:
Newsroom responses to Zakaria plagiarism reveal lack of consistency, transparency

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Erik Wemple, Politico and artsblog.dallasnews.com

Irene Caselli / Guardian:

Ecuador ‘to grant’ Julian Assange asylum — Ecuador's president Rafael Correa has agreed to give the WikiLeaks founder asylum, according to an official in Quito — Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, has agreed to grant Julian Assange asylum, officials within Ecuador's government have said.

Discussion: Bloomberg, Digital Spy, Telegraph, CNET, Wired, The Atlantic Wire, Foreign Policy, WebProNews, Gawker and Mashable!

Estelle Shirbon / Reuters: Assange seeks London-Quito ticket but Sweden looms

RT:
Correa: Assange asylum rumors false, no decision yet

Discussion: @mashirafael, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and @wikileaks

Zeke Miller / BuzzFeed:

Romney Campaign Bars Press From Ryan, Adelson Event — LAKEWOOD, Colorado — Presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's first major fundraiser will be closed to the press, in apparent violation of the Romney-Ryan campaign's oft-strained agreement with the reporters who cover the campaign.

Discussion: Gawker, Politico, The Huffington Post, Yahoo! News and Daily Kos

Erik Wemple:

Politico puts ‘stop reading’ sign in article — Politico today tells us that there's an “unmistakable consensus” among Republican Beltway operatives that the choice of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate “has only a modest chance of going right — and a huge chance of going horribly wrong.”

Discussion: Politico, The Hill and CNN

Howard Kurtz / The Daily Beast:
Is Paul Ryan a Ticking Time Bomb as Mitt Romney's Running Mate?

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Forbes, The Daily Beast, TVNewser, Change of Subject, New York Times, FiveThirtyEight, Mother Jones, NewsBusters.org blogs, Erik Wemple, Paul Krugman and Erik Wemple

Steve Myers / Poynter:

NY photojournalist gets cameras back after arrest, but not press credentials — Robert Stolarik's cameras were confiscated when he was arrested on Aug. 4 while photographing police on a public street. He has them back now, but he still hasn't received his press credentials.

Discussion: Hit & Run, NPPA Advocacy Committee and The Huffington Post

James Estrin / Lens:
Criminalizing Photography — Mickey H. Osterreicher …

Discussion: Media Decoder, Hit & Run and The FJP

Eric Goldman / Ars Technica:

Heavy dose of hyperlinks gets defamation lawsuit against Gizmodo tossed — Judge: links allow readers to decide ultimate truth for themselves. — Eric Goldman is an associate professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law and directs that school's High Tech Law Institute.

Discussion: @nicknotned, The Atlantic Online and Techdirt

Adrienne LaFrance / Nieman Journalism Lab:

After a deal falls apart, Homicide Watch D.C. is going on hiatus — The Internet famously enabled anyone to become a publisher. A tiny outfit of one or two people can, when the stars align, have the same claim on your attention as a major media company with thousands of employees.

Discussion: Kickstarter and DCist

Ben Fritz / Los Angeles Times:

Leading Variety bidder is owner of National Enquirer — An owner of the National Enquirer's parent company is now the leading bidder for Hollywood trade paper Variety. (Variety website / August 13, 2012) — Avenue Capital, a New York hedge fund whose holdings include the parent company …

New York Post:
Life on variety avenue

Discussion: FishbowlNY and The Wrap

Drew Olanoff / The Next Web:

Siri's sister company Trapit debuts its redesigned iPad app and other newsreaders are in trouble — We've told you about Trapit before, the newsreader app that uses brilliant algorithms to help you “trap” news about any topic that interests you. Today, the company has unleashed an updated version …

Discussion: App Advice, Thanks:@jordan_tara

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Google acquires media companies without becoming one — Google is “unarguably a media company” following its acquisition of travel-guide publisher Frommer's, Jeff Bercovici writes. “The travel-guide publisher is indisputably a content business, not a platform or a network or anything else more quintessentially Google-y.”

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Forbes and Skift

Alexander Abad-Santos / The Atlantic Wire:

Actually, Bloomberg Businessweek Won't Scold You for Spritzers — It's okay to mix a little pleasure with business at Bloomberg Businessweek. After The Economist ran a short piece about “The boredom of boozeless business,” (a paean to drinking at work) the magazine was prompted to post …

Discussion: Poynter

Bloomberg:

NBC Wonders if It Should Have Actually Tape-Delayed the Olympics More — Games Drew 219.4 Million Viewers, Becoming Most-Watched TV Event — The London Olympics drew 219.4 million U.S. viewers as gold-medal performances by Americans bolstered ratings, according to NBC …

Discussion: Poynter