Mediagazer: Mitt Romney repeats pledge to cut PBS federal funding if elected (Barry Walsh/Realscreen)

12:20 PM ET, August 16, 2012

Top News:

Ecuador Grants Asylum to Assange, Defying Britain — CARACAS, Venezuela — The government of Ecuador is prepared to allow Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to remain in its embassy in London indefinitely under a type of humanitarian protection, a government official said in the capital, Quito, on Wednesday night.

Discussion: Guardian, The Wrap, Guardian, @skynewsbreak, Media Decoder, New York Magazine, Associated Press, Techdirt, @fieldproducer, BBC, The New Yorker Blog, The Huffington Post, CNET, Vanity Fair and Pressing Issues

Lizzy Davies / Guardian:

Julian Assange Ecuador embassy row - live coverage — 15:16 BST My colleague Ole AlSaker has been down at the Ecuadorean embassy. This clip shows protesters chanting, “We are not a British colony!” outside the building- echoing the defiance of their foreign minister last night.

Discussion: BBC, @antderosa, Mediaite, Agence France Presse, Gawker, AllThingsD, The Wrap, @wyliecatherine, @ggreenwald, @ggreenwald, @skynewsbreak, The Age and @tomjharper

@reuters:

UK Foreign MInister Hague says Britain will not allow Assange safe passage out of Britain.

Discussion: @producermatthew and @foreignoffice

@skynewsbreak: Foreign Office says will “carry out binding obligation to extradite Julian Assange to Sweden”

Reuters:
Ecuador says Britain threatened to raid embassy over Assange

Discussion: Guardian, Firedoglake, National Review, @foreignoffice, Wired, @wikileaks and CNET

Joel Mathis / The Philly Post:

The Inky Should Go Online Only and Other Radical Ideas to Save Philly Newspapers — The Inquirer and Daily News have survived ownership changes and staff reductions. Now it's time for them to try something startlingly new. — It's time to do something different—radically different—to save Philadelphia's major daily newspapers.

Josh Lowensohn / CNET:

Apple TV could double as cable box, report says — Apple wants to make its streaming set top box double as a cable box, and is in talks with operators, according to a new report. — Apple's set top box could be destined to stream live TV channels, according to a new report.

Discussion: Bloomberg, Media Money …, TechCrunch, AdAge, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News, The Next Web and Business Insider

Josh Halliday / Guardian:

Phone hacking: Andy Coulson and others to face crown court in September — Six former News of the World Journalists, plus private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, told of next court date by magistrate — Andy Coulson, the prime minister's former director of communications …

Guardian: Rupert Murdoch's memo to News Corp staff - full text

Josh Halliday / Guardian:
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp launches anti-corruption review

Discussion: mediabistro.com, FishbowlNY, Crikey, Digital Spy, Media & Entertainment and Reuters

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

13 ways of looking at Medium, the new blogging/sharing/discovery platform from @ev and Obvious — [With apologies to Wallace Stevens, the finest poet to ever serve as vice president of the Hartford Livestock Insurance Company.] — I. — Medium is a new online publishing platform from Obvious Corp. It launched yesterday.

Discussion: Medium, One Man & His Blog, GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb, Betabeat, eMedia Vitals, Digits, Joho the Blog, PC Magazine, msnbc.com, AdAge, App Advice, Dave Winer, Business Insider, GalleyCat, The Wall Blog and Snarkmarket

Choire Sicha / The Awl:
The Pretty New Web and the Future of “Native” Advertising

Discussion: The Kernel, Digiday, Anil Dash, The Rumpus.net, ReadWriteWeb and GigaOM

Lewis DVorkin / Forbes:

Inside Forbes: A New Language of Journalism Speaks to the Rebirth of a Profession — As chief product officer, I spend a lot of time talking with people outside FORBES about our unique model for journalism. Here's one question I get asked all the time: “What exactly are you guys up to?”

Discussion: Talking To Strangers

Garance Franke-Ruta / The Atlantic Online:

What to Do with Political Lies — Fact-checkers are no longer enough: If lies are going to be repeated, the truth needs to be, too. — My former Washington Post colleague Alec MacGillis has a thought-provoking piece in The New Republic today about “The Welfare Card and the Post-Truth Campaign …

Discussion: Guardian, The Caucus, The New Republic and New York Magazine

Barry Walsh / Realscreen:

Mitt Romney repeats pledge to cut PBS federal funding if elected — Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has elaborated on his plans to slash U.S. government spending to Fortune magazine - plans that include cutting federal funding to PBS. In a comprehensive interview …

Simon Rogers / Guardian:

London 2012 and data journalism: what did we learn at the Olympics? — It was two weeks of elite sport, emotion - and data. So how did we deal with it and what did we learn? These are the 12 lessons we learned from London 2012 — • More data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

After ‘chains’ remark, Biden's staff tries to edit press pool reports — Vice President Joe Biden's “penchant for off-message moments regularly sends aides in the West Wing and at Chicago reelection headquarters into orbit,” Jonathan Martin writes in Politico, so his staff tries “to save Biden from himself.”

Discussion: Politico and Mediaite

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

As time ticks down, publishers and Authors Guild slam ebook settlement — On Wednesday, the Authors Guild, publishers Penguin and Macmillan, and Apple filed their opposition to the Department of Justice's proposed ebook pricing settlement with Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.

Discussion: paidContent