Mediagazer: Exclusive: Pentagon threatens legal action over bin Laden book (Phil Stewart/Reuters)

7:05 AM ET, August 31, 2012

Top News:

Jack Shafer / Reuters:

Column: Why the Yahoos at Yahoo were wrong to fire David Chalian — If you're a journalist and you've ever said anything “inappropriate,” as David Chalian got caught doing yesterday — and you know you have — please step forward to be fired now. — Chalian, the Washington bureau chief for Yahoo News …

Discussion: NewsBusters.org blogs

David Carr / Media Decoder:

Is This Thing On? Yahoo Firing Proves the Perils of Feeding Many Platforms — David Chalian, the Washington bureau chief of Yahoo News, was fired in record time on Wednesday after he was overheard on a hot mic making a remark about Mitt Romney and his wife not caring about the African-American victims of Hurricane Isaac.

Discussion: The Daily Beast, Los Angeles Times, Hillicon Valley, NewsBusters.org blogs and Politico

Wired:

Apple Rejects App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes — It seemed like a simple enough idea for an iPhone app: Send users a pop-up notice whenever a flying robots kills someone in one of America's many undeclared wars. But Apple keeps blocking the Drones+ program from its App Store — and therefore, from iPhones everywhere.

Discussion: NYT Bits, Los Angeles Times, CNET, Gawker, TUAW, Kotaku, WebProNews, Gizmodo and AppNewser

Phil Stewart / Reuters:

Exclusive: Pentagon threatens legal action over bin Laden book — (Reuters) - The Pentagon warned on Thursday in a letter to a former U.S. Navy SEAL that he was in material breach of non-disclosure agreements with his book detailing his first-hand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Discussion: New York Magazine and Washington Post

Rebecca Shapiro / The Huffington Post:
CBS News Uses Makeup To Hide Identity Of Navy SEAL Who Wrote Bin Laden Book (VIDEO)

Discussion: TVNewser

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' response to HBO Nordic: It's on! — Hot on the heels of HBO's announcement that the network is going over the top in Northern Europe, comes Netflix CEO Reed Hastings challenge for it to do the same in the U.S. Hastings posted the following comment Thursday afternoon on his Facebook page:

Discussion: Fortune, WebProNews, Home Media Magazine and Gizmodo

T.C. Sottek / The Verge:

HBO to stream its content to customers without cable for the first time, but only in Europe — In mid-October, HBO will sell streaming subscriptions to non-cable customers for the first time, but it won't be for customers in the US, Variety reports. The premium TV network announced its plans …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Variety, TechCrunch and VentureBeat

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Twitter Tries Cranking Up the Money Machine: More Precise Targeting = More Ad Dollars — Someone smart who doesn't work at Twitter tells me that the company expects to do $350 million in revenue this year. — Here's one of the ways they could get there: A new slug of ad dollars, generated by an overhaul of its ad platform.

Discussion: Media Week, Media News, Inside Facebook, Twitter Advertising, The Next Web, Forbes, AdExchanger, AdPulp, AdAge, MediaPost, Business Insider, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Mashable! and CNBC

Charlie Warzel / Adweek:

Adweek's Digital Guide to Election Apps and Sites — It's like an being on Instagram, but with more boring white males! — “Why not create a space with a stream of everything in one place?” is what WashingtonPost.com asked readers in its introduction to The Grid.

Ernesto Londoño / Washington Post:

U.S. journalist reportedly in Syrian custody — American freelance journalist Austin Tice, who has been unaccounted for in Syria for more than two weeks, has been captured and is being held in Syrian government custody, according to people familiar with the matter, including a senior diplomat.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM

Brendan Nyhan / CJR:

Ignored factchecks and the media's crisis of confidence — Whatever campaigns may do, aggressive truth-telling is the right approach for reporters — Can the media stop politicians from misleading the public? — That's the question on the minds of many journalists and commentators …

Discussion: GigaOM, The New Yorker Blog, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, Gawker, Media Nation and The Huffington Post

Gabriel Sherman / New York Magazine:

Behind the Latest Palin-Fox Fight — Last night's kerfuffle between Sarah Palin and Fox News was a classic display of Sarah Palin being, well, Sarah Palin. But her Facebook outburst complaining about Fox canceling her appearance at the Republic National Convention reveals something deeper …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Politicker, Mediaite and Deadline.com

Bill Mickey / Folio:

CNN-TIME's Political Convention App Exceeded 10,000 Downloads on First Day of RNC — The app offers round-the-clock National Convention news and alerts to its users. — J ust a few days prior to the Republic National Convention, Time Warner Inc. launched the CNN-TIME Convention Floor Pass app …

Todd Shields / Bloomberg:

Comcast Said Near U.S. Approval To Encrypt Basic-Cable Signals — Cable companies led by Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) are close to winning U.S. permission to start encrypting basic- tier signals, two regulatory officials said, in a move to fight theft and reduce service calls.

Discussion: Radio & Television … and ZDNet