Mediagazer: France Weighs New Tax to Fund Film, Music Industries (Wall Street Journal)

4:35 AM ET, May 14, 2013

Top News:

Gov't obtains wide AP phone records in probe — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

Erin Madigan White / Associated Press:

AP responds to intrusive DOJ seizure of journalists' phone records — The U.S. Department of Justice notified The Associated Press on Friday, May 10, that it had secretly obtained telephone records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP journalists and offices, including cell and home phone lines.

Discussion: Politico, CNN, Techdirt, GigaOM, The Newspaper Guild, @janinegibson, The Daily Caller, Mediaite and FishbowlDC

Heidi Moore / Guardian:

The Bloomberg ‘snooping scandal’ is completely overblown | Heidi Moore — Bloomberg was using pretty standard ‘big data’ on users to get a slight edge. It's exactly what Wall Street tries to do — Bloomberg News has been accused of violating the privacy of its users by collecting …

Discussion: AllThingsD, Mashable and Columbia Journalism Review

Nitasha Tiku / Gawker:

Source: Bloomberg Was Supposed to Cut Off Spying Last Year, But Didn't — A high-ranking newsroom official for Bloomberg News was ordered last year to cut off reporters' access to information about how clients used the company's information terminals, according to a former Bloomberg reporter, but the spying continued anyway.

Discussion: Politicker and FishbowlNY

Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Thousands of confidential Bloomberg terminal messages allegedly posted online

Discussion: Quartz, Gizmodo, Business Insider, Talking Biz News, Wall Street Journal and Talking Points Memo

Wall Street Journal:

ESPN, Twitter Expand Tie-Up — Sports Network to Increase Highlights on Messaging Service, Generating Ad Sales — ESPN and Twitter Inc. are announcing a major expansion of their collaboration to post sports-related videos on the short-messaging service—part of a growing wave of tie-ups …

Discussion: GigaOM, Variety, The Next Web, CNET, The Verge, Engadget, Softpedia News and Lost Remote

Wall Street Journal:

France Weighs New Tax to Fund Film, Music Industries — PARIS—The French government is considering a new tax on smartphones, and broadening existing taxes to apply to foreign video-streaming companies, as it looks for ways to keep financing its cinema, music and literature in the digital age.

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Reporter shot in New Orleans violence — Deborah Cotton was in “guarded but stable condition” Sunday night after being hit by gunfire in New Orleans, Kevin Allman reports. Cotton returned to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina “more determined than ever to write, videotape and chronicle the city's culture …

Discussion: Blog of New Orleans, Gambit

Sean Ludwig / VentureBeat:

iHeartRadio hits 30M registered users, but it's a far cry from Pandora's 200M — Clear Channel-owned streaming radio service iHeartRadio announced today that it has surpassed 30 million registered users less than two years after its relaunch. — iHeartRadio streams customized radio stations …

Discussion: Radio & Television …

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:

Hearst's New Digital Chief on E-Commerce and the ‘Natural Evolution’ to Native Ads — Give Consumers Value in Native Ads 'or You're Dead,' Troy Young Says — Hearst Magazines named Troy Young to the new post of president at Hearst Magazines Digital Media this week, citing two decades of experience in the digital world.

Discussion: Canadian Magazines

Sebastian Anthony / ExtremeTech:

How the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year was faked with Photoshop — It turns out that the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year — the largest and most prestigious press photography award — was, in actual fact, a fake. The World Press Photo association hasn't yet stripped the photographer …

Discussion: NEWS.com.au and The Hacker Factor Blog