Mediagazer: Amazon takes away pre-orders on many Hachette titles, messes with search, categories and recommendations (Laura Hazard Owen/Gigaom)

9:55 AM ET, May 23, 2014

Top News:

Michael Kinsley / New York Times:

In review of Greenwald book, Kinsley says government should choose which secrets to release — ‘No Place to Hide,’ by Glenn Greenwald — “My position was straightforward,” Glenn Greenwald writes. “By ordering illegal eavesdropping, the president had committed crimes and should be held accountable for them.”

Erik Wemple / Washington Post:

Kinsley's review attacks Greenwald and the First Amendment that allows secrets to emerge — Michael Kinsley on Glenn Greenwald: He ‘cannot’ decide what secrets get published — Michael Kinsley, always a provocative thinker, has done quite a bit of provoking in his just-published …

Discussion: Freedom of the Press …, @danielellsberg, @i_hay, @readthis140, @davewiner, @xor, @ggreenwald, @froomkin, Scripting News, @dangillmor, The Newspaper Guild, CNNMoney.com and The Daily Banter

David Streitfeld / New York Times:

Amazon escalates battle with Hachette, refuses coming book orders, lists some as unavailable — Amazon Escalates Its Battle Against Hachette — Amazon, under fire in much of the literary community for energetically discouraging customers from buying books from the publisher Hachette, has abruptly escalated the battle.

Discussion: Publishers Lunch, New York Times, Observation Deck, @laurahazardowen, @kevinhearne, Bookseller news and The Awl

Laura Hazard Owen / Gigaom:

Amazon takes away pre-orders on many Hachette titles, messes with search, categories and recommendations — As Amazon and Hachette continue to battle in an apparent fight over contracts, Amazon abruptly stepped up its tactics on Thursday night. The retailer, which until now had delayed shipments …

Robert Mackey / New York Times:

Twitter Agrees to Block ‘Blasphemous’ Tweets in Pakistan — At least five times this month, a Pakistani bureaucrat who works from a colonial-era barracks in Karachi, just down the street from the former home of his country's secularist founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, asked Twitter to shield …

Discussion: Sky News, Techdirt, Times LIVE, AHRC News, DAWN.COM, The Daily Beast, Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Verge and TechCrunch

Jon Boone / Guardian:
Pakistan's Geo News becomes latest target in blasphemy accusation trend

Discussion: Khaleej Times, Economist, The News International, DW.DE, The News International, The News International, presstv.ir, @rizmokal, Eurasia Review, @venkatananth and @ketan72

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Newspapers are ‘hollowed out’ and ‘VICE is the savior of news,’ says guy from Facebook — Facebook's Mike Hudack published a rant “about the state of the media” on his page Thursday. Some choice moments: — CNN is “the network of kidnapped white girls.”

Charlie Warzel / BuzzFeed:
Why A Facebook Employee Just Scared The Hell Out Of The Media

Discussion: Gigaom, Mother Jones, Daily Dot, @antderosa, Slate, @obrien, @mathewi, @rbole, @cwarzel, @meganpaolone, @dannysullivan and @cwarzel

Alex Howard / semper scriben: Where journalism, Facebook's algorithm and responsibiliy lie

Katherine Fung / The Huffington Post:

CNN, Other Broadcasters Go Dark In Thailand After Coup — BANGKOK, May 23 (Reuters) - Television screens went blue and up flashed the army's emblem, normal programming stopped and Thailand held its breath. For anyone looking forward to their favorite show, it was going to be a long wait.

Discussion: Inquirer News, Variety and Mashable

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Twitter Experiments With a New Video-Sharing Feature — So it doesn't look like Twitter is going to get into the audio business, after all. But Twitter has liked video for quite a while. — And it looks like it's experimenting with a new product that could encourage more people to use …

Discussion: Tech Digest, Expert Reviews, Ubergizmo, SocialTimes and Engadget

Lucia Moses / Digiday:

Bloomberg gives its native ads a data spin — Data journalism is getting the native ad treatment. — Bloomberg LP, best known for its financial news and information, has launched a new suite of native ad products that tap into its data-crunching abilities.

Discussion: @raju

Agence France-Presse:

News Corp chief says print ‘crucial’ to company future — AFP News Corp chief says print ‘crucial’ to company future — Sydney (AFP) - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. on Friday issued a strong statement of support for newspapers, with chief executive Robert Thomson saying they had a crucial role in the group's multimedia future.

Reuters:

U.S. criticizes Cuba over blocking of dissident website — (Reuters) - The United States criticized Cuban censorship on Thursday after Cubans were blocked from an independent website that is challenging the state monopoly on news on the island. — Dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez …

Discussion: Associated Press, Committee to Protect … and HispanicallySpeakingNews.com

Press Gazette:

BBC legal chief warns that Bribery Act can make foreign newsgathering ‘very difficult’ — Many journalists may have failed to understand the extent to which the Bribery Act 2010 could affect their activities, the head of the BBC's editorial legal group told a conference.

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:

TVTY Raises $4.5 Million To Sync TV And Online Ads — French startup TVTY raised $4.5 million from Partech Ventures, 360 Capital Partners and business angels. This is yet another sign that French companies' efforts to advertise technology have been doing very well.

Discussion: VentureBeat

Dominic Patten / Deadline.com:

Only U.S.-Based News Corp Phone-Hacking Suit Dismissed; Angelina Jolie's Stunt Double Must Pursue Case In UK — Confirming his tentative ruling from February, a federal judge has formally dismissed the U.S.-based phone-hacking scandal suit against News Corp filed last June by a stunt double for Angelina Jolie.

Discussion: Bloomberg and Hollywood Reporter