Sunday, Dec 21st
Last update09:46:34 AM GMT
Journalism Glance
Rupert Murdoch has admitted to the Leveson inquiry there was a "cover-up" at News International over the phone-hacking scandal.
When asked by Jay whether News Corp had managed the legal risk of phone hacking by covering it up, Murdoch replied: "No. There was no attempt either at my level or several levels below to cover it up. We set up inquiry after inquiry, we employed legal firm after legal firm. Perhaps we relied too much on the conclusions of the police.
In a recent campaign-trail speech, President Obama delivered a line that was widely construed as a jab at Mitt Romney. But whether it was a direct jab at Romney was at least arguable until a Fox News host pumped it up with three additional words that Obama never said.
“Somebody gave me an education,” the President said last Wednesday in a Elyria, Ohio speech, discussing equality of opportunity. “I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Michelle wasn’t. But somebody gave us a chance — just like these folks up here are looking for a chance.”
A new news show hosted by Julian Assange debuted yesterday on RT, the global media outlet funded by the Russian government and carried by several of America’s largest cable providers. His first show was devoted to an interview with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (video below), who has not given a television interview since 2006.
The combination of Assange and a Russian-owned TV network has triggered a predictable wave of snide, smug attacks from American media figures, attacks that found their purest expression in this New York Times review yesterday of Assange’s new program by Alessandra Stanley.
Mark Lewis, the tenacious lawyer who has been at the forefront of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, is considering an approach to the FBI in his pursuit of three potential legal cases of alleged hacking on US soil.
Lewis has arrived in New York at the start of five days of intense legal discussions over the possibility of launching civil lawsuits in the US courts. In his first newspaper interview since arriving in Manhattan, he told the Guardian that he was determined to "go wherever the evidence takes us, now some of that evidence is pointing to America."
One of the most important parts of the lawsuit is that it is seeking “an injunctive relief to prevent police from keeping the press further back than the general public,” according to Osterreicher.
This is part of a much larger and thoroughly troubling trend of Americans being beaten, arrested and harassed for exercising their right to legally film police, which is just part of the growing American police state and the general erosion of our most essential liberties.
“The Rush Limbaugh Show” is leaving the dominant conservative talk radio station in Philadelphia, one of the biggest radio markets in the country.
In its place on the station, WPHT, will go “The Michael Smerconish Show,” hosted by Mr. Smerconish, a native of the city.
A former CIA officer who became a key player in the debate over waterboarding as an interrogation technique was indicted on charges he leaked classified secrets to journalists, including the role of an associate who participated in a covert mission to track down a top al-Qaida figure.
The indictment of John Kiriakou, returned by a federal grand jury on Thursday, is part of an aggressive justice department crackdown on leakers and is one of a half-dozen such cases opened during the Obama administration.
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