New Yorker writer faked Bob Dylan quotes in bestseller

A staff writer for The New Yorker has resigned and his bestselling book has been halted after he acknowledged inventing quotes by Bob Dylan.

Jonah Lehrer released a statement Monday through his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, saying that some Dylan quotes appearing in Imagine: How Creativity Works did “not exist.” Others were “unintentional misquotations, or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes.”

Lehrer said he acknowledged his actions after being contacted by Michael Moynihan of the online publication Tablet Magazine, which earlier Monday released an in-depth story on the Dylan passages in Imagine.

“I told Mr. Moynihan that (the quotes in question) were from archival interview footage provided to me by Dylan’s representatives. This was a lie spoken in a moment of panic. When Mr. Moynihan followed up, I continued to lie, and say things I should not have said,” Lehrer wrote in his statement.

“The lies are over now. I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers.”

Rogers races to capture multicultural viewers for Olympics

The Olympics provide a solid boost in prestige for Rogers multi-cultural channel OMNI, but they are not likely to be a big money maker in the short term. The network partially depends on advertising from popular prime-time programming for its survival, and will need to move hit shows off its airwaves to make room for the Games.
And while being a member of Canada’s Olympic Consortium is a high-profile boost, the network only receives a small percentage of the ad revenue the Canadian Olympic Consortium and its members generate. But OMNI has a longer-term goal in mind.
“As a station this is more of a prestige play,” said Madeline Ziniak, OMNI’s national vice-president. “We’re not garnering any revenue. In fact, you could say we are going the other way.”
The Globe and Mail story

Tory minister's complaint against lawyer's comments about Conrad Black case dismissed by Law Society

I
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s office pursued a formal complaint against a Toronto lawyer who suggested publicly that the Conservative politician played a role in the decision to let former media baron Conrad Black return to Canada.
This spring, a staffer in Mr. Kenney’s office filed a grievance against Guidy Mamann with the Law Society of Upper Canada, proposing he be investigated for violating its code of conduct.
The veteran immigration lawyer offered commentary to media outlets, including The Globe and Mail, following news in late April that Mr. Black had engineered his return to Canada, a country whose citizenship he renounced in pursuit of a British peerage.
The law society answered the complaint in July by saying it found insufficient evidence to warrant an investigation into Mr. Mamann. It closed the file.
The Globe and Mail story

William French, long-time Globe and Mail literary critic, dead at 84

William French, literary editor and journalist at The Globe and Mail for 42 years, died  last Tuesday.
French shaped Canada's literary landscape from 1960 to 1990 as the most influential book columnist of his time, recognized by two National Newspaper Awards (1977 and 1978). For 28 years he taught editorial and critical writing at Ryerson University's School of Journalism and did much work for the Canada Council and CBC.
Link to paid obit.

The power and glory of sportswriting

Nice sports writing memoir piece in te New York Times:

"I spent four and half years as a young reporter at Sports Illustrated, in the company of many fine writers and editors. All of them knew that the world considered sports to be of modest significance. And yet they also observed how much time and emotion people invested in sports and saw that sports mattered in ways that transcended the games. They took some credit for this. When I left to write books, the first one about sports, I continued to think about my privileged apprenticeship — about what sportswriters do to make the unimportant feel absolutely urgent."

The full New York Times story

Aboriginal network breaks Carson story

The Aboriginal Peoples' Television Network (APTN) broke the story that led to charges against PM's advisor Bruce Carson.

The PMO's referral to the RCMP was prompted after an investigative news report aired on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) in March 2011.

APTN's story probed Carson's relationship with Ottawa-based water company H2O Pros and said documents revealed how the former Harper aide promoted the business to bureaucrats in the aboriginal affairs department.

The report also said Carson was engaged to a former escort who had a financial connection to the company.

more

New York Times Co. posts $88 million loss

The New York Times Company reported a second-quarter loss on Thursday because of a write-down in the value of About.com and continuing declines in print and digital advertising revenue. The net loss was $88.1 million, or 60 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $119.7 million, or 79 cents a share, in the period a year earlier, when the company wrote down the value of its regional newspapers, which it later sold. Increases in circulation and digital subscriptions contributed to a 0.6 percent increase in revenue, to $515.2 million. But a $194.7 million write-down of About.com, the online resource guide the company bought in 2005, weighed on profits. The Times Company had an operating loss of $143.6 million in the quarter ended June 24, compared with an operating profit of $31.5 million in the period a year earlier.

Newsweek to cease publication, stay online

An 80-year-old relic from the heyday of news magazines is going to go purely online. Newsweek will shift out of publishing soon according to Barry Diller, head of owner IAC/InterActiveCorp.  Bloomberg News

Sun finds boy in a burka can buy booze

Sun News Network organized a test -- some may call it a stunt -- to see if a 14-year-old boy could buy alcohol at liquor stores in the GTA.  The boy was dressed head to toe in a burka, the black gown worn by some Muslim woman.  The attempt was successful at three LCBO stores, with no questions being asked  .Sun Media.

Coulson, Brooks to face hacking charges

Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks will face phone hacking charges for their tricky reporting methods on behalf of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World between 2000 and 20006. He is Prime Minister David Cameron's ex-media chief and she was the chief of all  Murdoch's newspapers  Reuters

Shaw Approved for BC Regional News Network

CRTC has approved Shaw's new channel, to be called Global News: BC 1  It will  launch in early in the New Year;.  Mediacaster

Do we know what we want to see on TV?

CRTC says viewers will get to see what they wants. But do we always know what we want? Here.

Murdoch quits boards of all his newspaers

Rupert Murdoch has resigned as a director of a string of companies in his embattled newspaper empire, a move that could result in the octogenarian ending a six-decade-long love affair with print media.Filings with Companies House in Britain reveal that Mr Murdoch stepped down from the boards of the News International group, Times Newspaper Holdings and News Corp Investments last week, following a scandal-riddled year for his British newspaper empire.The mogul has also quit a number of News Corporation's boards in the US, the details of which have yet to be disclosed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He is expected to quit the boards of some of his Australian companies this week. The move follows last month's announcement that News Corp will separate its publishing assets from its film and television businesses.

Networks,cable giants launch Aurora marathon

Wall-to-wall  coverage from Aurora Colorado  Variety

Consummate anchor Alastair Burnet dead at 84

Veteran newsreader Sir Alastair Burnet, best known for fronting ITV's News At Ten, has died aged 84.In a statement, his family said he died at a nursing home in London, where he was being cared for after suffering several strokes. The broadcaster presented his last news bulletin in August 1991, after retiring at the age of 63.BBC.

No FOI in Pyonyang for South Korean press

Interesting story about how the absolute absence of official information from the North makes South Korean newshounds go crazy.  Huffington Post

Star cancels satirical sheet

Onion off-shoot to close

CBC moaning about the end of local programming surcharge

Scrapping the fund (see post below) also represents another blow to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which is still reeling from a decision in the last federal budget to cut $115-million from its $1.1-billion annual funding. The broadcaster was one of the biggest recipients of money from the CRTC fund, receiving more than $40-million a year.
The CBC said it was “astonished” by Wednesday’s decision, arguing the fee was critical to local programming in smaller markets.
“For us, it will mean adjustments in terms of level of service, how we deliver service and the territory that our journalists can cover,” said Hubert T. Lacroix, president of CBC/Radio-Canada.
(Hey, don't these guys already get $1.1 billion from the government? Maybe they should learn to live with that.)--ed)

Cogeco Cable buying Atlantic Broadband to expand in U.S.

Cogeco cable has agreed to buy Atlantic Broadband for $1.36 billion, letting it expand into the U.S. after a failed attempt to gain a foothold in Europe.
Cogeco is purchasing the company from private-equity firms Abry Partners and Oak Hill Capital Partners in a deal that’s expected to be completed by year-end, the Canadian company said today in a statement. Quincy, Massachusetts-based Atlantic Broadband operates cable systems in Pennsylvania, Florida, Maryland, Delaware and South Carolina.
 For Cogeco, today’s deal raises investor concerns that the company is making another risky international gamble, sending the shares down as much as 17 percent. Cogeco is pushing into the U.S. after abandoning the struggling European market, where it wrote off the value of its Portuguese acquisition Cabovisao- Televisao por Cabo SA and lost $248 million last year.

CRTC orders end to cable's local programming fee

Canada's broadcast regulator says an obscure fee that cable companies charge to fund local television content is being scrapped, and the companies have until this fall to explain how they will remove the fee from customers' bills.
The CRTC announced Wednesday it plans to phase out the Local Programming Improvement Fund by the end of August 2014.
"The fund was created to ensure television stations had the resources to meet Canadians’ needs for local programming," chair of the CRTC's hearing panel Leonard Katz said Wednesday.
Starting in 2008, cable and satellite firms were ordered to pay into the $100 million fund to protect Canadian content during the economic slowdown. They, in turn, passed the charge on to customers, tens of thousands of whom complained about the new, nebulous charge.
The CRTC now says those companies have until Sept. 17, 2012 to outline what steps they will take to ensure that customers' bills decrease by a corresponding amount, as the fee is slowly phased out before being stopped entirely in 2014.

Jewelry Television named 13th largest jewelry retailer in the U.S.

Jewelry Television, the leading broadcast retailer of jewelry and gemstones in the United States, ranked no. 13 in National Jeweler’s $100 Million SuperSellers 2012 list. JTV inched up from last year’s no. 14 spot.
National Jeweler’s exclusive industry analysis, The State of the Majors 2012, features its annual $100 Million SuperSellers report, which ranks the nation’s largest jewelers according to annual sales. National Jeweler collects survey data from the nation’s largest jewelers every year.
More of the media release

Chinese newspaper shakeups raise fears of growing pressure on media

Abrupt reshuffles at two outspoken Chinese newspapers have raised fears of growing pressure on the media in the runup to Beijing's once-a-decade change of leadership this autumn.
Lu Fumin, the editor-in-chief of Guangzhou's New Express, has been moved sideways to its parent paper and national and international news coverage has been slashed, reportedly on the orders of officials.
The publisher of Shanghai's Oriental Morning Post, Lu Yan, has reportedly been transferred to another division of the group and the deputy editor-in-chief Sun Jian has been suspended. The newspaper refused to comment.
More

Texting overtakes talking in UK, says Ofcom study

People in the UK are now more likely to text than to make a phone call, according to new research from Ofcom.
While 58% of people communicated via texts on a daily basis in 2011, only 47% made a daily mobile call, said the country's communications industry regulator.
The new trends were revealed in its annual communications market report.
More

Google's Mayer is new Yahoo boss

Yahoo has appointed Google executive Marissa Mayer to be its next CEO, the fifth in five years as the company struggles to rebound from financial malaise and internal turmoil.
Ms Mayer was one of Google's earliest employees and was most recently responsible for its mapping, local and location services. Ms Mayer, 37, began her career at Google in 1999 after getting her master's degree in computer science from Stanford, the school Google's co-founders attended.

NHL’s labour woes raise prospect of a broadcasting vacuum this fall

The sports TV networks will likely be dusting off their catalogue of canned programming until at least U.S. Thanksgiving. That’s after the release of the reported details of the league’s pitch to its players for the next collective agreement.
The NHL wants five-year limits on player contracts, a 46-per-cent share of hockey-related revenues for players, a 20-per-cent rollback on salaries, a 10-year waiting period for free agency and presumably, a return to tube skates. The rollback theme underscored the pessimism we’d been hearing from NHL teams about the prospect of seeing Hockey Night In Canada the first week of October.
More

Microsoft pulls out of msnbc.com; prepares to launch its own news service

Microsoft is pulling out of the joint venture that owned MSNBC.com, freeing the world's largest software maker to build its own online news service.
The breakup announced late Sunday dissolves the final shreds of a 16-year marriage between Microsoft Corp. and NBC News, which is now owned by Comcast Corp. The relationship began to unwind in 2005 when Microsoft sold its stake in MSNBC's cable TV channel to NBC.
NBC is buying Microsoft's 50 percent interest in the MSNBC website for an undisclosed amount. MSNBC.com will be rebranded as NBCNews.com, and readers who logged into MSNBC.com late Sunday were automatically redirected to NBCNews.com.
The website will move its headquarters from Microsoft's corporate campus in Redmond, Wash., to NBC News' longtime home in New York.
The online divorce stemmed from the two partners' desire to gain greater control over their digital destinies as the Internet becomes an increasingly important part of their businesses.

Assembly of First Nations candidates using "new mocassin telegraph"

Pam Palmater essentially launched her campaign to lead the Assembly of First Nations on Twitter.
Word that another candidate, Ellen Gabriel, was going to run spread through Facebook before she could even file the paperwork.
Manitoba lawyer Joan Jack has become a household name among First Nations because of her use of social media.
And the blossoming Aboriginal Peoples Television Network is piping commentary, analysis and, on Thursday night, an all-candidates debate, straight into aboriginal living rooms across the country.
For the first time, regular First Nations people living in far-flung communities across Canada have readily accessible tools for a national conversation about their leadership in Ottawa — turning the traditional discourse among chiefs on its head.
"It has changed it entirely, that's for sure," Jack said in an interview.
The grassroots don't have a vote, but through a growing network enabled by new media, they seem to have a voice.
"It's the new moccasin telegraph," said Jack.
more

Finding—and photographing—Karla Homolka

“All of a sudden, here’s the miracle: a light wind blows just enough to do this,” and (photographer Zoran) Milich demonstrates by parting his fingers in just the way the leaves parted to reveal Homolka reaching for her child. Milich unleashed a barrage of exposures, the shutter firing.

From the Maclean's report on how Paula Todd and photographer Zoran Milich found Karla Homolka. Unfortunately the story -- at least on line -- does not include the photo. You have to buy the e-book to see it.
Link

Conrad Black's fight to retain Order of Canada fodder for columnists

The Star has never loved Conrad Black. Admittedly, he is hard to love but editorial page editor Bob Hepburn may have gone a bit over the edge by tagging him -- Henry Luce style -- "the medal-loving British ex-convict" in a piece about Black's "desperate" fight to retain the decoration.
Hepburn's column
On the other hand, Bob Fulford writes in the NatPost that  "Conrad Black deserves his Order of Canada."
The column
If you have read more about Conrad than you want to, don't click on the links. :))

Forcing reporter to retire at 65 discriminatory: N.B. court

After 34 years as a reporter for the St. John Telegraph Journal in New Brunswick,  Khalid Mallik was forced to retire in March 2008 when he turned 65.  The Journal's parent company Brunswick News Inc., took the position  that Mallik had reached normal retirement age and consistently failed to meet performance standards.  So, the company fired him using a  clause in the collective agreement which appeared to authorize the dismissal. He received a special severance package of 52 weeks pay worth $48,009 as required by the agreement.

 A year later, Mallik filed an age discrimination complaint with the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission. The Commission investigated and dismissed his claim because they were convinced that  it was his history of poor performance and not his age which led to the decision to fire him. Mallik didn't accept that decision and applied to the Court of Queen’s Bench for an order to quash the dismissal and tell the Human Rights Commission to appoint a Board of Inquiry to hear his case.

Mr. Justice McLellan decided that there was no performance-related issues that had led to Mallik’s firing.  He was going about his work as he always had and although there were four written warnings over a three-year period, they were not serious enough to justify a suspension, let alone a firing.
Full story

Kitchener Rangers hockey team sues student newspaper

The Kitchener Rangers of the OHL have taken legal action against a University of Michigan student newspaper and one of its reporters for publishing a story that alleged the team offered defenceman Jacob Trouba $200,000 to play for it.
A story that appeared in The Michigan Daily last week alleged that the Rangers tried to coax Trouba, a first-round draft pick of the Winnipeg Jets last month, out of a deal to play for the Michigan Wolverines.
The Rangers have now sued the newspaper and reporter Matt Slovin, according to the Waterloo Region Record.
"It's not a threat anymore," Rangers chief operating officer Steve Bienkowski told the Record Monday. "We served the newspaper and the writer there to either back it up or retract it."
The Rangers drafted Trouba two years ago but he declined to play, opting for the U.S. National Team Development Program instead. He has committed to Michigan but will lose his NCAA eligibility if he signs with the Jets.

TV providers watch subscribers numbers drop

Sharp drops in subscribers during the first quarter of this year for Astral Media and Corus Entertainment suggest that cable's heyday is passing quickly.  National Post.

Court rules on music downloads, photocopying

The Supreme Court of Canada has thrown out a lower court decision requiring music downloaders to pay a royalty fee to the songwriter or music publisher. The court also reversed a decision that teachers violate copyright law if they make photocopies parts of a text books for the purposes of student instruction. CBC,ca

Blast at Shaw HQ hits 911, gov't, public computers

Calgary Herald with video.

No bad news please, we're Iranian

No bad news please, we're Iranian

Scotland Yard makes two more arrests

Police investigating corruption in the British media arrested two more journalists Wednesday, both from rival tabloids to Rupert Murdoch's now-closed News of the World. One of the men is Justin Penrose, a reporter for the Sunday Mirror tabloid, Penrose's employers said, while British media named the other as Tom Savage, deputy news editor of the Daily Star Sunday.Scotland Yard said that in dawn raids a 37-year-old man was detained at his home in Kent, southeast England, and a 34-year-old man at his home in London, but did not identify them.  AFP

Sun pundit attacks Globe ex-editor

Twitter is apparently burning up as Sun TV pundit Ezra Levant and a former editor at the Globe and Mail, Stephen Wicary, trade insults. Wicary has moved to Cuba to be with his wife who is there as director of CARE Canada. Cabinet Minister Tony Clement has joined in as well. (Why?) Slow news day stuff.  National Post

Postmedia plan for cost-cutting

Postmedia Network Canada Corp. announced plans for a three-year cost-cutting program as it reported a fiscal third-quarter loss Tuesday. The Toronto-based media company posted a net loss of $12.1 million for the quarter as revenue slipped to $212 million, a drop of 6.9 per cent compared to the same period last year. Canada.com

Celebrity chef Anthony Seldak dead at age 29

Cooking fans are shocked tonight at the untimely death of 29-year-old celebrity chef Anthony Seldak. Seldak was found dead in his West Vancouver apartment. Cause of death so far is said to be an undiagnosed medical condition. Seldak was a dynamic young who burst onto the cooking scene in 2007. Sedlak won a silver medal representing Canada at the World Junior Chef Challenge in New Zealand and the Food Network’s Superstar Chef Challenge at age 23, before hosting his own show for four seasons. Trish Magwood, one of Sedlak's fellow judges on "Family Cook Off," said she first encountered him the day before they began filming last summer Magwood said she expected to be met by the baby faced host from "The Main.""When he shot 'The Main,' we would joke that he was 12 when he did it -- they had him in a cardigan," said Magwood.  Canadian Press obit on CP24

Stooge of Stalin or Simply Stupid?

(Left) Nicole Underlay as Hildy Johnson and through the years

The Star's critic Richard Ouzounian gives the Shaw Festival's His Girl Friday two stars only. While praising the cast,  Ouzounian pans the 2003 John Gaure adaption of this newsroom comedy. Of course, His Girl Friday is a re-write of Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur's 1928 legend The Front Page.  Ouzounian has a number of complaints and we think he might agree with us that the ommission of a truly trademark line is unforgiveable. How could anyone write out Walter Burn's pithy headline "Sheriff Hartman: Stooge of Stalin or Simply Stupid?"  Toronto Star review

Times to launch free Chinese-language news site

 The New York Times will begin a free news site in Chinese and has hopes that the government in China will permit it to be accessed by Chinese citizens. The  Times says the server will be outside China for whatever that may be worth. Content will be an amalgam of NYT translations and original material from Chinese contributors -- about 30 items a day in all. According to the Times the site is called cn.nytimes.com but frankly we have to think that catchy name will be superseded by another. New York Times

Fiona Conway heads to Canada and the CBC

Fiona Conway is heading back to Canada to join the CBC after what many will call a lifetime at ABC News. Ms Conway joined ABC with the ascension of Peter Jennings to the anchorship of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings (as it was known at the time). She was Jennings point-person for hard news for many years. Most recently Fiona Conway was director of  ABC news and client services based in New York. She will return to her native Canada to take on the challenging work of driving the cross-platform rationalization of the CBC. Her title is that of executive director. As told by the Hollywood Reporter, Ms  Conway's new post at the CBC "includes helping ensure the Canadian pubcaster remains relevant to Canadians in the increasingly digitally-driven news arena.  Her ABC stints included senior producer for Good Morning America and ABC World News Tonight, where she worked with fellow Canadian Peter Jennings." She is still well-remembered by many as a no nonsense producer at CTV in the 1980s.  Fiona Conway issued a statement in which she said “I have been really fortunate at ABC News to have been a part of some of the biggest news stories of our time. I can’t think of a more exciting next chapter than my new role with CBC News,” 

Media fight ban on naming social workers

Next week will see a judicial decision as to whether there will be a publication ban on the names of social workers involved in the care of Phoenix Sinclair of Winnipeg. She was five years old when she was murdered in 2005. The media has banded together to fight a proposed ban. A lawyer for local outlets says it would allow "an unaccountable group of anonymous civil servants" to avoid scrutiny. But child welfare agencies and the social workers union are asking for a ban on the identities of workers who are to testify at the scheduled  public inquiry into the death of Phoenix  CBC.ca

Toronto police return negatives from 2000 riot

Interesting yarn here from the Star about how photo and negatives from a riot 12 years ago have been returned to the Star by the Toronto Police. The story, by Jim Rankin, notes that the pictures were taken with expensive 35mm film cameras by the legendary Boris Spremo, now retired. The story goes on to ponder the present digital world of picture taking and the everyman-with-a-camera state of affairs. It has changed the way police go about seeking pictures of criminal and civil events. Now they have a much wider choice of pictures from which to choose, quite often taken by ordinary people who actually witnessed events. That's better than Johnny Come Lately reporters and photographers. Toronto Star.

Radio Canada reporter running for Parti Quebecois accused of being a separatist

Parti Quebecois Leader  is defending a former TV journalist who will run for the party in the next provincial election.

Pierre Duchesne resigned from Radio-Canada last month after 25 years at the broadcaster, most recently as chief correspondent at the legislature.

“I will defend without reservations the integrity of Pierre Duchesne,” Marois told a news conference.“He is a man of great integrity.”

Marois said that while Duchesne had been considered as a potential candidate, the PQ only approched him in the last several days and that she had only met him herself on Wednesday.

“When we saw he was resigning, it made our work easier,” Marois said. “We had targeted him as an interesting candidate.

(A separatist at Radio Canada? We are shocked!)

NatPost story

U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear media ownership restrictions case

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by media companies seeking to challenge government restrictions on the ownership of newspaper and broadcast station in the same market. The court sent the issue back to the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC is in the middle of its regular review of media ownership rules that news organizations and broadcasters say are outdated. The agency relaxed some the rules in 2007, the year of its last review.

An appeals court threw out the looser regulations that applied to the top 20 markets in the United States. It ruled that the FCC didn’t follow proper procedures in implementing the changes. Last Friday the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the lower court ruling filed by Media General Inc., the National Association of Broadcasters, Tribune Co., and other media companies.

Media General, Tribune and the broadcasters said that they were disappointed by the Supreme Court action. Both sides involved in the case thought that the high court would accept an appeal that revolved around the procedural issues.

The tablet war heats up: Smaller, cheaper iPad said to be on the way

Apple Inc. plans to debut a smaller, cheaper iPad by year-end, two people with knowledge of the plans said, to help maintain dominance of the tablet market as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. prepare competing hand-held devices.

The new model will have a screen that’s 7 inches to 8 inches diagonally, less than the current 9.7-inch version, said the people, who asked not to be identified because Apple hasn’t made its plans public. The product, which Apple may announce by October, won’t have the high-definition screen featured on the iPad that was released in March, one of the people said.

A smaller, less expensive iPad could undercut the ambitions of Google, Microsoft and Amazon.com Inc. to gain traction in the advancing tablet market, said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach Inc. The new device will probably have a price closer to Google’s Nexus 7 tablet and Amazon’s Kindle Fire, both of which have 7-inch screens and cost $199.

Bloomberg News story in The Star

Journalism education cannot teach its way to the future

 Poynter Institute journalism prof muses about the future.

The full article

Out of touch TV crew in the Philippines was feared kidnapped but is apparently safe

It was eight days ago that a prominent TV reporter and his film crew disappeared into a jungle on the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines. They didn’t call their bosses or their families, and they missed their return flight to Manila. For a week, not a word.

Kidnapped — that was the first and easiest answer.

The team had been trying to interview a shadowy leader of the Abu Sayyaf Group, the violent Islamist outfit that is notorious for supporting itself through kidnappings for ransom. And Jolo is no resort: It sits amid a string of southern islands where criminal gangs and Islamist cells operate nearly unchecked.

But the interior secretary of the Philippines said Tuesday that the film crew is probably in no danger. He said one of them had finally called a friend to say they were with an Abu Sayyaf cell, but had not been kidnapped.

“They are not under duress,” said the secretary, Jesse Robredo, who was quoted by The Philippine Daily Inquirer. “They appear to be free to go anytime.”

The crew, working for Al Arabiya TV, is led by Baker Atyani, a well-known Jordanian journalist who had scored an interview with Osama bin Laden in June 2001. In the interview, Bin Laden offered a veiled and ominous warning about an upcoming attack against the United States.

HBO Renews 'True Blood,' 'The Newsroom'

HBO has renewed the Aaron Sorkin drama The Newsroom for a second season, while their smash vampire romp True Blood was also picked up for its sixth season.
True Blood is currently in the midst of its fifth season, which will be its last with showrunner and creator Alan
The Newsroom is currently just a handful of episodes into its first season, and though it received mixed reviews from critics, it has been among HBO's top programs since it premiered on June 23rd. The drama stars Jeff Daniels as a jaded cable news anchor who attempts to change things with his producer/ex-girlfriend (Emily Mortimer) following a "mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it"-like moment.
HBO did not release any information involving possible air dates or changes for the new season.

Anderson Cooper reveals he's gay

Anderson Cooper, the 45-year-old CNN anchor revealed he is gay in an email that a colleague published on The Daily Beast Monday morning. The site boasts that it offers "a smart, speedy take on the news from around the world, combined with the depth and investigative power of Newsweek magazine."

The dashing journalist was responding to a request by Andrew Sullivan for his thoughts on an emerging trend: gay people in public life who come out in a much more restrained and matter-of-fact way than in the past.

Cooper, who anchors CNN’s primetime news show Anderson Cooper 360° and also hosts a daytime talk show, gave Sullivan permission to reprint his response

(Does anyone care? Now if he wore disco pants!--ed)

New Zealand reporter ejected from courtroom after official objects to her gold sequinned 'disco pants'

A female reporter covering a murder trial was ordered out of court after turning up in gold sequinned 'disco pants'.

Laura McQuillan's ejection from Wellington High Court in New Zealand sparked an online debate over the rights and wrongs of wearing the trousers in court.

A registrar at Wellington High Court approached Miss McQuillan, 25, who works for NZ Newswire, while she was sitting in an area reserved for media and asked her to leave before the hearing broke for lunch.

Afterwards, Miss McQuillan, who describes herself on her Twitter page as 'Winner, Most Awesome Person of the Year, 25 years running', took to the site to defend the trousers, saying: 'I'm sitting under a table! No one even sees my legs!

All the news that’s fit to post and link: Federal Court clears up legal risks

Free Dominion is a Canadian-based political news website where users regularly post articles or link to online content for the purposes of political debate. On January 10, 2008, an eleven-paragraph column by National Post columnist Jonathan Kay was posted to the site. When the Post complained in April 2010, the column was replaced with shorter excerpt that included the same headline along with 3 full paragraphs and one half-paragraph. A month later, a site user posted a link to a photograph that was posted on the photographer’s website. The photograph itself was not posted as only a link was used.

These postings and links were not particularly unusual – similar actions occur millions of times every day - yet soon after, Free Dominion was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit claiming the posting and the link violated the Post and photographer’s copyright.

Last week, the Federal Court of Canada issued its ruling, dismissing both claims (along with a claim over the posting of a second article for which the limitation period to sue had expired). The decision has enormous implications for Internet users, news organizations, and free speech in Canada as it removes much of the legal uncertainty surrounding sharing information online.

More from The Star's columnist Michael Geist