The release of a long-anticipated report on Thursday about abuses in the British press, particularly the phone-hacking scandal, is prompting furious debate about what comes next, John F. Burns and Alan Cowell report. The question is whether the British government should regulate newspapers, or whether some stronger form of self-regulation is sufficient. The report from the Leveson inquiry will no doubt have suggestions as well.
- The idea of the government becoming involved in the operation of newspapers is chilling to many in Parliament - 86 members on Wednesday signed a letter in defense of a free speech - as well as to the publishers themselves. But others note that self-regulation proved itself inadequate to deal with the phone hacking scandal, and that all the attention gives the country a rare chance to rein in the excesses of the British press.
With the appointment of a new mediator there is hope that, perhaps, the online advertising industry an d privacy advocates can come to an agreement on how to give consumers more control over the collection of personal information, Natasha Singer reports. It has been tough going for the creation of an international standard for a browser setting “Do Not Track.†The new mediator is Peter Swire, a professor of law at Ohio State University and a former White House privacy official during the Clinton administration. He said in an interview: “The overarching theme is how to give users choice about their Internet experience while also funding a useful Internet.â€
There is an accessibility among many of the films selected for the Sundance Film Festival in January, with many familiar movie and TV stars appearing, Brooks Barnes writes. Of course, accessible is a relative term, and the selections - with actors like Jessica Biel, Daniel Radcliffe and Kristen Bell - are still destined to be art-house films, not multiplex fare. But the 56 feature and documentary films selecte d on Wednesday - culled from 4,044 submissions - reflect the stronger infrastructure around independent films, including video-on-demand distribution.
The editorial director of Le Monde, Érik Izraelewicz, died on Tuesday at the office apparently of a heart attack at age 58, Eric Pfanner writes. He had been brought in to the left-leaning newspaper two years ago by new owners, who had acquired it from the employees, after a career in business journalism. Mr. Izraelewicz had many friends in the Socialist Party, however, and the president of France, François Hollande, spoke with affection about him.
Noam Cohen edits and writes for the Media Decoder blog. Follow @noamcohen on Twitter.
