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Lowell Bergman has investigated News Corporation for PBS Frontline. He depicts Rupert Murdoch's British operation as a criminal enterprise, routinely hacking the voicemail and computers of innocent people, and using bribery and coercion to infiltrate police and government over decades. Enemies are ruthlessly "monstered" by the tabloids. Bergman also spoke to NPR's Fresh Air. But the hits keep coming: in recent days News Corp has been accused of hacking rival pay TV services and promoting pirated receiver cards in both the UK and Australia. With the looming possibility of prosecution under America's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, how long will shareholders consider Rupert Murdoch irreplaceable?

You can arrest Andy Coulson, you can sack two hundred journalists, and take the News of the World off the face of the earth, but the problem will not go away. News is in crisis, but believing that it is a crisis stemming from the lies, deceitfulness, and illegality of hacking is misplaced. Understanding the roots of the crisis requires a critical interrogation of the terms on which newspapers in operate.

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A new report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) warned that the "independent watchdog function that the founding fathers envisioned for journalism" was at risk in local communities across the US. The report said there was a "shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting" that could lead to "more government waste, more local corruption," "less effective schools," and other problems. The 475-page report is the product of an 18-month effort to explore the turmoil sweeping the traditional media business in the US.

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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Al Jazeera was gaining more prominence because it offered "real news" -- something she said American media were falling far short of doing. Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Clinton said the US was losing the "information war." Other countries and global news outlets, she said, were making inroads into places like the Middle East more effectively than the United States. One of the reasons she cited for this was the quality of channels like Al Jazeera. The channel, she said, was "changing peoples' minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, it is really effective." US news, she added, was not keeping up.

A year after entering the Swat Valley, Pakistan's army has begun to scale down its operations in the region. One of the big challenges they face now is to reintegrate some of the men, who were once considered the enemy, back into mainstream society. Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder reports from Swat Valley.

It is hard to imagine the revolutions in the Middle East without Al Jazeera. The channel gave a boost to the protesters and was essential in bringing people out. Thanks to Al Jazeera, you can hear the same chants shouted by demonstrators in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere. Al Jazeera helped save lives and forced international media to act. In Libya, as in Egypt, Al Jazeera has been shaping public opinion, challenging people.

Al Jazeera is strongest when it can talk to the people it is covering. Iranians are not watching Al Jazeera. This is why it is so exciting that Al Jazeera will soon have channels in Turkish and Swahili. The Saudis, former Egyptian regime, Gaddafi, and many Arab dictators despise Al Jazeera as do those seen as collaborating with American hegemony or with Israel. Al Jazeera is the new Gamal Abdel Nasser, the nationalist force uniting the Arab world.

Two influential US consultancy firms, The Livingston Group (LTG) and Monitor Group, had prepared strategies to reintroduce the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, on the international arena, according to documents published in 2009 by the Libyan opposition group, National Conference of the Libyan Opposition (NCLO). (LTG said it had dropped Gaddafis' regime as a client.)

The documents showed that Gaddafi's regime would have paid millions of dollars for the publicity campaigns and related services, including a book lauding Libya under Gaddafi's rule. The book would have been based on conversations between Gaddafi and "renowned expert visitors," such as Benjamin Barber, Francis Fukuyama, Anthony Giddens, Richard Perle, among others.

In one document, Mark Fuller, CEO of Monitor Group, said he would woo foreign dignitaries to Libya to boost the regime's image. Under the strategy outlined, Monitor Group would push for positive articles about Gaddafi's regime to be published in US and international media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist, Financial Times, and others.

The goal of the publicity campaigns was to introduce Gaddafi as a "thinker and intellectual." Also, LTG would have groomed Gaddafi's fourth son, Mutassim, for leadership, teach him English, and help set up a National Security Council that he would head. One of LTG's invoices --for USD 617,000-- was called "Project Armani." Could it have been a reference to Mutassim's suits?

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2009/07/29/hugh-miles/the-cost-of-letters/

The Never-Betters believe that we are on the brink of a new utopia, where information will be free and democratic, news will be made from the bottom up, love will reign, and cookies will bake themselves.

The Better-Nevers think that we would have been better off if the whole thing had never happened, that the world that is coming to an end is superior to the one that is taking its place, and that books create private space for minds.

The Ever-Wasers insist that at any moment in modernity something like this is going on, and that a new way of organizing data and connecting users is always thrilling to some and chilling to others; that this is what makes it a modern moment.

American software developer Dave Winer announced that he is working on a simple blogging tool that keeps an archival copy of your content on your servers, but pushes it out onto whatever other publishing platform you choose. "The important thing is that you and your ideas live outside the silo and are ported into it at your pleasure," Winer wrote. "You never have to worry about getting your stuff out of the silo because it never lived in there in the first place."