From the NYT:

Earlier administrations have fired and prosecuted government officials who provided classified information to the press. They have also tried to force reporters to identify their sources.

But the Bush administration is exploring a more radical measure to protect information it says is vital to national security: the criminal prosecution of reporters under the espionage laws.

Such an approach would signal a thorough revision of the informal rules of engagement that have governed the relationship between the press and the government for many decades. Leaking in Washington is commonplace and typically entails tolerable risks for government officials and, at worst, the possibility of subpoenas to journalists seeking the identities of sources.

But the Bush administration is putting pressure on the press as never before, and it is operating in a judicial climate that seems increasingly receptive to constraints on journalists.

In the last year alone, a reporter for The New York Times was jailed for refusing to testify about a confidential source; her source, a White House aide, was prosecuted on charges that he lied about his contacts with reporters; a C.I.A. analyst was dismissed for unauthorized contacts with reporters; and a raft of subpoenas to reporters were largely upheld by the courts.

It is not easy to gauge whether the administration will move beyond these efforts to criminal prosecutions of reporters. In public statements and court papers, administration officials have said the law allows such prosecutions and that they will use their prosecutorial discretion in this area judiciously. But there is no indication that a decision to begin such a prosecution has been made. A Justice Department spokeswoman, Tasia Scolinos, declined to comment on Friday.

John Reid, the federal access to information commissioner, has blasted the Conservative government's proposed changes to the federal access to information law.

   more »

Richard Gizbert, late of ABC News, and Global Television correspondent Kimberly Halkett are joining the new al-Jazeera International venture.

   more »

In the flap over allowing the media to cover repatriation ceremonies, Alberta Conservative MP Myron Thompson, first elected as Reformer, said if it were his son coming home from Afghanistan in a body bag, he'd "shoot the first media" covering the arrival.

My friend Deborah Jones is a journalist who has a son serving in the military as a reservist. Here's a copy of a letter she sent to Thompson, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, her own MP (Stephen Owen) and Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor.

She wrote a related essay in Time magazine recently.

Hussein Abdel Ghani has been charged with making a false report in connection with the Sinai bombings.

   more »

Fox News commentator Tony Snow is Dubya's new press secretary.

   more »

The NYT's Jonathan Landman, the paper's deputy managing editor for digital journalism, talks about j-school and the coming age of the multiplatform journalist.

   more »

From The Nation, based in Lahore, Pakistan:

'Taliban' set newspapers on fire

From Our Correspondent
PESHAWAR – Alleged Taliban set on fire bundles of local and national newspapers before their delivery in Mirali town of NWA Monday morning, reports said.
The alleged Talibans told the tribesmen that they committed this act because they are dubbed as terrorists and miscreants in the newspapers and vowed to continue such acts, they also asked the local media representatives to mend their ways. Later these Talibans while brandishing their weapons fled from the scene.
, without being offered any resistance.

The story then takes a turn from the unintentionally amusing to the serious:

It is pertinent to add that ongoing war on terror and growing trend of militancy resulted into wide range of unrest amongst the tribal journalists. Almost all of tribal journalists from North and South Waziristan Agency have either left their profession or shifted to some other place. The whereabouts of Hayat Ullah, Correspondent of The Nation, mysteriously abducted from his residence on December 5 2005, are still not known. His relatives allege that he is in custody of the secret agencies, whereas government is contradicting such allegations. Some 17 months back two correspondents of The Nation Allah Noor Wazir and Amir Nawab Khan were mysteriously assassinated by armed persons.

The Harper government plans to keep the media away from witnessing the return of the bodies four soldiers killed in a bombing in Afghanistan. Pop question: Can anyone think of any other government on this continent that's adopted such restrictions?

   more »

Funny. You wake up one morning, and you find something you didn't really listen to disappeared almost a month ago.

I speak of CBC's The National Playlist -- strangely, without Peter Mansbridge. :)

I'm glad they killed it. The 50 Tracks list from which it sprang was one thing, but listening to music hipsters have formulaic arguments five days per week , culminating in people voting online for their favourite tracks, struck me as a forced exercise in interactivity.

And it proved impossible to keep the energy level up. I certainly tuned it out.

Save that idea for perhaps an end-of-year special.

While I hear the dulcet tones of Bill Richardson on CBC Radio One as I write, I'm not entirely sure what the replacement show is about.

NYT media columnist David Carr said this year's crop of Pulitzer Prizes, awarded last Monday, show the press has resumed its adversarial role in its relationship with the U.S. federal government. The reaction of some conservative critics would suggest that's true.

   more »

This NYT story talks about how a thin, plastic, foldable newspaper with constantly changing text is a thing of the present.

   more »

Pulitzer Prize winner Michael A. Hiltzik had been an LA Times business columnist and blogger. The blog has been taken away. His offence? Posting comments on other blogs (and his own) under an assumed name.

   more »

The four major U.S. television networks plus the Hearst-Argyle chain of TV stations want to fight back against some nasty penalties imposed by the Federal Communications Commission.

   more »