From The Globe and Mail:

A controversial attempt to seize a Toronto freelance writer's notes was defused yesterday after a judge brokered a deal that limited damage to journalistic principle.

Journalist Lon Appleby agreed to answer questions in the witness box in connection with a first-degree murder case.

In return, a defence lawyer for the accused man said he would drop his attempt to subpoena notes and tape recordings that Mr. Appleby made while researching a 1998 Toronto Life magazine story.

"I am very happy with the result today," said Iain MacKinnon, Mr. Appleby's lawyer. "The questioning of Lon was narrowly tailored to establish some basic facts about his article and did not pose a threat to press freedom."

From globeandmail.com:

The Ontario Court of Appeal has ordered the National Post newspaper to hand over a document and envelope that could reveal the identity of an individual who tried to “undermine the authority” of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

The ruling came as a blow to several media organizations – including The Globe and Mail – who had argued that handing over the documents would put a chill into the relationship between journalists and their sources – regardless of whether the material in the National Post case was a forgery.

From the BBC:

With Russia's presidential election campaign entering its last day, the head of the electoral commission has admitted media coverage was unequal.

Vladimir Churov told the BBC not all candidates had enjoyed equal access to the media, but he still believed the coverage had been fair.

From Maureen Dowd's column in the NYT:

Hillary and her aides urged reporters to learn from the “Saturday Night Live” skit about journalists having crushes on Obama.

“Maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow,” she said tartly in the debate here Tuesday night. She peevishly and pointlessly complained about getting the first question too often, implying that the moderators of MSNBC -- a channel her campaign has complained has been sexist -- are giving Obama an easy ride.

Beating on the press is the lamest thing you can do. It is only because of the utter open-mindedness of the press that Hillary can lose 11 contests in a row and still be treated as a contender.

From the NYT:

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults are behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million, after three decades of growth that has seen the prison population nearly triple. Another 723,000 people are in local jails.

The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 adult Hispanic men is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 adult black men is, too, as is one in nine black men ages 20 to 34.

China has 1.5 million people in prison -- and with 1.3 billion people, slightly more than four times the population of the U.S.

When you're out-incarcerating an authoritarian country like China, I can only say, "wow."

From The Globe and Mail:

An attempt to seize a Toronto freelance writer's notes has erupted into a court battle pitting journalistic principle against the fate of a man accused of first-degree murder.

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TorStar Corp. is predicting a challenging 2008 for its newspaper holdings, but fortunately, there is a way to ease the bite into earnings taken by falling advertising revenue.

From the NYT:

Of the many landmarks along a journalist’s career, two are among those that stand out: winning an award and making the government back down. Last week, Joshua Micah Marshall achieved both.

On Tuesday, it was announced that he had won a George Polk Award for legal reporting for coverage of the firing of eight United States attorneys, critics charged under political circumstances. The “tenacious investigative reporting sparked interest by the traditional news media and led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,” the citation read.

Also last week, the Justice Department put him back on its mailing list for reporters with credentials after removing him last year.

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Former Hollinger International executive David Radler began serving his prison term today.

Next up, Conrad Black, in exactly one week.

The NYT published an article this week on Sen. John McCain's overwhelming confidence in his own sense of propriety.

The story came under considerable fire, particularly for its use of anonymous sources (more than 2,400 comments were attached to the story).

A key allegation is that some anonymous individuals -- sourced as former aides to McCain, who is currently the presumptive Republican nominee for president -- thought he was having an affair with a younger lobbyist whose clients had business before a committee McCain chaired.

Both McCain and the lobbyist deny they had an affair.

In response, the NYT's editors and reporters took questions from readers. More than 4,000 were sent in.

NYT public editor Clark Hoyt weighs in:

From AP via CTV.ca:

The Black Crowes are lashing out at Maxim magazine for reviewing the band's new album -- apparently without actually hearing it first.

The review, published in Maxim's March issue, gives the Crowes' "Warpaint" a rating of two-and-a-half stars out of five.

"The writer -- who has not heard the album since advance CDs were not made available -- wrote what appears to be a disparaging assessment anyway, citing, `it hasn't left Chris Robinson and the gang much room for growth,'" said a statement on the band's official Web site.

The band's manager, Pete Angelus, said the magazine explained that its review was an "educated guess."

From the BBC:

A Moroccan computer engineer has been sentenced to three years in jail for setting up a Facebook profile in the name of a member of the royal family.
 
Fouad Mourtada was arrested on 5 February on suspicion of stealing the identity of Prince Moulay Rachid, younger brother of King Mohammed VI.

The Casablanca court also ordered Mr Mourtada, 26, to pay a $1,300 fine.

The prosecution had urged the court to impose a sentence which set an example for others.

Mr Mourtada was convicted of "villainous practices linked to the alleged theft of the [prince's] identity".

In his defence, he said he admired the prince, and that the Facebook entry was just intended to be a bit of fun.

Students from the UBC j-school worked with Mr. "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" on a doc about Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. They liked him.

Brit Martin Newland, the founding deputy editor of the National Post, is now helping start up a brand-new paper in the United Arab Emirates. Here's some of his thoughts on that process and on journalism in his former colony.

From the Guardian:

For the viewers of Turkmenistan's popular nightly news programme, Vatan, it was another routine bulletin. But as the newsreader began the 9pm broadcast, viewers across the central Asian country spotted something unusual crawling across the studio table: a large brown cockroach.

The cockroach managed to complete a whole lap of the desk, apparently undetected, before disappearing. The programme, complete with cockroach, was repeated at 11pm that night.

It was only at 9am the following day that horrified officials from Turkmenistan's ministry of culture discovered the cockroach's guest appearance. And that, perhaps, should have been the end of the matter, the mildly entertaining footage being consigned to the occasional airing by the Turkmenistan equivalent of Denis Norden on a telly bloopers show.

But the consequences of this particular cockroach's impromptu five minutes of fame were immediate and severe.

The country's president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, took news of the insect so badly that he responded by firing no fewer than 30 workers from the main state TV channel, the news website Kronika Turkmenistan reported yesterday.

The story went on to say that Berdynukhamedov isn't the only president to have fired TV people. His immediate predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov -- the Turkmenbashi, or father of all the Turkmen -- sacked a bunch after drunken technicians forgot to broadcast his New Year's Eve message one year.