From the BBC:

A former US TV news presenter who hacked into a rival's e-mail and leaked gossip to the press has been sentenced to six months under house arrest.

A report commissioned for the Canadian Human Rights Commission says that agency should get out of the business of policing online hate and make leave it up to the criminal justice system.

However, Richard Moon, a constitutional law expert and the report's author, also recommends that media accountability be improved.

CBC.ca has a 'your view' thread going asking for people to comment on what influence they think the media is having on the recession.

Surprisingly, only 12 comments.

Most of those would suggest that the media is sensationalizing the issue and therefore is making matters worse.

I would note that the noted alarmist, one S. Harper of 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, has said the world faces its greatest economic challenge since the Great Depression -- a big shift from his pre-election messaging.

B. Obama, set to move into the White House in late January, has called the situation a crisis of historic proportions.

And the media are being too negative?!?!

Back when I covered courts in Regina (a depressingly long time ago), any accusations of  "sensationalizing" usually came when I faithfully reported the facts of a sensational case. Reporting the facts does not constitute sensationalism. A media outlet is sensationalizing when it makes something appear more spectacular than the facts would warrant.

Unfortunately, we won't know for years whether the news media's coverage overestimated, underestimated or got the gravity of this current situation just right.

But given the words of those charged with leading us out of this mess, not to mention the empirical evidence of economic troubles, I don't believe the media is overestimating the problem.

User-generated content is slipping in importance on YouTube as major media corporations increasingly use the video site as a distribution channel for their own wares.

From The Globe and Mail:

Web advertising continues to do well in the United States despite a down economy.

Online ad revenue totalled almost $5.9-billion (U.S.) in the third quarter, up 11 per cent from the same period last year.

For the first nine months of the year, online advertising revenue in the United States totalled $17.3-billion, compared with $15.2-billion in the same period last year, according to The Associated Press.

About 10 per cent of all money spent on advertising in 2008 is going toward online ads, according to Britain-based advertising company ZenithOptimedia.

Addendum

That news is actually from last Friday, although it was in Monday's G&M. Here's how Forbes reported it on Nov. 21:

... Comparing the latest figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau to its Q307 report shows how much growth has slowed.

While online ad spending approached $5.9 billion this past quarter, in Q307, when the IAB said revenues hit $5.2 billion, it had gained 25.3% over the prior year.

Although online ad dollars had already been slowing last year consider the difference from Q306, when web-based advertising was up 33%.

Forbes concluded online advertising revenues should be considered flat when compared to Q1 and Q2.

So maybe the news wasn't so great after all.

From CBC.ca:

An Afghan man who worked with CBC reporter Mellissa Fung said Monday he immediately flagged down a policeman after she was abducted, but was told it wasn't the police's responsibility to help them.

Shokoor Feroz, who was held for questioning in connection with Fung's Oct. 12 abduction, was released by local authorities on Monday after appeals from the CBC and Fung herself.

A "fixer" who works as a translator and guide for foreign reporters, Feroz was arrested in the hours after Fung's abduction and held for questioning. He had been working with CBC reporters in Afghanistan for about three years.

Addendum

I was under the impression Fung's driver had also been taken into custody, but today's story -- at least at the time I read it -- didn't have any update or reminder about that person's fate.

Fortunately, there's an RSF news release:

Reporters Without Borders welcomes today’s release of two local employees of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - brothers Shokoor Feroz, a fixer, and Qaem Feroz, a driver - who had been held by the National Directorate of Security, an intelligence agency, since CBC reporter Melissa Fung’s abduction on 12 October

"We thank President Hamid Karzai and the many other Afghans and Canadians who interceded on behalf of the unjustly detained Feroz brothers," Reporters Without Borders said. "The protests by CBC’s journalists and management illustrated in an exemplary manner that the defence of the local employees of foreign media should be a priority. The Afghan authorities should compensate the two brothers for their six weeks in detention."

From the NYT:

After getting through most of this year unscathed, luxury brands are suffering. Rich consumers who were relatively insulated from the economic downturn continued spending, but that has changed in the last few months. While luxury spending began to fall slightly from June, in October alone, it dropped 20.1 percent, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse, which estimates consumer spending in the retail and service sectors.

That drop-off means more bad news for magazines and newspapers in the United States that had grown increasingly dependent on luxury advertising.

Ad pages at the top luxury magazines fell 22 percent year over year for the December issues, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Vogue, for example, dropped from 284 pages last December, to 221 pages this December, while Food & Wine went from 160 pages to 126, according to the newsletter.

NYT headline from Nov. 23: For laid-off journalists, free blog accounts

My headline from from Nov. 17: Sign of the times - The Typepad bailout for journos. :)

Twitter actually announced the program on Nov. 14. From the NYT:

On Monday morning, (Six Apart's Anil Dash) had roughly 50 e-mail applications in his inbox, and they have continued to pour in, totaling nearly 300 so far. “It was a bit of a surprise how quickly word got out,” Mr. Dash said. “This has struck a nerve.”

From the NYT:

They cannot perform in public. They cannot pose for album cover photographs. Even their jam sessions are secret, for fear of offending the religious authorities in this ultraconservative kingdom.

But the members of Saudi Arabia’s first all-girl rock band, the Accolade, are clearly not afraid of taboos.

The band’s first single, “Pinocchio,” has become an underground hit here, with hundreds of young Saudis downloading the song from the group’s Web site. Now, the pioneering foursome, all of them college students, want to start playing regular gigs — inside private compounds, of course — and recording an album.

“In Saudi, yes, it’s a challenge,” said the group’s lead singer, Lamia, who has piercings on her left eyebrow and beneath her bottom lip. (Like other band members, she gave only her first name.) “Maybe we’re crazy. But we wanted to do something different.”