Some media stories of note for Thursday, May 16, 2013:

It may seem incongruent, but as the White House deals with criticism of the Department of Justice's seizure of phone records for reporters at The Associated Press, it is reviving its efforts to create legislation that would shield reporters' sources and communications from disclosure. The New York Times reports that the President's Senate liaison called Wednesday to ask a Democratic Senator to reintroduce a version of a 2009 bill that didn't make it through Congress.

The New Republic explores the context of the DOJ/AP phone-seizure issue by looking at the chilling effect official surveillance might have on national security reporting. It interviews journalists who believe their phones were tapped and activities tracked. Sources are less willing to part with sensitive information in this climate, the story concludes.

Ken Doctor, writing on "newsonomics" for the Nieman Journalism Lab, examines what went wrong with NewsRight, the effort by the AP and others to deal with illegal or unfair use of their content online. NewsRight was wound up this week. Doctor chronicles the questionable and vague strategy, the evolution of the news licensing field with such players as NewsCred and Flipboard, and some of the decisions made along the way. "Thumbs down to content consortia," he writes. "Thumbs up to letting the freer market of entrepreneurs make sense of the content landscape, with publishers getting paid something for what the companies still know how to do: produce highly valued content." 

Three media-related stories of note for Friday, March 1, 2013:

The exhaustive dispute between Google and Germany reached the end of another chapter Friday when legislation was finalized to bring about a compromise on the degree of information the search engine could reveal. Google will be permitted to show snippets. Publishers had been arguing that Google should pay fees to produce those results. Spiegel Online reports that the permitted length of these snippets is still unclear.

Keith Somerville, a senior research fellow at the Commonwealth Institute and veteran journalist, provides a primer in Mmegi Online on the framing of two recent African stories to fit Western perceptions. He examines the South African Crime frame to discuss the Oscar Pistorius case and the War on Terror frame to discuss violence in Mali, and he notes how both suit the Western audiences but only tell small parts of the stories. While frames are not necessarily wrong, he says, journalists need to provide more context to help readers understand what led to the events.

A new survey from Rasmussen Reports discusses American sources of news and finds that cable TV ranks first (32 per cent use it). But the major change is in the rise of the Internet (25 per cent) over network television (24). Newspapers (10) and radio (7) were well back. Trust among all was quite low. While 56 per cent found media somewhat trustworthy, only six per cent found them quite trustworthy.

Media files of note for Wednesday, February 27, 2013:

For a clear take on what a reporter does, we can now turn to the entity that taught us all much over the years: Sesame Street, whose Word on the Street is "reporter." This clip compiles some historical references to reporting and puts it into the most basic language even a child could understand.

Peter Osnos, writing for The Atlantic Online, takes on the myth of the Internet as the purveyor of free information. He notes the expense of connectivity isn't accessible to all, by any means, and argues there is an important public policy challenge in narrowing the gap between those who can and cannot pay. He also notes that very little of the revenue attached to the Internet finds its way to creators of the content.

When Sir Martin Sorrell speaks, the advertising community listens. The head of the giant WPP agency has misgivings about Twitter as an effective advertising platform. He tells the Harvard Business Review that Twitter is a public relations medium and a good way to spread the word, but that it "reduces communication to superficialities and lacks depth." Sorrell also repeats his view that Facebook is a much better branding medium than an advertising medium. 

Twitter, meanwhile, is expected to unfurl its initial public offering soon, and today the Wall Street Journal corporate news director suggests it is hard to deny the platform is worth $10 billion. 

For a clear take on what a reporter does, we can now turn to the entity that taught us all much over the years: Sesame Street. This clip compiles some historical references to reporting and puts it into the most basic language even a child could understand.

Public access to government information in Canada is defined by the laws at a federal, provincial and municipal level that assert public rights to disclosure. There are many exceptions to these rights and, more than three decades into the laws, there are few legal precedents to clarify the degree of rights.

For journalists, these laws fuel conduct in the field. They guide the degree to which journalists can claim records should be publicly disclosed. Canada's laws are largely considered outmoded in an era of greater pressure for institutional electronic release of records.

This week the Supreme Court of Canada declined to pronounce freedom of information as a constitutional right. Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin and Justice Rosalie Abella wrote in their decision that there is no "general right" to access to information.

The ruling does leave open the possibility to strengthen rights, though. It said future appeals might be able to argue that certain suppression of information constitutes an abrogation of free speech rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.