MediaGuardian briefing

Media briefing Tuesday 17 Feb 2015 g Top stories on MediaGuardian More » Al-Jazeera journalists leave Egyptian prison on bail Less than a fortnight after the release of their colleague Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed are granted bail following more than 400 days in jail  Cathy Newman to take break from Twitter after row over mosque visit Channel 4 news anchor says she ‘deeply regrets’ phrasing of tweets she sent after she attempted to visit mosque in south London on Visit My Mosque day  BBC lifts ban on sponsorship of Sports Personality of the Year Non-commercial charities, trusts or foundations will be able to fund 2015 awards, eight years after row over Robinson drinks deal  Sun paid MoD official close to average wage for army tip-offs, court told Chief reporter John Kay tells court that contact supplied ‘public interest’ stories that the army wanted to ‘suppress’  NME magazine back on the rocks with another fall in sales Time Inc music title narrowly avoids dropping below the 15,000 circulation mark for the first time in its history  Guido Fawkes website adds environment section in redesign Political site will also introduce separate technology and media channels – and no longer wants to be known as a ‘blog’  HSBC tax row: Le Monde owners attack newspaper's coverage Owners hit out at decision to name wealthy Swiss account holders, sparking row over paper’s independence  Freeview rebrands for new connected TV service Free-to-air Freeview Play will combine live TV with BBC’s iPlayer and other on-demand services, challenging Sky’s Now TV and YouView  Mary Berry's Great Comic Relief Bake Off cooks up 6 million viewers BBC1’s charity spin-off, featuring Dame Edna Everage and Joanna Lumley, beats off Midsomer Murders as Wolf Hall snatches back viewers  Vice announces new global head of content and editor-in-chief Former UK editor-in-chief Alex Miller takes worldwide role, as Ellis Jones is promoted from managing editor of Vice magazine  Today's newspaper headlines More » Today's media stories from the papers Our roundup of the day's media stories, including Channel 4's Ukip film attracts complaints before it airs and Daily Express website rapped over 'distorted' Ukip story  Media Monkey's pick of the day More » Shortlist for 2014 Paul Foot award announced • The shortlist is announced on Monday for the 2014 Paul Foot award, set up by Private Eye and the Guardian in 2005 in memory of Foot and to celebrate the kind of investigative and campaigning journalism his work exemplified. Richard Brooks and Andrew Bousfield of Private Eye are nominated for unravelling the details of a corrupt UK-Saudi contract and going on to expose the “decades of bribery” involved in previous arms deals between the two countries. The Sunday Times’s Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake reported on the millions of Fifa documents leaked by a whistleblower, focusing on the efforts to win votes for a World Cup bid by Qatar’s top football official. George Monbiot of the Guardian criticised the rush to blame building on flood plains for the impact on households of last year’s winter floods, arguing that the role of subsidy-encouraged bad farming methods had been overlooked. The Daily Telegraph’s Claire Newell, Holly Watt, Claire Duffin and Ben Bryant uncovered further Fifa scandals, shedding more light on how Qatar won support for its successful bid for the 2022 World Cup. The Daily Mail’s Richard Pendlebury reported on the hard lives of some of Britain’s migrant communities, including immigrants from Bangladesh, Lithuania and Pakistan. Dominic Ponsford and Will Turvill of Press Gazette’s “Save Our Sources” campaign sought to protect reporters’ confidential sources, after it emerged that police investigating Plebgate had seized a Sun journalist’s phone records. The Observer’s Mark Townsend reported on allegations of sexual assaults by Serco employees on female detainees at the Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre. Of the above, Brooks was the joint winner in 2008, Townsend was shortlisted in 2011 and Calvert and Blake in 2012 and 2013. Among recent winners are the Guardian’s Ian Cobain (2009) and Nick Davies (2011), freelancer Clare Sambrook (2010), the Times’s Andrew Norfolk (2012) and the London Evening Standard’s David Cohen (2013). The 10th winner or winners, revealed on 24 February, will receive £5,000 with £1,000 going to the other shortlistees.

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