Beat the Press

Tom Scholz, the lead guitarist for the Band Boston, has sued the Herald's Inside Track gossip columnists, Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa, for libel, saying they fabricated a story blaming him for lead singer Brad Delp's 2007 suicide. The kicker: Scholz is represented by Howard Cooper, the same lawyer who won a $2.1 million libel case against the Herald on behalf of Judge Ernest Murphy.

New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt says shorthand labels like "Christian conservative" and "evangelical" don't fit the complexity and diversity of Christian opinion that's helping shape the American political landscape.

Here are today's topics for Beat the Press:

Track Suit: Tom Scholz, the lead guitarist for the Band Boston, has sued the Herald's Inside Track gossip columnists, Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa, for libel, saying they fabricated a story blaming him for lead singer Brad Delp's 2007 suicide. The kicker: Scholz is represented by Howard Cooper, the same lawyer who won a $2.1 million libel case against the Herald on behalf of Judge Ernest Murphy.

Pardon the Interruption: Newsweek called it "the Interrupt-a-thon." Fox New's Bret Baier sat down with President Barack Obama this week, but was it an interview or an argument? Fox lovers say Baier was just trying to pin Obama down to specifics, but haters say he was rude and just trying to insert the network's conservative talking points.

Religious Write: New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt says shorthand labels like "Christian conservative" and "evangelical" don't fit the complexity and diversity of Christian opinion that's helping shape the American political landscape.

The panel: Emily hosting, Dan, Callie, Joe, and Kara Miller in the guest panelist chair.

Greg Mitchell, the former editor of Editor & Publisher and Twitter enthusiast who was without portfolio after the newspaper industry bible was shuttered last December, has landed at The Nation, where he'll write and edit a new blog called "Media Fix."

In a column announcing the April launch of the new blog, Mitchell wrote it will be a mix of original reporting and commentary on "the latest media outrages." In particular, the blog will focus on media politics and media culture, and other writers for The Nation will also contribute.

Here's hoping the mix will lean toward original reporting - E&P was always a great source of it, and its loss was keenly felt given the important role newspapers still play in the news ecosystem as the primary generators of virgin content.

After National Public Radio aired a graphic report on the death of a US Marine in Afghanistan, his family asked the network not to use his name anymore, citing Navajo taboos against speaking of the dead. NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard honored the family's request, but his name has been widely used in other media - including Native American news outlets like the Navajo Times. The case points up the difficulties that occur when journalistic conventions collide with religious customs.

Short show this week thanks to pledge (dig deep, the chief blogger's kids' college fund isn't what it should be), but plenty of interesting material. Our topics are:

Radio Active: Governor Deval Patrick says he's not going to make the same mistake Martha Coakley did in her US Senate race by ducking Boston's legion of right-wing radio talkers. Patrick's determined to go into the lion's den, but will it help him snatch victory from jaws of defeat, or will the likes of Howie Carr, Gerry Callahan, and Michael Graham simply have him for lunch?

Culture Clash: After National Public Radio aired a graphic report on the death of a US Marine in Afghanistan, his family asked the network not to use his name anymore, citing Navajo taboos against speaking of the dead. NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard honored the family's request, but his name has been widely used in other media - including Native American news outlets like the Navajo Times. The case points up the difficulties that occur when journalistic conventions collide with religious customs.

OK, that headline was admittedly a bit of naked, attention-baiting hyperbole, but a couple of recent legal cases in Paris and Milan have got advocates of universal web access muttering under their breath.

First there was the conviction of Google in an Italian criminal court for hosting a user-generated video of some teenage boys harassing an autistic child. The New York Times reports that Google took down the video within two hours of receiving a request from Italian police, but by then the clip had already been publicly accessible for two months.

An judge in Milan, Oscar Magi, sentenced three Google executives in abstentia to six months in jail for invasion of privacy, a ruling the company called "astonishing." Italian prosecutors were apparently able to convince Magi (who hasn't released the arguments underlying his ruling yet) that Google was acting as a direct content provider, not simply as a conduit, because service providers are supposedly protected from liability by European Union trade rules.

Web freedom proponents have called the ruling alarming, but have consoled themselves with the fact that Italy is a special case. Web use in the country is low compared to the rest of Western Europe, and President Silvio Berlusconi has a serious dog in the Internet-regulation fight. Berlusconi is a mogul who is not only the dominant player in privately-owned media in Italy, but who also indirectly influences publicly-owned media by virtue of his office.

Imagine Roger Ailes in the White House or Rupert Murdoch in 10 Downing Street and you start to get the picture. Web providers who host video are the competition, so chilling them just makes good business sense.

Yet now from our Friends at the Citizen Media Law Center at Harvard comes news of a criminal case in France that can only be described as bizarre.

A New York University Law School professor, J.H.H. Weiler, is facing a criminal charges in Paris for refusing to take down a negative review of a book about the International Criminal Court written by an Israeli law professor, Karin Calvo-Goller. Weiler, published the online review in his capacity as editor of the site Global Law Books, but it was written by law professor from Germany.

Calvo-Goller asked Weiler to take down the review, saying it contained factual misstatements and went beyond mere opinion. Weiler reexamined the article and refused, saying it met generally-accepted standards for book reviewing and criticism. So Calvo-Goller brought a criminal libel complaint in France against Weiler, who is now faced with the prospect of having to fly to Paris to defend himself at trial.

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