News Media

State officials asked a judge to take steps to remove from the Internet a leaked video in which a teenage follower of Tony Alamo defends the jailed evangelist and says he would never commit the sex crimes of which he is accused. The girl told a child welfare official in a September interview that Alamo never touched her and she knew of no one who had been molested by him. "He would never do such a thing. That's a sin. He wouldn't be a pastor. He would be dirt," said the girl, who is among 36 children in protective state custody.

NBC's "Today" aired on Monday the second part of Ann Curry's exclusive interview with octuplet mother Nadya Suleman, showing the first images of her tiny babies in the neonatal unit. Not to be outdone, ABC's "Good Morning America" touted its own get -- an interview with Suleman's mother, who said her daughter was irresponsible for having more children when she has six at home. Except the interview wasn't actually done by ABC: The network licensed the footage from Radaronline.com, a Web-only version of the celebrity magazine that folded last fall.

Even a few years ago the word "blog" inspired that peculiar mix of derision and dismissal that seems to haunt new media innovations long after they're proven. A blogger was a lonely, pajama-clad person in a dark room, typing out banal musings he mistook for interesting ones, to be read by a handful of friends or strangers if they were read at all. That blogs have become a fixture of media and culture might, you'd think, give critics pause before indulging in another round of new media ridicule.

Americans weren't the only ones surprised by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's decisive victory in Iowa's Democratic caucuses on Thursday. Like hundreds of foreign journalists trying to make sense of an unsettled time in American political life, Nuala O'Faolain, who is covering the campaign for Dublin's Sunday Tribune, was still trying Monday to absorb it. She was especially baffled by Hillary Rodham Clinton's third-place finish. "It's very difficult for a Clinton to do wrong in Ireland," she said.

An American scholar and freelance journalist who recently wrote about the growing strength of Taliban militants in Pakistan has been expelled, a media rights group said Saturday. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern that the deportation of Nicholas Schmidle, who has written recently for the New York Times Magazine and the online magazine Slate, could presage heavier pressure on foreign journalists working in Pakistan.

The Orange County Register is killing its daily stand-alone business news section, the latest sign of the financial pressures affecting U.S. newspapers. Business news will be carried inside the paper's main news section Monday through Saturday, effective Jan. 30, the Register reported on its website Monday, and the Monday business tabloid will be discontinued after next week's edition. Stock and mutual fund listings will "largely be eliminated," the paper reported.

Tribune Co. Chairman Sam Zell on Monday backed Los Angeles Times Publisher David D. Hiller's decision to replace the newspaper's editor. "I've said loud and clear that I am returning control of our businesses to the people who run them," Zell told Tribune employees in an e-mail message. "That means David Hiller has my full support. He carries direct responsibility for the staffing and financial success of the L.A. Times." Hiller said in an interview that he notified Zell last week that James E.

When it comes to the glare of the paparazzi, age apparently has its advantages. Just ask actor Kiefer Sutherland, who walked out of the Glendale jail early Monday mostly to a collective shrug of tabloid indifference. He'd done 48 days behind bars without fanfare, judged uninteresting in the age of Britney, Paris, Nicole and Lindsay. Fame, a Santa Monica-based photo agency, sent a photographer, to little avail: Only one publication called with a request.