Torturous News Corp defence. The increasingly ramshackle News Corporation is doing its best to push back against phone-hacking — so it was inevitable it would turn to torture advocate, and privacy law expert, Mirko Bagaric, to try and make some parallels between News of the World hacking the phone of a murdered teenager and WikiLeaks’ release of documents showing a decade of lies about two wars, corruption in the Arab world and spying on the UN.

WikiLeaks’ revelations had cause “shame and embarrassment” to people. No! Not shame and embarrassment! Torture, maybe, but not shame and embarrassment! Getting into his stride, Bagaric notes:

“It was only months ago that The Guardian, The New York Times and the Fairfax press in Australia ran numerous front-page exclusives featuring hacked communications supplied to them by WikiLeaks…”

Indeed professor, the evil liberal press — except that, at that time, the outfit scrambling desperately to get a slice of the cablegate material was…News Corporation, which ran an op-ed by Julian Assange in The Australian, a long pro-WikiLeaks piece in The Times, before turning on him once more when no cables were forthcoming. Not exactly the clearest defence there. Back to the waterboard, er, drawing board. — Guy Rundle

Front page of the day. The News of the World phone-hacking scandal just keeps on truckin’, as The Guardian‘s headline today illustrates:

Overington leaves Media Diary

“The Australian’s Media Diary editor Caroline Overington is to switch roles, becoming a writer on the relaunched Weekend Australian magazine.” — mUmBRELLA

Murdoch misled MPs, say ex-NoW editor and lawyer

“James Murdoch has been accused of misleading the parliamentary select committee this week in relation to phone hacking, igniting yet another fire for the embattled News International boss to extinguish.” — The Guardian

Missteps in managing News Corp’s hacking crisis

“No company ever wants a crisis to get to this point: the chief executive and his lieutenant grilled by skeptical legislators, with errors condemned, reputations impugned and the drama broadcast around the world.” — Wall Street Journal

Subscription TV sales boss: speak with one voice on ratings

“The CEO of subscription TV’s biggest sales house has called for the whole television industry to agree on a single way of discussing audience metrics.” — mUmBRELLA

Read all about it: Why we have an appetite for gossip

“There are very few universal truths, but two relating to human behaviour are that farting is considered funny in all societies and that gossip occurs but is ostensibly always disapproved of. The evolutionary reason for the former is not clear, but the evolutionary reason for the latter becomes clear when one considers what is gossiped about.” — New Scientist

E-book sales up 160% this year

“According to Association of American Publishers (AAP) sales figures for the first half of 2011, eBook sales were up 160 percent compared to the same period last year.” — Mediabistro