Daily Mail responds to court action. Sydney photojournalist Richard Milnes says he is already feeling the effects of suing the Daily Mail for using his images without paying. As we reported yesterday, Milnes has taken the media giant to court in an attempt to recoup money he’s owed for images that appeared in the Daily Mail or its website MailOnline, accessed through an agency that’s since been acquired. Milnes — who makes a significant part of his income from selling photos to the Daily Mail via agencies — told Crikey that a photo agency he now uses to sell his images to outlets including the Daily Mail had been contacted to say the Mail wouldn’t be using his pictures. He said he’d be looking into whether he could increase his damages claim in the matter, due for a directions hearing next month. A Mail spokesman declined to comment.

Facebook privacy investigation. Australia’s privacy commissioner has launched an official investigation into Facebook after it revealed more than 300,000 Australians may have had their private data used. The investigation will look at whether Facebook has breached the Privacy Act. The inquiry comes as the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal continues. Founder Mark Zuckerberg’s apology tour is continuing, telling Vox Media: “We will dig through this hole, but it will take a few years”. His second-in-command Sheryl Sandberg has also come out to apologise, saying she personally had made “mistakes” and the company had been too slow to respond after the data story was revealed.

The revolving door. Fairfax has picked up former Huff Post Australia editor-in-chief Tory Maguire as its national editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Maguire was left without a job when Huff Post announced its Australian joint venture with Fairfax was over, late last year. Maguire replaces James Chessell, who was promoted to group executive editor.

Coulthart departs 60 Minutes. Investigative journalist Ross Coulthart is leaving Nine’s 60 Minutes, with his contract not renewed after three years with the program. Coulthart defected to the network from rival Seven’s Sunday Night where he was chief investigations reporter.

Fox losing grip of top spot. Fox News might still be winning the nightly cable news wars, but its crown is slipping and the emerging contender isn’t CNN, but the avowedly liberal (in US terms) MSNBC. No wonder Donald Trump continues to snipe at it and its owners, NBC. MSNBC — and particularly its main evening personality Rachel Maddow — have emerged as the most potent challengers to the Fox News money-making machine controlled by the Murdoch family’s 21st Century Fox.

In the first three months of this year, Fox News’ evening prime time audience (8pm to 11pm) fell 13% to average 2.5 million, according to Nielsen figures, MSNBC’s audience surged 30% to 1.9 million viewers on average, but CNN’s audience fell 17% to 985,000. Together the two liberal/centrist cable news channels have more than 2.7 million viewers a night and now out-rate the right-wing Fox News, which is a big change from a year ago when Fox News attracted more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined. — Glenn Dyer

Glenn Dyer’s TV Ratings. Did the commonwealth games bring home the ratings gold for Seven? Yep — 1.71 million across more than four hours of viewing in the evening and night sessions on Seven’s main channel. But on its 7TWO and 7mate channels an average of another 331,000 watched across the same period. So more than 2 million people watched the games coverage on all of Seven’s channels last night as it again used its three free-to-air channels to maximise viewing. 

In the regions, the Games evening session topped the night with 559,000 viewers, followed by the night session with 473,000, then Seven News with 442,000, Seven News/TT was fourth with 394.000 and ACA was fifth with 356,000.

Elsewhere, if anyone is interested, there’s AFL and NRL on tonight with the Tigers playing the Blues tonight on 7mate. — Read the rest on the Crikey website.