The National Union of Journalists has condemned the BBC for wasting “vast sums of public money on hopeless projects” after it announced it was writing off £98.4 million spent on the Digital Media Initiative.
The DMI was scrapped today after five years, with BBC management admitting that it “struggled to keep pace with new developments”.
In an email to corporation staff, director general Tony Hall said the BBC would be investigating the failure of the project “and will take appropriate action, disciplinary or otherwise”.
Actor Riz Ahmed has apologised and paid damages to a freelance journalist he accused of being a “bigot” and falsely claimed had punched him.
The star of film The Reluctant Fundamentalist made the allegation on Twitter in June last year against freelance journalist Hardeep Singh. The tweet was in response to an article written by Singh for the Telegraph headlined: “It's time to stop using the word 'Asians’”.
The actor has now apologised and agreed to pay substantial damages, a proportion of which Singh is donating to the charity Help for Heroes.
1 Telegraph figures show ‘no downside’ to metered paywall
The first website figures for the Telegraph since it went behind a metered paywall suggest there is “no downside” to their approach.
This is the view of media analyst Douglas McCabe of Enders Analysis who suggested other publishers could now follow suit.
The High Court has ruled that Sally Bercow did libel Lord McAlpine via Twitter and she has agreed to pay him damages.
Her posting appeared two days after a November 2012 Newsnight report wrongly implicated the former Conservative Party treasurer in allegations of sex abuse at Bryn Estyn children's home in the 1970s and 1980s.
Bercow has always denied that the tweet - "Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *Innocent face*" - was defamatory.
News organisations have defended their decisions to broadcast controversial video footage shot in the immediate aftermath of the Woolwich terror attack.
The Sun and ITN both obtained videos from members of the public on Wednesday showing one of the attackers brandishing what appears to be a meat cleaver and delivering a politically-charged diatribe moments after he murdered a soldier.
The High Court decides today whether a tweet by Commons Speaker's wife Sally Bercow about Tory peer Lord McAlpine was libellous.
The posting appeared two days after a November 2012 Newsnight report wrongly implicated the former Conservative Party treasurer in allegations of sex abuse at Bryn Estyn children's home in the 1970s and 1980s.
Bercow has always denied that the tweet - "Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *Innocent face*" - was defamatory, but lawyers for the peer said it pointed "the finger of blame" at him during a media frenzy.
Telegraph Media Group has claimed a slight improvement in operating profit for 2012 despite a marginal fall in turnover.
The publisher of the Telegraph print titles and website revealed this morning that operating profit for 2012 was £58.4m compared with £55.7m in 2011. Turnover was said to be down 1 per cent to £327.5m.
The privately-owned company released the figures this morning and said they were based on financial statements filed with Companies House.
One of the big surprises at last week’s Bafta Awards was that Mark Williams-Thomas did not win the current affairs category for his ITV Exposure documentary on Jimmy Savile.
With two Royal Television Society awards and a joint London Press Club award under its belt – not to mention a subsequent police investigation and major BBC internal inquiry – the ITV programme was a firm favourite to claim the prize.
Williams-Thomas had originally been working on Newsnight’s investigation into Savile, which was controversially shelved.
