A judge has challenged the fairness of the policy of a News Corporation subsidiary under which all e-mails are deleted after only three days, with only those considered important printed out and included in hard copy files. Justice Ronald Sackville told News Limited's barrister, Noel Hutley, that the company should "Keep them. Or don't engage in a systematic process of removal of them so that in a case like this the end result is that ... I simply don't know what the contemporaneous communications were within News." In its closing submission News Ltd pointed out that the deletion of e-mails by its in-house lawyer was consistent with the system employed by News's head office in New York. Sackville is hearing a case into allegations that News Limited and others sought to undermine the viability of a pay TV company operated by the Seven Network.

George Monbiot argues that journalists and media outlets routinely fail to ensure adequate disclosure of the funding sources when including interviewing staff from think tanks on global warming. "While the BBC would seldom allow someone from Bell Pottinger or Burson-Marsteller on air to discuss an issue of concern to their sponsors without revealing the sponsors' identity, the BBC has frequently allowed International Policy Network's executive director, Julian Morris, to present IPN's case without declaring its backers. IPN has so far received $295,000 from Exxon's corporate headquarters in the US." He points out that while the BBC's guidelines are clear that the broadcaster should not "get involved with campaigning programming which is politically contentious" not all groups describe themselves in those terms. IPN, he suggests, would be better described as a "lobby group" than as a think tank.

"Everyone is kind of groping around in the dark," says New York Times Baghdad correspondent Dexter Filkins on his return from reporting in Iraq. Despite employing 70 Iraqi staffers, the civil war there (Filkins doesn't hedge--"Yeah, sure" it's a civil war) has meant the Times cannot safely access stories. Its own five correspondents primarily spend their time pasting together reports by the Iraqi staff, protected by a small army of 45 security guards, armored cars, and belt-fed rooftop machine guns. "Nobody trusts anybody anymore. There's no law, and the worst people with guns are in charge." The Iraqi reporters know that if their association with the Times is revealed they may pay with their lives, Filkins told the Committee to Protect Journalists at a September 14, 2006, talk in Manhattan where he is preparing to serve a U.S. fellowship. His advice to other reporters thinking about covering Iraq: "Don't go." Filkins said that the U.S. military is similarly hamstrung in getting quality information: soldiers rarely leave their bases and don't interact much with average Iraqis. Ninety-eight percent of Iraq, including Baghdad, is too dangerous for reporters to cover, he said.