Facebook narrowly avoids dip below starting price in mixed first day of IPO

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:08:00 GMT

Social network giant ends day at $38.23 (£24), up just 0.61% from its starting price after share sale got off to a messy start

Facebook's first day as a public company ended with the company narrowly avoiding the embarrassment of its stock dipping below the $38 (£24) starting price, in one of the most frenzied share sales in history.

Shares in the social network giant ended the day at $38.23, up 0.61%, having soared 11% earlier in the day. A record 566m shares traded hands as the company joined the Nasdaq stock market where it is now valued at $104bn, more than the combined worth of Goldman Sachs and Nike.

Mark Zuckerberg, the company's 28-year-old founder and Facebook's largest shareholder, saw the value of his holding reach $20.4bn by the time the market closed.

The sale got off to a messy and inauspicious start. Early trading was delayed until 11.30am as the exchange systems seemed unable to cope with the scale of the initial public offering (IPO) and failed to send electronic reports back to traders and firms to confirm that shares had been bought or sold. After the market closed, CNBC reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking at the Nasdaq trading problems.

When trading eventually did start, more than 82m shares were traded in the first 30 seconds. The share price soared 11% before quickly collapsing to close to the $38 offer price.

Dealers speculated that Facebook's army of bankers had stepped in to stop the shares falling below $38, a move that would have landed the social network with a public relations disaster on its first day as a public company.

Sam Hamadeh, founder of the analyst PrivCo, watched the day unfold at the Nasdaq exchange. "It was stunning," he said. "I have not seen anything like it in 20 years of watching this market."

He calculates that the banks who underwrote the share sale stepped in and bought $300m worth of shares to stop Facebook dipping below $38, a move that would have marked Facebook as a "busted IPO".

"It doesn't matter so much to Facebook, they raised their money but
it's not a great start," said Hamadeh, who said he believed Facebook was worth $24-$25 a share. "And that's being generous."

Before the shares started trading the estimated price reached $45, triggering a wave of sell offs that Nasdaq could not handle, said Hamadeh. Nasdaq did not return calls for comment. He predicts that the shares will fall further next week. "The banks can't support this thing forever," he said.

For now the share price is not Zuckerberg's primary concern. "Of course the money means something to him," said David Kirkpatrick, author of the Facebook Effect. "But he's not doing it just for the money and he assumes that rather than focus on the money, he should focus on making sure Facebook does well. He is highly analytical in everything he does, extremely disciplined. He is not going to be watching that stock price every day, I can tell you that."

Facebook's stock market debut had begun with Zuckerberg - wearing his trademark navy blue hooded top - remotely ringing the opening bell for the New York-based stock exchange from outside his California headquarters as staff cheered him on. Forbes calculated that as he did so, he was the world's 23rd richest man – two places above Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

However, the riches generated by Facebook went wider. At $38 a share Facebook created 88 people with fortunes of over $30m, according to Wealth-X, an analyst that monitors high net worth individuals. If the price reaches $43, there will be 265 Facebook millionaires worth more than $30m.

The sale reaped enormous rewards for Facebook's co-founders and early backers. Co-founder Dustin Moscovitz is now worth over $5bn. Elevation Partners, an investment firm that counts U2 singer Bono among its partners, holds shares worth over $1.6bn.

Facebook's IPO is the most hotly anticipated share sale since Google's in 2004. Google's stock started trading at $85 and ended the day at $100.34. Google's shares now sell for over $620.

As with the Google IPO, there has been a lot of scepticism about Facebook's ability to turn its phenomenal number of users into a business able to support a $100bn-plus valuation. Facebook's revenues were $3.7bn last year. Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, had revenues of close to $29bn and is valued at half Facebook's current value.

The social network now has over 900 million people on its service and will soon top a billion. For its fans, Facebook is the defining company of the 21st century. "His impact on the world will be as least as big as Bill Gates and probably already has been," said Kirkpatrick.

Kirkpatrick has spent many hours with Zuckerberg writing the only authorised history of the company. He said Zuckerberg had a "laser focus" on business and planned to spend Friday working rather than watching the share price.

"He really doesn't believe in paying attention to that stuff. He's much more focussed on product development, on penetration of the service around the world," said Kirkpatrick.

The sale comes amid what some are calling a new bubble in tech companies. Facebook's IPO follows a mixed set of share sales from other social media firms including Groupon, the online coupon company, and Zynga, the games firm behind Words With Friends and Draw Something.

Facebook itself has driven up the bubble, according to some, by spending $1bn on Instagram, a profitless photo-sharing application.

Earlier this week Pinterest, a social site that lets people "pin" pictures and content to create collections of interest, raised $100m at a price that valued the company at $1bn.

"There is a frenzy going on. I think this is a bubble," said Alan Patrick, co-founder of technology consultancy Broadsight. "Short term I can see that Facebook can be valued at $100bn on sentiment. People believe that it is going to make a lot of money. But sentiment doesn't last."

He said Facebook had yet to prove that it could make money on mobile devices, the fastest growing way in which people access Facebook.

However, the share sale comes in a week when General Motors announced it was dropping its own Facebook ads and said they were not working. GM is one of the world's largest advertisers and spent $1.83bn on US ads last year, according to Kantar Media, an ad-tracking firm.

Nigel Morris, chief executive of ad giant Aegis Media Americas, said: "We handle a number of clients who are advertising very successfully on Facebook. For others we are evaluating the right approach. The issue for Facebook is not whether revenues will grow, it's whether they will grow fast enough to justify this valuation."

Whatever the future for Facebook, its founders and early investors were certainly celebrating. Co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who is now worth over $2.7bn, congratulated Zuckerberg on his Facebook page: "Congrats to everyone involved in the project from day one till today, and I especially wanted to congratulate Mark Zukerberg (sic) on keeping tremendous stead-fast (sic) focus, however hard that was, on making the world a more open and connected place."

NI spends £53.2m on MSC

Fri, 18 May 2012 14:50:18 GMT

Cost of body set up to internally investigate hacking and illegal payments revealed as group publishes accounts

Rupert Murdoch's London operation has spent more than £50m on the company's management and standards committee, taking the total bill of costs associated with the closure of News of the World and dealing with the fallout of the phone-hacking scandal to in excess of £300m.

Accounts published by NI Group – the parent company of the Sun, Times, Sunday Times, and the now-defunct News of the World – also revealed its directors took home a combined £5m and that its highest-paid director earned £1.9m in the year to 3 July 2011.

NI Group said it has spent £53.2m between July 2011 and 8 May to run the MSC, the body set up to internally investigate phone hacking and illegal payments within News International, with the costs attributed to "primarily legal and professional fees". Linklaters are the MSC's principal lawyers.

The costs of advisers had not previously been disclosed, although the accounts of other subsidiaries had already revealed that News Corp's British division had taken an exceptional charge of £23.7m in the year to 3 July to meet legal fees and damages of hacking claimants such as Sienna Miller and Steve Coogan.

Other previously disclosed costs relating to the closure of the Sunday tabloid are recorded on the company's accounts as post balance sheet events. In addition there is a £55.5m charge relating to redundancy and restructuring costs and legal fees directly related to the closure of NoW – and NI Group said it had incurred another £14.4m charge relating to a further "restructure of the workforce to match the requirements of the business".

The company has already made a £160m non-cash write off on the value of "publishing rights" for News of the World, which closed last July in response to the phone-hacking scandal, filed in its results for subsidiary NGN which were published last month. Taken together the legal bills and redudancy costs totalled £146.8m and with the write-off added in, the total rises to £306.8m.

"News Group Newspapers [parent firm of the Sun and NoW] is subject to several ongoing investigations by regulators and various governmental authorities," said NI Group.

"NGN has admitted liability and settled a number of civil cases related to voicemail interception allegations. NGN also has litigation ongoing and outstanding in relation to voicemail interception allegations for which there is a high level of uncertainty in respect of potential damages and legal costs which may be payable."

A breakdown of pay to individual directors is not given in NI Group's financial filing to Companies House, but six directors are listed as serving the company in the year to 3 July including the former chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks, James and Rupert Murdoch and ex-NI operations officer Clive Milner.

The financial report shows that year-on-year total director remuneration rose from £4m to £5m and the highest-paid director, who was not named, got a pay rise from £1.3m in 2010 to £1.9m in 2011.

However, with so few of the charges included in last year's figures, NI Group was able to report a 13.3% increase in pre-tax profits for the year to £162.6m. Revenues at the business which also includes Harper Collins UK remained flat at £1.36bn as operating profit rose 11% to £113.4m.

Revenue at its newspaper publishing operation increased marginally to £1.09bn. Revenue from the HarperCollins book publishing division eased 3.7% to £266.6m. However NI Group said the book publishing operation recorded its highest margin percentage for three years.

During the year to 3 July 2011 the company published titles including The Third Man by Peter Mandelson andthe Game of Thrones series by George RR Martin, which is currently airing its second TV season on Sky Atlantic. Digital book revenues grew seven-fold year on year to account for about 19% of trade revenue, NI Group said.

The company said its staff, which have become stretched from the seven-day operation on the Sun, were its "most valuable asset" with 4,318 employed in the year to 3 July. Just under 3,000 were employed in the newspaper business and just under 1,300 in book publishing.

"Despite the closure of the News of the World and the subsequent impact on the business, as well as the ongoing uncertainty surrounding issues arising from that, the directors consider that the group remains in a healthy position financially," said NI Group.

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Ryan Giggs settles phone-hacking claim

Fri, 18 May 2012 14:49:16 GMT

Manchester United star likely to receive tens of thousands of pounds as 46 other claims continue against News International

Ryan Giggs has settled his phone-hacking civil action against News of the World publisher News International, the high court has been told.

The amount the Manchester United star received in damages was not disclosed at a phone-hacking case management conference at the high court on Friday, but is likely to run to tens of thousands of pounds.

Giggs launched his action against the News of the World almost a year ago, in June 2011, weeks after he was visited by Metropolitan police officers who told him his name was in the notes of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the phone-hacking scandal.

He was in the first group of litigants to sue News International last October but was one of six carried over to the second round of cases because of outstanding issues.

The Mulcaire paperwork details the private investigator's activities during 2005 and 2006, when Giggs was allegedly conducting an eight-year affair with his sister-in-law, details of which were revealed by the News of the World shortly before its closure last year.

Hugh Tomlinson QC, the counsel for phone-hacking victims, told the case management conference on Friday that there were still 46 active cases against News International.

"There are 47 issued claims on the register, one of which has settled since the last case management conference," Tomlinson said in court.

One new case has been lodged since the last case management conference, by TV presenter June Sarpong, who hosted a Channel 4's Sunday morning strand T4 for eight years.

Others on the list of active claimants include Cherie Blair, David Beckham's father Ted, actor Jimmy Nesbitt and Emma Noble, John Major's former daughter in law.

Mr Justice Vos, who is overseeing the phone-hacking litigation, said there were "over 100 cases" on the group register, indicating that many more have yet to file their claims with the court.

Friday's case management conference was aiming to establish a tariff of costs that could be expected by any new claimant.

Vos is determined to keep costs down by ensuring common research is shared among all litigants where possible. He repeated his warning made at the last conference that litigants were entitled to representation but not to use solicitors who had no knowledge of phone hacking and passed all ensuing costs on to News International.

Tomlinson told the court there were three types of cases ranging from the worst instances of sustained phone hacking and surveillance, such as that suffered by Jude Law, to the smaller cases which involved hacking but did not result in any article being published.

Asked how many cases similar to Law's were likely to come before the court, Michael Silverleaf, QC for News International, said: "I don't think it would be in the tens."

Law was awarded damages of £130,000 earlier this year after it emerged he had been targeted for three years between 2003 and 2006.

Vos said he wanted to ensure costs were "modest" and proportionate to the damages but said claimants who did not have articles published against them still had the right to a full investigation.

"Clients will only settle when they know the are being properly investigated. It has to be a cathartic. The whole purpose of this litigation is to achieve peace with the people who have been intercepted," the judge said.

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Sky News referred to CPS and attorney general after naming rape victim

Fri, 18 May 2012 12:40:11 GMT

On-air mistake occurred in report on Twitter users who allegedly revealed identity of footballer Ched Evans's victim

North Wales police have referred Sky News to the Crown Prosecution Service and the attorney general's office following the accidental broadcast of a rape victim's name.

Officers from North Wales police on Thursday questioned four staff at Sky News' Osterley headquarters in south west London after the broadcaster inadvertently displayed a Twitter feed that named the 19-year-old victim on air last month.

The on-air mistake occurred as part of a report on Twitter users who allegedly revealed who footballer Ched Evans's victim was following his conviction for rape.

Sky News said in a statement: "Yesterday we met with North Wales police to demonstrate and explain the technical error which caused the inadvertent broadcast of the victim's name in a recent serious sexual assault case.

"The name was on screen for a fraction of a second and was visible only when viewed in slow motion. We apologised to the victim and her family as soon as we became aware of the error and are co-operating fully with the police."

A formal interview took place with Sky News staff and the investigation will continue, according to the north Wales force, which said that it was now up to the CPS whether to press charges.

A North Wales police statement confirmed: "The case, as with all other cases in the investigation into the naming of the victim on social media sites, will be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service and the attorney general's office."

Detective chief inspector Steve Williams said that Sky News "has fully co-operated with the investigation".

Sixteen men and women from north Wales and South Yorkshire have been arrested and bailed during the investigation so far.

The police statement added: "The force is reminding people that the law gives rape victims and other victims of serious sexual offences, anonymity for life and that if anyone publishes a victim's identity they will be subject to investigation and possible criminal proceedings."

Evans was jailed for five years last month at Caernarfon crown court after being found guilty of raping the woman who was "too drunk to consent".

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Hunt adviser and lobbyist to give evidence

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:22:15 GMT

Former special adviser Adam Smith and lobbyist Frédéric Michel to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry next week

The two men at the centre of the row over Jeremy Hunt's handling of the News Corporation/BSkyB deal – his former special adviser Adam Smith and lobbyist Frédéric Michel – are to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry next week.

Lord Justice Leveson will also be hearing evidence next week from former Labour cabinet ministers Tessa Jowell, Alan Johnson, Lord Mandelson, Lord Reid and Lord Smith, broadcasters Andrew Marr and Jeremy Paxman, and phone-hacking campaigner Tom Watson MP.

Adam Smith and Michel will appear on Thursday. Adam Smith resigned as culture secretary Hunt's special adviser last month, after 163 pages of emails written by Michel when he was News Corp's head of European public affairs in 2010 and 2011 were released by the company to the Leveson inquiry.

Those emails, written over several months, appeared to show that Hunt's office was passing information about the minister's BSkyB bid approval process to the company during 2010 and 2011. Michel repeatedly described information he had obtained to his boss, James Murdoch, as emerging from Hunt himself.

The culture secretary denied there was an inappropriate relationship between himself and News Corp. Adam Smith resigned when it emerged that the bulk of Michel's contact was with him rather than Hunt directly.

Hunt said that the volume and tone of the Adam Smith/Michel communication could not be justified, but insisted that he oversaw the Sky bid correctly in a quasi-judicial manner. The culture secretary is also expected to appear at the inquiry.

In February Michel was promoted to News Corp's senior vice-president of government affairs and public policy for Europe, based on Brussels.

James Murdoch described Michel as the firm's "PO box" for correspondence between government ministers and the Murdoch empire during his Leveson inquiry evidence in April.

"On various levels, he was the liaison with policymakers," Murdoch said, describing Michel as a diligent employee. News Corp insiders saw him as a "James Murdoch acolyte".

Former Labour culture secretary Jowell, the MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, received £200,000 from News International after settling her civil claim for breach of privacy over News of the World phone hacking. Of this, £100,000 was paid to a charity of Jowell's choice.

Jowell will be giving evidence to the inquiry on Monday, along with Mandelson, who is likely to be asked about his dealings with journalists, editors and executives from News International and other national newspaper publishers during his time as Labour's director of communications in the 1980s, and from 1997 as a cabinet minister.

Lord Smith, another former culture secretary, will be appearing on Tuesday along with Johnson, the former education, health and home secretary, and Watson, the Labour MP who has doggedly pursued Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation over the scandal.

BBC presenters Marr and Paxman are up on Wednesday, along with Reid, the former Labour defence and home secretary, and Stephen Dorrell MP, who oversaw media policy as heritage secretary in John Major's Conservative government in the mid 1990s.

Also appearing on Thursday with Michel and Smith will be Lord Brooke, another former Tory heritage secretary in the early 1990s.

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Communications green paper delayed

Fri, 18 May 2012 01:06:00 GMT

Policy thinking on internet piracy, public service broadcasting and spectrum unlikely to be published until the autumn

The planned publication of a communications green paper has been put on hold until after Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, has given evidence to the Leveson inquiry and dealt with accusations that he favoured News Corporation in its negotiations to buy all of BSkyB.

Those close to Hunt's Department for Culture, Media and Sport say the communications green paper, which will set out the government's initial policy thinking in areas as diverse as internet piracy, public service broadcasting and spectrum allocation, has largely been written but is now unlikely to be published until autumn at the earliest.

Hunt and his deputy, Ed Vaizey, had hoped to publish the document in the spring but Hunt's attention has been concentrated on the need to give a full account to Lord Justice Leveson of his relationship with Rupert Murdoch's company and see off Labour calls for him to resign.

One source said Hunt and the DCMS were distracted by the Murdoch controversy and it would be impossible for the document to be published until September at the earliest, assuming the culture secretary gives a successful performance before the judge.

There are also suggestions that the green paper could be shelved completely, with ministers instead moving to publish a white paper that by then would incorporate any relevant recommendations arising from the Leveson inquiry about the future of press regulation.

Leveson is due to report in October, and if his document appears before the green paper, it may have to be redrafted to include the government's initial response to his findings.

If Hunt were to be replaced, a new culture secretary would want to review the document before agreeing to release it. The culture secretary has been under fire after 163 pages of emails written by News Corp lobbyist Frédéric Michel were released by the company to the Leveson inquiry.

Those emails, written over several months, appeared to show that Hunt's office was passing information about the minister's BSkyB bid approval process to the company during 2010 and 2011. Michel repeatedly described information he had obtained to his boss, James Murdoch, as emerging from Hunt himself.

The culture secretary denied there was an inappropriate relationship between himself and News Corp. But his special adviser Adam Smith did resign when it emerged that the bulk of Michel's contact was with Smith rather than Hunt directly.

Hunt said that the "volume and tone" of the Smith/Michel communication could not be justified, but insisted that he oversaw the Sky bid correctly in a "quasi-judicial" manner.

Ministers are still officially insisting that the green paper will emerge in the spring. But the joke understood to be circulating in at the DCMS is that spring in Whitehall can run from anywhere from February to November.

The green paper marks the start of a legislative process that will culminate in a communications bill scheduled for the 2014/15 session of parliament.

Meanwhile Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, told a meeting of the campaign group Hacked Off that there should be the "equivalent of the knife amnesty" for newspapers and politicians before regulatory reforms are introduced for the press. She said both sides needed to stop attacking each other and start with a clean slate once the Leveson inquiry made its recommendations.

"At the end of the day what I hope is that we have is no victors and no vanquished here," she said.

Alan Partridge switches channels to Sky

Thu, 17 May 2012 23:03:00 GMT

Steve Coogan moves character from BBC for two one-hour specials and TV adaptation of online series Mid Morning Matters

A-ha! His BBC television career famously came to an end when he thrust a lump of cheese in his commissioning editor's face. Now Steve Coogan's most famous creation, hapless Norfolk DJ Alan Partridge, is changing channels to Sky.

Coogan will star as Partridge in two new one-hour specials as well as a TV adaptation of his online series, Mid Morning Matters. The shows will appear on Sky Atlantic as part of an output deal with Coogan's production company, Baby Cow.

The BBC has been the home of Partridge since he started out reading the sports news on BBC Radio 4's On The Hour. The last series of I'm Alan Partridge aired on BBC2 in 2002.

Coogan's Sky Atlantic deal also includes Welcome to the Places of my Life, which will see Partridge take viewers on a tour of his beloved home county, Norfolk. A second Partridge special will feature the DJ being interviewed for a local book club by author Chris Beal, played by Robert Popper.

The specials will be executive produced by Coogan with his Baby Cow business partner Henry Normal and The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci, who is also involved in bringing Partridge to the big screen in a long-awaited film version next year.

Coogan said: "Alan has been off the TV for too long but he is even more excited than me about his chance to have a second bite of the cherry. Alan feels the second decade of the millennium is the right time."

Mid Morning Matters, which aired online last year in an initiative funded by beer brand Foster's, will be re-edited for TV in a six-part "special edition" with a second series next year. Partridge published his "autobiography" last year.

The Baby Cow deal also includes an animated children's tale, Uncle Wormsley's Christmas, narrated by Coogan, and a two-part look at Coogan's 2009 standup tour in Australia and New Zealand.

A high-profile victim of phone-hacking, Coogan's more recent television appearances have been connected to his legal action against News International, publisher of the now-defunct News of the World, which he settled earlier this year.

Sky, not previously known for its homegrown comedy output, has been investing heavily in the genre of late with shows such as Stella with former Gavin & Stacey star Ruth Jones, and Trollied starring Jane Horrocks. Other new projects will star Kathy Burke, Julia Davis and Jack Dee.

Sky's head of comedy Lucy Lumsden said Sky Atlantic was "providing our best writer performers the space to feel creatively free".

Launched last year, Sky Atlantic is home to the satellite broadcaster's high profile US dramas including Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire and Mad Men, for which it bought the rights after four series on BBC4.

The pay channel will also air West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin's latest drama, The Newsroom, as well as Iannucci's US comedy, Veep.

Normal, who is chief executive of Baby Cow, said the company was "at the beginning of a great adventure".

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Dale Farm: broadcasters do not have to reveal eviction footage

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:07:52 GMT

High court says broadcasters including BBC, ITN and Sky News do not have to hand over Dale Farm eviction footage to police

The high court has ruled that news broadcasters including the BBC, ITN and Sky News do not have to hand over footage of the Dale Farm eviction to police.

In a ruling handed down at the high court on Thursday morning, Mr Justice Eady said broadcasters did not have to disclose unbroadcast footage of the eviction to Essex police.

The judge said that the police need clear evidence of criminality when applying for production orders against the media.

Broadcasters including BBC, Sky News and ITN – the producer of ITV News, Channel 4 News and 5 News – won the right to a judicial review after they were told by Chelmsford Crown court to hand hours of footage of the Dale Farm eviction in October last year over to the police.

In his judgment on Thursday, Eady said that the Chelmsford Court decision failed to give any sufficient weight to the inhibiting effect of production orders on the press.

The ruling marks a significant victory for the media, which has campaigned strongly against being forced to disclose unbroadcast footage.

Broadcasters warned they would be seen as an extra arm of the state if they passed unaired footage to the police.

Eady said in his judgment: "The interference caused by such orders cannot and should not be dismissed mainly because a small proportion of that which is filmed maybe published.

"The judge should have feared for the loss of trust in those hitherto believed to be neutral observers if such observers maybe too readily compelled to hand over their material. It is the neutrality of the press which affords them protection and augments their ability freely to obtain and disseminate visual recording of events."

Eady and Lord Justice Moses described as scattergun and speculative the attempt by Essex police to obtain more than 100 hours of broadcast and unbroadcast footage from the media groups.

The ruling also applied to Hardcash, the independent producer behind a BBC Panorama documentary on Dale Farm, and Jason Parkinson, the freelance journalist who filmed an Essex police officer using a stun gun against a Traveller during the eviction.

Eady and Moses said that production orders should only be granted if there was cogent evidence of how important the unbroadcast footage would be in a police investigation.

Parkinson said he was "very happy" with Thursday's ruling because it recognised the impact production orders have on the "safety and impartiality of all journalists".

"This ruling to overturn the crown court's decision to grant the Dale Farm production order sends a very clear message to all police forces that these wide-ranging fishing trips will not be accepted by the UK courts and that we will not be forced into the role of unwilling agents of the state.

"We are not there as evidence gatherers to fill police intelligence databases with hours of material on activists or protestors. We are journalists and we are there to report the news and keep the public informed.

"In the last 18 months, every time one of these orders have been served it has put journalists in greater danger while trying to report on public order situations. I know this because I have been threatened and assaulted by people claiming my material will be used by the police. I am very happy to see [the high court] has recognised the impact these orders have on the safety and impartiality of all journalists and has made sure any future production order applications must take this into account, as was clearly not the case this time round."

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said: "Today is a huge victory for the cause of press freedom and the protection of sources and journalistic material.

"We are incredibly pleased that the NUJ and other media organisations have won the high court battle against the police production order to force journalists to hand over their Dale Farm eviction footage."

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Buffett buys US local newspaper group

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:29:08 GMT

Media company owns 63 local newspapers across south-east US and is Buffett's second print news purchase in a year

Warren Buffett, the world's most famous investor, has made a big bet on small newspapers.

The billionaire investor has bought Media General, owner of 63 local US newspapers covering markets across Alabama, North Carolina, South
Carolina and Virginia.

Buffet's BH Media, part of his Berkshire Hathaway investment company, paid $142m in cash for the titles. Under a separate credit agreement, Berkshire Hathaway will provide Media General with a $400m loan and a $45m revolving credit line.

The move is just the latest foray into print from Buffett. Last year Berkshire bought the Omaha World Herald Company, owner of Buffett's local newspaper and six other local titles. At Berkshire's recent annual shareholder meeting Buffett said he was considering other local newspaper acquisitions. "We may buy more newspapers. I think the economics will be ok, but it will be nothing like the old days," he told the meeting.

Announcing his latest purchase Buffett said: "In towns and cities where there is a strong sense of community, there is no more important institution than the local paper. The many locales served by the newspapers we are acquiring fall firmly in this mold, and we are delighted they have found a permanent home with Berkshire Hathaway."

Buffett, a former newspaper delivery boy, has long been a fan of newspapers and an investor in The Washington Post. But only a few years ago he was making dire predictions about the future of the industry.

Asked about newspapers as investments in 2009, Buffett said: "For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price. They have the possibility of going to just unending losses."

Buffett isn't the only billionaire showing an interest in newspapers. Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecoms billionaire, is a major shareholder in the New York Times. Earlier this year Gina Rinehart, billionaire daughter of mining magnate Lang Hancock, became one of the largest shareholders in Australia's Fairfax Media, publisher of The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and other titles.

TalkSport owner forecasts ad boost

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:18:54 GMT

UTV Media's Radio GB arm increases its revenues by 8% year on year and expects them to rise by 20% in May and June

TalkSport owner UTV Media expects radio revenues to rise by 20% in May and June as advertisers launch campaigns around Euro 2012 and the London Olympics.

UTV said that its Radio GB division, home to 16 stations but dominated by TalkSport, increased its revenues by 8% year on year in the 12 months to the end of April. TalkSport was up 16% over the same period.

Radio GB is forecast to enjoy a 20% year-on-year surge in May and June as ad campaigns ahead of the summer's sporting events kick off.

"The major sporting events of Euro 2012 and the London Olympics are expected to generate strong revenue growth during the summer," the company said.

TalkSport has been awarded the rights to broadcast full commentary on all 31 matches at this summer's Euro 2012 football tournament in Ukraine and Poland.

BBC Radio 5 Live will also air full match coverage of every game of the competition, which kicks off in Warsaw on 8 June and ends with the final on 1 July in Kiev.

UTV's Northern Ireland ITV franchise saw a 6% year-on-year ad revenue decline in the four months to the end of April. Total TV revenues fell by 4%.

However, UTV is forecasting year-on-year ad growth of 2% in May and June for its ITV business.

ITV plc, which owns all the ITV franchises in England and Wales, reported a 1% year-on-year fall in TV ad revenues in the first quarter of 2012 but expects to see a bounceback in the second quarter, with May up 6% and June up between 12% and 17%.

"Continuing economic uncertainty, however, means airtime bookings remain short term and forward visibility is limited," the company said. "We therefore remain cautious about the remainder of the year but believe we will continue to deliver on market expectations."

UTV's Radio Ireland division increased revenues by 1% year on year in the first four months, with a 3% increase forecast in May and June on a local currency basis.

However, negative foreign exchange rate movements mean that the division reported a 2% year-on-year revenue fall from January to April, with a 5% drop forecast for May and June.

Digital revenue grew by 3% year in the year to 30 April, with a forecast of a 15% rise in May and June. This is mainly due to the impact of increased revenues following UTV's acquisition of social media agency Simply Zesty in March.

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Chris Evans surges ahead of Chris Moyles

Thu, 17 May 2012 08:31:00 GMT

Breakfast DJ has biggest-ever lead with an average weekly reach of 9.23m listeners compared to Radio 1 rival's 7.1m

BBC Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans has surged ahead of his Radio 1 breakfast rival Chris Moyles with his biggest-ever lead of more than 2 million listeners.

Evans had an average weekly reach of 9.23 million listeners in the first three months of 2012, ahead of Moyles's 7.1 million, according to official Rajar figures published on Thursday.

It is Evans's biggest lead over Moyles – who has had talks with Radio 2 about presenting a show on the network – since the 1.7 million advantage he had in the third quarter of last year.

Evans helped Radio 2 to within a whisker of a new record audience with 14.56 million listeners each week on average in the first quarter, just 9,000 short of its highest ever.

There were also record audiences for Radio 2 presenters including morning DJ Ken Bruce, with 7.72 million, and lunchtime presenter Jeremy Vine, with 6.76 million.

There is no shortage of rivalry between Evans and Moyles, who had harboured hopes of becoming the UK's biggest breakfast show when Sir Terry Wogan stood down from the Radio 2 wake-up slot at the end of 2009.

But Evans has not only maintained Wogan's lead, he has built on it since taking over the show two years ago.

It was not Evans's biggest breakfast audience though – that was the 9.53 million listeners he had in the first three months of 2010 immediately after he took over from Wogan.

BBC Radio 3 suffered the biggest drop of any of the BBC's national stations, down 15.8% year on year – and 9.3% on the previous quarter – to just over 1.9 million listeners.

With 350,000 fewer listeners than a year ago, it is Radio 3's lowest audience since the second quarter of 2010 and followed changes to its schedule intended to broaden the station's appeal. It was Radio 3's second significant audience drop in less than a year.

The new-look schedule includes a new weekday morning show and listener requests on the breakfast show.

Radio 3 is still some way off its lowest ever audience of 1.78 million in 2007, which followed another schedule shakeup by controller Roger Wright.

A BBC spokeswoman said: "BBC Radio 3's audience traditionally fluctuates around the 2m mark – this is only the second quarter of a new schedule and audience reach figures are only one measure of our success – we're proud that we bring so many people to our distinctive blend of high-quality classical and cultural content with listeners listening for longer year on year up from 6.06 to 6.16 hours per listener a week."

The BBC World Service, which has had its funding cut by the government, also saw a big drop in its UK audience, down 27% year on year to 1.3 million. The cutbacks including the axing of World Service broadcasting on medium wave to the south-east of England.

Elsewhere, BBC Radio 1 slipped back 4.5% on the previous quarter, to 11.14 million weekly listeners on average, while Radio 4 was also down, 4.9% to 10.31 million.

Radio 4's Today programme was listened to by 6.66 million people a week, down from 7.15 million the previous quarter.

News and sport network BBC Radio 5 Live had 6.36 million listeners, up on the previous quarter but down 4.3% year on year. The 5 Live breakfast show had 2.56 million listeners.

Digital station BBC 6 Music, crowned station of the year at this week's Sony Radio Academy awards, continued to grow, albeit marginally, up 0.8% on the previous quarter to a new high of 1.45 million listeners a week.

BBC local radio, which faces smaller than expected budget cuts following a public consultation by the BBC Trust, grew its total audience by 263,000 listeners on the previous quarter to 7.6 million, its highest share of the audience since 2008.

The BBC's best performing digital networks were 5 Live Sports Extra, up 54.5% on the previous quarter to 952,000, and the Asian Network, which like 6 Music was saved from the axe but faces big cutbacks. It had 540,000 listeners, up 14.4% on the end of 2011.

BBC Radio 4's sister station, Radio 4 Extra, had 1.5 million listeners, down 3.3% the previous quarter, while 1Xtra was up year on year but down 9.9% on the previous three months, to 916,000.

All today's media stories

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:36:26 GMT

On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin 1986-2012 – review

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:08:01 GMT

The powerful reportage of a friend and rival is greater than the sum of its parts

To read a great newspaper reporter's work in a collected volume is entirely different from the cumulative effect of the articles over time. One gets a sense – perhaps a false one – of coherence, or even teleological destination, though of course there is none. And to read that work when the eyewitness was a friend recently killed while trying to continue, if not complete, the narrative is downright surreal.

I had a strange friendship with Marie Colvin, if that is what it was. The Middle East was her fiefdom; I was an interloper – twice: Iraq both times around, 1991 and 2003. She was writing for the Sunday Times, I for the Observer. During the crucial, immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion, Marie was embedded (in his compound) with the Iraqi dissident Ahmed Chalabi, who had done so much to take the Anglo-American axis to war. With the Sunday Times "in the bag" for the invasion, I had been doing all I could to counter Chalabi's influence on this newspaper, which I saw as deceptive and catastrophic.

And so Marie and I would eyeball each other through the Mesopotamian dusk, buy each other drinks – that waltz rivals dance when discussing the week's work over mezze. But knowing all along that what binds you is stronger than what divides you.

Here it all is, a vast Marie Colvin box set, poignant beyond words. It says on the back cover that Marie "believed in the pursuit of truth, and the courage and humanity of reporting", but I can't imagine her putting it like that. Marie was the greatest artisan war reporter: unlike most of us, she did almost nothing else but this insane metier. There was no "time out" to write a concert review or a piece about being Irish-American, or a glance across her adoptive Britain.

And when her articles between 1986 and the appalling last assignment in Syria come together in a book, the whole is suddenly greater than the sum of the parts. One realises that no one else entwined the powerful pieces and the pawns on war's chessboard quite like Marie (most of us specialise in one or the other): Gaddafi's son and the university student press-ganged into fighting for the Libyan dictator share a column.

Above all, the book captures the dramatis personae of her work. Here is Latif Yahia, tortured into having cosmetic surgery so as to live as Uday Hussein's body double. Here are the small people who make big history, such as Sasson Shem-Tov, who cares not a fig for politics, but is about to order a fleet of bulldozers to eradicate Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem. Here is the girl from Kosovo who returns to find the remains of her family in plastic bags, and the Libyan soldier who coolly describes how he and his comrades carried out an order to rape four sisters in a house they had broken into: "She did not move much when I raped her."

There is the epic adventure of Marie herself: clambering over mountains to escape Chechnya. There is her controversial apologia for Guantánamo Bay and her capacity to say so much with so few words: "Stunned and dusty in this new world, returning Palestinians wandered around a moonscape the size of two football pitches" – the Jenin refugee camp after the bloodbath in 2002.

We are told at the start that Marie paid the "ultimate price". A shot of martyrdom runs through this language that I don't think she would have liked. I remember having a conversation with her at the Frontline club and warning her: "If you keep doing this, you stack the odds against you." She was scoffing, more than slightly, at the fact that I'd quit this caper after four months in the Mexican drug war. This stuff is like heroin, I told her, and like heroin, it kills you in the end.

Therein lies the anger as one reads her last, marvellous paragraphs about Syrian first lady Asma Assad's schooldays in Acton, and a line she sent from Homs, quoted by her colleague Jon Swain in his heartbreakingly restrained account of the end: "I think the reports of my survival may be exaggerated."

It's not rocket science – maybe Sunday papers sell fewer because they cost more

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:06:08 GMT

Roy Greenslade and other commentators may analyse the ABCs, but maybe sales disparities boil down to the change in our pockets

Professor Roy Greenslade (like other academic commentators before him) broods over the disparity between Saturday and Sunday newspaper circulations, as revealed by new ABC sales audits. What's so soggy about British Sunday sales? he asks, running through a gamut of changing social habits. But sometimes you don't need rocket science at all. Sometimes simple cash chinking on shop counters counts, too. I bought the total package of Saturday nationals yesterday for £10.80. Today's equivalent Sunday bundle will cost £2.80 more (and £3.30 the moment the new Sun stops its launch promotion). Newspapers don't like to talk about cover prices. It's not supposed to be a suitable topic for conversation in polite society. But that doesn't mean that even hard-working university professors don't need to count every penny.

Tweet nothings

Ten million Twitter users in Britain. John Prescott celebrates. But something called the Portland Communications NewsTweet index shows 80,000 fewer tweets from journalists in the first three months of this year, almost 25% down. As for Sky News, the Guardian and the Telegraph, their tweets have slumped nearly 40%. What's gone wrong? Boredom, overwork, stress, changing fashions, the beginning of the end? Or perhaps the realisation that no contender, however dogged, can out tweet the unstoppable and clearly under-employed Baron P.

Britain's got talent, but the Daily Mail seems short of prescience

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:06:06 GMT

The Mail prophesied the end of Simon Cowell when Britain's Got Talent was being outperformed by The Voice. So much for the power of the press to influence events

The supposed power of the press? Here's a chastening example from everyday life, one without a smidgen of politics on display. Begin at the end of March as Britain's Got Talent and Simon Cowell are caught in the headlights of a supposedly omnipotent Daily Mail. Look back and see The Voice from the BBC "soaring" as BGT fails. Oh what "a blow for Cowell"! His "reign as the king of Saturday night TV" is looking vulnerable. Maybe "Television's Mr Nasty has a made a fortune but lost his soul". Maybe his "botched botox" job is the final humiliation. "Will Simon Cowell have the courage to put himself out of his misery?"

Thus, as May crept onto our screens, the Mail's diagnosis couldn't have been clearer. Cowell was washed up. His show was getting walloped in the ratings. His new press adviser (hired from the Daily Mail, as it happens) didn't stand a chance. The Voice was the winner, loud, clear and thumping.

Except that, of course, it wasn't. The Voice's audience plunged to below 6m. Cowell's Got Talent wound up on 11.9m. "If there's a happier, more family-friendly TV show, then I missed it," cooed the Mail's Jan Moir. God bless Simon, and Alesha, and David Walliams, and the incredible dancing Pudsey. It's a 180-degree turnaround. And caused, power-mongers please note, by nothing more complex than ordinary viewers in their millions flicking a remote from one channel to another. Simple is as simple does. Just one finger does it.

A Tory at the BBC? It wouldn't be the first time

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:06:00 GMT

Boris Johnson was as outspoken as ever about political placement at the BBC. But rare is the chairman of board or trust who has not been affiliated to one of the main parties

Boris, in full blond bulldozer mode, tells the BBC where to find its next director general: "We need a Tory, and no mucking around." Watch lips purse, hear sharp intakes of breath. The people appointed to run British broadcasting must surely be "independent" – not party nominees. The gabby mayor has boobed again.

But (just to remind) let's not get too sanctimonious about perfect Portland Place propriety. The BBC already has a former Conservative party chairman as its supreme trustee-cum-governor. He succeeded a former Labour councillor, who (after a spasm of trust transition) succeeded a former Tory chief whip, who succeeded the banker husband of the human dynamo who ran Gordon Brown's office. The chairmen of the governors before that were an active Conservative local politician (and Bow Group chairman), the retired MD of the Times and the brother of a Conservative cabinet minister.

And remember who appoints DGs. The chair of the trust takes the lead. Chris Patten is doing it again right now (as gossip about Ed Richards, ex-aide to Blair in No 10, moving over from Ofcom accelerates). And the thought that whoever emerges from the process will somehow be free of party connection is plain illusion, not born out by even the most cursory glance at history.

Is the BBC itself actually independent? For the most part, yes: because its staff in their thousands hang on to such freedom. Those are the people who safeguard its reputation. But politicians and sundry advisers? They've been poking their fingers in the pie through the decades: and we ought grimly to acknowledge as much.

Over at Leveson you could sense the same sands shifting as the lord justice and Gus O'Donnell, the last cabinet secretary, played a cosy little game. Gus wanted regulation made "independent and compulsory" under a "truly independent chairman" appointed by "fair and open competition" with "a panel that would have credibility".

It would need "to be quite a strong body", he added. And "not in any sense government-led or government-controlled," chimed in LJL – "either expressly or implicitly, so that it is seen to be independent in the true sense, not merely in its appointment but its operation."

They went on to discuss Gus's idea, based on his fleeting experience of American newspapers, of "segregating fact and comment" so that – "as with the code that civil servants operate to" – there could be strong belief in "honesty, objectivity, integrity and impartiality" imposed as a "kind of rule of thumb". Maybe someone like the information commissioner could have a role here, he suggested. At which point, listen for a scream of brakes.

Before he was cabinet secretary, Gus ran No 10 press relations for John Major. So, after him, did another career civil servant, Sir Christopher Meyer, who went on to be our ambassador in Washington before becoming chairman of the Press Complaints Commission. Saintly O'Donnell, soiled Meyer? It's a ridiculous distinction – as ridiculous as saying that Charles Anson (once press secretary to the Queen), Judge Jeremy Roberts, Michael Grade (once chairman at the BBC) and Julie Spence (former chief constable of Cambridgeshire) are also unfitted for the duty they exercise at the PCC.

What did Christopher Graham, the present information commissioner, do before he arrived at the ICO? He was director general at the Advertising Standards Authority – just like Mark Bolland, the first director of the PCC.

Independence isn't some adjective-rich device that pops down the Whitehall slipway on demand. Look at "fair and open competition" when it comes to choosing who'll run the BBC and hoot with laughter. Look at the tradition of British newspaper life over three centuries and laugh again. Think of a retired judge or a retired permanent secretary deciding what's fact, what's opinion and what pages they shall go on.

It would all be in the cause of press freedom, of course. No participant in the present debate would dream of saying otherwise. But even Boris would know what to call it: just mucking around.

On message? Who knows?

How shall we know when Delivering Quality First at the BBC has been, well, delivered? The idea – now fully endorsed by the trust – is to pare away here and there so that only the most attentive viewer and listener can spot that the money has gone. Blue Peter banished to CBBC? One presenter at a time on the BBC news channel? Fewer Radio Three3 concerts? Eight hundred newshounds out to grass? Somehow you feel a shrunken service may survive, though – if it can get over the stringent upheaval about to be wreaked on BBC4's service contract in the following, cherishable trustspeak: "Wording changed from 'it should record and broadcast performance from the nations and regions' to 'it should provide a platform for local celebrations in the nations and regions and should also create occasions that bring people together.'" Delivering incomprehensibility later, perhaps?

Bafta TV special: Ant and Dec, Anna Maxwell Martin, Kayvan Novak, Andrew Scott

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:05:00 GMT

Stars of the small screen reveal their TV secrets

The entertainers: Ant and Dec

This feels like real life," says Declan Donnelly, settling back into the sofa next to Anthony McPartlin. "We've done this before." You would have thought that after all those hours on telly performing – often live – for millions, Ant and Dec would want to do anything but watch it when they got home. "It's my number-one way to relax," says Dec. "We watch everything and anything and we constantly text each other to check what we're watching." Dec's last text to Ant was about the best ham sandwich in the world, as featured on Countrywise Kitchen. Ant's alerted Dec to the Hairy Bikers' pork terrine. Both food related, "but we text through sport, documentaries and dramas, too," says Dec. As hosts of Britain's Got Talent, the pair have been baffled by the competition revved up between BGT and The Voice. "It's just about the time slot," says Ant. "The shows are completely different. BGT is fun, a laugh." Adds Dec: "But have any of their contestants sung, 'Where's Me Keys? Where's Me Phone?' Hopefully they will on season two"…

Would you be a good gameshow contestant?
Dec We would. We've hosted so many that we've got loads of knowledge about crap stuff. You accumulate it.
Ant I wouldn't mind being on The Chase and beating that woman. I don't like her.
Favourite childhood TV?
Dec Game for a Laugh, Noel's House Party, Tiswas and Going Live.
Ant Anything but Dad's Army.

The leading lady: Anna Maxwell Martin

I wish I got offered more comedy," says Anna Maxwell Martin. "People must think I just cry and have a sad face all the time." It's hard to feel sorry for her when, over the years, she's cried her way so brilliantly through such great TV shows as Bleak House, South Riding and White Girl. She gets to look sad in two new dramas this year. "I'm in a 50s thriller called The Bletchley Circle, which has a grisly murder and nice cossies." Then there's Jimmy McGovern's Accused. "The part wasn't like anything I've done before – I was cast as someone who works in a juvenile detention centre alongside Ewen Bremner. We were the scrawniest people in there." Anna says she's missing out on all the "groovy hot dramas" at the moment. "I've just had a baby so I'm in bed at 8pm. I'm watching Corrie though. It's my dream to be in it when I'm 70. If I could end my days on Corrie, I'd be happy."

Who's your favourite newsreader? There's my friend Romilly Weeks – I get really excited when I see her on telly – and Kate Simms on North West Tonight. She's my best friend and my daughter's godmother.
Favourite childhood show? I watched The A Team and the wrestling.
New TV discovery? Monica Dolan who was in Appropriate Adult. She's the most extraordinary actress.

The trickster: Kayvan Novak

After the phenomenal success of prank-call extravaganza Fonejacker, Kayvan Novak is relishing his new role on hidden-camera show Facejacker, when he acts out his surreal characters instead. "It tickles my acting ability. It's total immersion – no action, no cut – you're with people who think you're real." The show was mainly filmed in the States, which Novak enjoyed. "If you're winding up Americans, their buttons are in different places. I was trying to process how the British compare to the Americans, so I read Quentin Crisp. He says that the difference is that the British want you to fail because they're afraid you'll leave them behind. The Americans want you to succeed in case you take them with you. I want to be as articulate as that, instead of just regurgitating it."

Would you be a good gameshow contestant? I love cooking shows – like MasterChef: The Professionals. I'll be editing until 10pm then get home, make dinner, and sit and eat while watching other people make dinner. So anything to do with cooking would be good.
Favourite TV? Shameless has a good vibe and I love Breaking Bad.
Favourite childhood show? I loved Harry Enfield and Blackadder. Spitting Image was the first show that I started mimicking off the telly.

The super villain: Andrew Scott

Andrew Scott declares his role in BBC's Sherlock as arch-nemesis Jim Moriarty to be an absolute blast. "Every time he appears he gets great stuff to do. You get real bang for your buck." Though Scott first made his mark in theatre – appearing in such award-winning productions as Cock and A Girl in a Car with a Man in London and in David Hare's The Vertical Hour in New York – he has two more TV dramas coming soon. First, there's psychological drama The Fuse, starring alongside Christopher Eccleston, for the BBC – "It's a very human story about obsession," he says – then an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's The Scapegoat for ITV.

After that there's the third series of Sherlock to consider – well, possibly. Any hints about the resolution of season 2's cliffhanger, which seemed to end with the deaths of Moriarty and Holmes? "I have to remain schtum. Even my mother doesn't know what happens."

Favourite sitcoms? Grandma's House and Twenty Twelve. Olivia Colman and Jessica Hynes are brilliant.
Favourite childhood show? The Muppet Show: the theme music makes me excited even now. I used to watch the drama Chocky, too. There's something about sophisticated drama for kids – it's just great.
Guilty pleasure? Judge Judy. It appeals to some weird side of me, I like the way she deals with idiots. I got into it when I was doing Emperor and Galilean at the NT last year. You can't go home and watch BBC4's The History of Desks after Ibsen.
Favourite US show? I've just started Mad Men. I want to be that person who watches it until 4am, but I don't think I am.

Facebook is going to need all the friends it can get | John Naughton

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:04:52 GMT

Facebook still has a long way to go to make its value credible

The interesting thing about the Facebook IPO (initial public offering) is that there was no first-day "pop". In other words, the shares ended the day trading at just about the price at which they had started.

Given the advance hype, this surprised many observers and led some to speculate that the underwriters (the banks that handled the flotation) were discreetly buying shares to prop the market up. So could it be that the world is finally wising up to the truth about Facebook?

What is that truth? Simply this: Facebook is an advertising business: last year, 82% of its revenue – about $4 per user – came from that source.

Social networking is really just a means to an advertising end. It is achieved by providing an addictive service for millions of people who spend unconscionable amounts of time freely giving away the thing that advertisers really crave, namely detailed information about their lives and interests.

But therein lies a serious contradiction: Facebook cannot easily exploit this bonanza because its users obstinately continue to regard the platform as a private space: in a recent AP-CBNBC poll, for example, more than 50% of respondents said they felt "not safe at all" using Facebook to make purchases. Yet Facebook needs them to make purchases – lots of them. Those who know about these things think the company needs to make $20 a year from each user to justify the $105bn (£66bn) valuation produced by Friday's IPO.

Power, someone once said, is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Maybe. But money runs it close. At any rate, a reality distortion field (RDF) surrounds anyone or anything that has lots of it. Thus the RDF surrounding Facebook's market valuation produced selective amnesia in many observers who should know better. It caused them to forget AOL, for example, which at its IPO in 1992 was valued at $70m, soared to $150bn 10 years later – and is now worth about $2.5bn.

And then there's the RDF surrounding Mark Zuckerberg – net worth currently $19bn plus – which seems to have blinded observers to the uncomfortable fact that the shareholding structure of Facebook means that he has total control of the company.

There are two classes of share – A and B. Each class B share carries 10 times the voting rights of its class A counterpart. Zuck owns 27.1% of the class B shares outright and the company's pre-IPO filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed agreements with other owners of class B shares to assign their voting rights to him. The net result is that he has voting control over at least 57.1% of the class B shares. In other words, he's omnipotent.

This would be a problem even if Zuck had the brains of Einstein and the wisdom of Solomon. But, alas, he doesn't. He is undoubtedly a smart and talented guy, but he also happens to have a megalomaniacal obsession – that everything has to be social, ie public. And if you're a Facebook user and don't like that – well, tough.

So we now have another powerful media company with a shareholding structure that renders its charismatic, single-minded founder immune from shareholder pressure. Remind you of anyone? Hint: it begins with "News".

Trailer trash at Cannes 2012

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:04:41 GMT

An experimental offering proved just too relaxing while Alan Yentob nearly got bounced from opening night for wearing trainers

Lazy days

Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul showed his experimental, hour-long film Mekong Hotel. It's set by a long quiet river and features a man chatting about Pob ghosts and Bangkok floods with a young woman and her mother on a hotel terrace overlooking the water. Occasionally, it cuts to one of them eating entrails, or hearts, like vampires or wild dogs. Throughout, a man plays a gentle blues on an acoustic guitar. It contains the literally immortal line: "I will be reborn as a horse and then several kinds of insect." It was screened after lunch in the hot Salle Bazin. On screen, the flies buzzed, the river flowed, the music played and the sun shone – I looked around and counted nine people blissfully asleep in my vicinity. Only for this Zen master director could one say that this reaction should be taken as some kind of compliment.

They shoot, he scores

If one theme dominates this Cannes it is Alexandre Desplat. The prolific composer's name – he's done scores for The King's Speech, The Tree of Life, Harry Potter, The Queen - flashes up on the credits of a record-breaking five films in the selection: Audiard's Rust and Bone, Garrone's Reality, the Polanski documentary, Moonrise Kingdom and Gilles Bourdos's Renoir which will close Un Certain Regard next week. You'd think they'd get his name right by now, at least, then? "I've been nominated for four Oscars and they alway read my name out wrong," he tells me. "It's Day-plah, I say, no S, no T, and yet every time they read the nominations: Alexander Dessplatt." Maybe they're waiting till he actually wins one to get it right, I venture? "In that case, I will be very forgiving."

Yes to Yentob

BBC creative director Alan Yentob was nearly ejected from the opening night ceremony, for incorrect attire. The Imagine presenter wore a silver-striped tie and trainers to the strictly black tie (noeud papillon) event and was promptly blocked by bouncers. Only the glamorous head of BBC Films Christine Langan saved him, with a last ditch appeal to Cannes boss Thierry Frémaux who was standing at the top of the red carpet steps. Just as well – Yentob gets a little name check in the opening night film, Moonrise Kingdom, when Bill Murray and Frances McDormand lie awake discussing their legal cases. "Did you get the approval on Yentob versus Crawford?" asks Murray. Did Alan know about this? "No, I didn't, but it's definitely me," he told me at the film's after-party, still smarting from the bouncers' clench. "And had I not got in, there might well have been another lawsuit with my name on it." A glass of bubbly and a couple of canape skewers later, though, he was all smiles.

Sky Sports make early impact but ITV hit back with Roy Keane's steel | Evan Fanning

Sat, 19 May 2012 21:31:15 GMT

Roberto Di Matteo's love of football was among the revelations during extended coverage of the Champions League final

They say that on the big occasions it is often the first to settle who prevails and with a significant head start on their rivals Sky Sports were all-conquering in this regard. A panel of Jamie Redknapp, Ruud Gullit and Graeme Souness were knee deep in the real business long before those watching on ITV had reached the third act of Keith Lemon's LemonAid. Gary Neville is Sky's prize asset and as such was wrapped in cotton wool until as late as possible. When he made his first appearance – moments before people may have been thinking of switching over to ITV for the start of their coverage – he went straight for his weapon of choice – the tactics board –while Redknapp, Gullit and Souness looked on like bored schoolkids watching a geography teacher run through a presentation about volcanoes.

There were revelations (of sorts) in Sky's coverage. The Chelsea squad had been gathered to play a game where they pull the name of a team-mate out of a hat and reveal his best and worst traits. John Terry pulled his own name, referred to himself in the third person and decided that the best thing about himself is that "he's good looking" – a Derek Zoolander moment for the Chelsea captain.

But for the most part it was left to Redknapp, Gullit and Souness to eat up the time. Gullit, in particular, brings an air of aloofness to his analysis which suggests he thinks avoiding answering the question is the name of the game. Roberto Di Matteo, he insisted, "really loves football" – a reassuring revelation for anyone who was wondering if the Chelsea manager might be a bit bored by the prospect of having to sit through yet another match. As it turned out, it was the rest of us whose love of football was tested by 85 minutes or so of the ensuing contest.

Thankfully most of the pre-match inquisition on Sky could be dealt with by saying "a lot" over and over again. "How much does this mean to Chelsea?" Geoff Shreeves asked frequently. "How surprised are you at Bertrand's inclusion?" Jeff Stelling wondered of his panel.

Strangely it was the broadcasters who seemed to struggle most with Ryan Bertrand's inclusion, in particular how to pronounce his name. ITV's Gabriel Clarke took the most elaborate approach, opting for a pronunciation that made the youngster sound as if he was a Parisian wedding planner rather than a 22-year-old from south London.

This was as avant-garde as ITV got as Adrian Chiles ran through his usual repertoire of telling his guests the answer before asking them the question. "Gianfranco, you're a bag of nerves. How do you feel?" he inquired of the Chelsea legend Zola.

But Chiles came into his own with an interview with Frank Lampard where he quizzed the midfielder on a bout of ear-flicking among the Chelsea players shortly after André Villas-Boas's dismissal earlier this season that had particularly enraged Roy Keane. Roy, Chiles assured Lamps, has mellowed a bit in the meantime.

"I think even Frank agreed the timing wasn't right," Roy chipped in back in the studio, providing ITV with the revelation of the night – the rumours of Keane's mellowing have been greatly exaggerated.

On the pitch, we were made to wait for the real drama as Neville and ITV's Andy Townsend struggled to find positive ways to describe Chelsea's display. When Didier Drogba scored Clive Tyldesley reminded us what happened the last time Bayern conceded a late equaliser to an English club in the Champions League final – something he has never failed to mention in the 13 years since Manchester United's triumph.

Gullit sensed a higher power. "A miracle," he said of the goal. Now just try illustrating that on a tactics board.

Test notebook: Kevin Pietersen takes swipe at Nick Knight's punditry

Sat, 19 May 2012 18:08:41 GMT

Sky pundit under fire, Matt Prior doesn't trouble the Lord's glaziers this time, while Graham Gooch is a happy Hammer

FEUD TO FOLLOW

Forget Jonathan Agnew's fleeting Twitter retirement after receiving abuse on Friday night. Kevin Pietersen appears to have strong feelings about a member of the Sky Sports team. In November, during a swipe at the punditry skills of Dominic Cork and Kepler Wessels on Twitter, Pietersen concluded they were both "as bad as Nick Knight". KP was at it again on Friday, tweeting: "Can somebody PLEASE tell me how Nick Knight has worked his way into the commentary box for Home Tests?? RIDICULOUS!!" Look out for a frosty interview soon.

GABRIEL'S ANGEL

Shannon Gabriel, the West Indies debutant, had personal support at Lord's from Nigel Camacho, a dentist from Port of Spain and the only member of the supporting "Trini Posse" who was able to make the trip at such short notice. Gabriel's summer could have been so different. Before his surprise call-up, he was due to play in the Northern League for Barrow – the Cumbrian club where his West Indies coach, Ottis Gibson, spent a summer.

GOOD TO SEE …

… Matt Prior placing his bat against the dressing room's window with utmost care after being bowled by Gabriel. With no broken glass to trouble them, the members enjoyed their day unscathed.

ATTENTION GRABBING

Big day in London with action at Lord's, Wembley and Twickenham. Graham Gooch, England's batting coach, enjoyed himself listening to West Ham's win on the radio and then miming climbing a ladder once their Premier League return was confirmed.

MORNING AFTER ILL

On the six occasions on which Andrew Strauss has remained not out overnight after scoring a ton, he has yet to add more than six runs the following day. Against South Africa in 2004‑05 he added four and six after scoring an overnight 132 and 120, in New Zealand in 2008 he added four to his overnight 173, against West Indies in 2009 he added three to an overnight 139, against Australia in 2009 he added nothing to an overnight 161 and yesterday he added one to his 121.

STAT OF THE DAY

After Ian Botham described Kirk Edwards's farcical run out as Nasser Hussain-esque, Sky served up a stat showing Hussain survived 87.5% of run-outs he was involved in. Shivnarine Chanderpaul is catching him, though, running a staggering 20 people out for an 87% return. But all have a way to go to match Jimmy Adams's 100% record of nine runs outs, no dismissals.

Facebook staff celebrate multi-million dollar windfall outside the limelight

Sat, 19 May 2012 17:21:59 GMT

As the social network floated on the stock market, its employees marked the occasion with discretion … and onion rings

The guests wore jeans and T-shirts. The venue was a sports bar. The menu was buffalo wings, mini-burgers, pizza and beer. The entertainment was a mechanical bull, which bucked in a corner, and screens showing basketball and football. Welcome to a hundred-billion dollar party, Facebook-style.

It looked like college kids out for a typical Friday night, but the scene in the Old Pro, an unremarkable bar tucked off a sidestreet in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley, was the celebration of a cultural and financial milestone which mesmerised the world.

"Yeah, it's been a big day," grinned a lanky software engineer. "So we're here chugging a few." He checked his watch. "Still happy hour."

He and his colleagues clinked beers, manifestly happy. Facebook had just completed its first day as a public company after one of history's most frenzied share sales valued it at $104bn. The trading took place in New York but the company's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, stayed with 2,000 employees at their colony in Palo Alto, the capital of social media.

As the largest shareholder Zuckerberg, 28, ratcheted up a paper fortune of $20.4bn. An estimated 88 employees saw the value of their individual holdings exceed $30m. The extraordinary sums, the website's mercurial rise and its role in connecting more than 900 million people made the initial public offering (IPO) an event watched far beyond Wall Street.

Had they received this windfall, Russian oligarchs might have celebrated by buying Manchester United. Investment bankers might have bought bigger yachts and jets. The lords of tech munched onion rings. "The taste that can't be beat," according to the bar's website.

"This town, it's a very unusual place," said David Batista, manager of the Palo Alto Creamery, a cafe where Zuckerberg used to map strategy over milkshakes. "You could be sitting beside a billionaire and not know it. A day like today and where do they go? A sports bar. It's all very low key."

Internet revolution, Hollywood movie, global impact on human interaction, byword for self-promotion – few outsiders consider Facebook to be discreet. But employees are exactly that.

"You might think as soon as they make a million they buy a house in Palo Alto, but a lot of these guys live in apartments, don't have girlfriends and bicycle to work. And they work all the time," said Alan Dunckel, an estate agent. Those who did buy houses – $1,000 per square foot – did not flaunt wealth, he said. "They wear T-shirts and hoodies." Many sellers, said Dunckel, had withheld properties in hopes of a boom. "Expectations are huge." Facebook has promised $1.1m to Menlo Park's cash-starved authorities to fund capital projects, prompting hopes more will follow.

The employees' celebration at the Old Pro, however, was muted. Whereas non-Facebook groups booked tables with their names on them, Zuckerberg's troops clustered in anonymous little knots. They had been drilled by headquarters not to speak to the media. Ostensibly it was to avoid spooking the markets at a delicate time but it followed a company tradition of reticence – opacity, critics say – ironic given concern over Facebook users' privacy guarantees.

"Sorry, buddy. Normally I'm really interesting to talk to but I just can't right now," one employee, drinking an ale, smiled sheepishly. Others recoiled as if questions were radioactive. One confirmed a rumour that Zuckerberg was hosting a party for some staff that night at his home – a relatively modest $7m house – several blocks away.

Blink on the highway and you could miss the company's Menlo Park headquarters, a nondescript complex of two and three-storey buildings which employees of the previous occupier, Sun Microsystems, nicknamed San Quentin, after the jail. An entrance billboard with the familiar thumbs-up icon is Facebook's only concession to marketing.

Instead of trumpeting its historic day the company rebuffed interview requests and corralled television crews in a car park across the street. While the Observer interviewed an employee's mother inside the grounds – "a historic day for the way the world is going", she was saying, beaming – security guards swooped, complaining about trespass, and threatened to summon police.

Friday's bounty was preceded by austerity. On Thursday night employees made a round-the-clock "hackathon" of writing code. They wore newly printed T-shirts which said: "Stay focused & keep hacking."

Some emerged early Friday for a ceremony at the centre of the complex known as Hack Square, where Zuckerberg rang the opening bell to start the Nasdaq stock market's trading. Then they returned to their computers.

Canteens with free gourmet food and outstanding coffee keep staff inside the complex, disappointing nearby restaurants and cafes. Hairdressers like Nina Phana, however, who runs a salon two blocks down, say the techies emerge for the occasional trim and blowdry. "They tip good."

A hundred billion dollars is a gargantuan sum for a company started eight years ago in a college dorm, and the fact that Friday's frenzied trading ended with shares at $38.23, just a fraction over the opening price, stoked claims the company was overvalued.

Ali Ghotbi, an executive at Box, a cloud computing developer, shrugged off concerns of another dotcom bubble. "Back in the 90s it was, oh, you have a website, here's a million dollars. Now it's more controlled, more selective."

A colleague, Tom Cochran, predicted Box would be Silicon Valley's next big thing. "Our chief executive, Aaron Levie, is a genius like Mark Zuckerberg. But with charisma."

The rate of startups in this corner of San Francisco bay – renovated premises filled with newly arrived geeks with Harvard and MIT baseball caps – suggests widespread confidence. Or hubris.

Leveson inquiry: the musical – video

Sat, 19 May 2012 14:24:32 GMT

An auto-tuned hip-hop extravaganza starring Alastair Campbell, Charlotte Church, Hugh Grant, Rupert Murdoch, Kelvin MacKenzie and many more

Taking stock after the Facebook IPO | Mike Daisey

Sat, 19 May 2012 14:02:00 GMT

As Facebook's public offering fizzled, so did the media's 'finance porn' hype. And perhaps a sense of just proportion was restored

On Friday morning, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, CEO, and majority shareholder, rang the Nasdaq opening bell and made history with one of the largest IPOs in years. It was exactly the kind of mania that made the dotcom era a profoundly silly time – irrational exuberance all the way to the bank in an era that became known more for the greed, ridiculousness, and excess than it did from the occasionally groundbreaking work that was changing how people did business at the dawn of the modern internet era.

Except, on Friday, the mania didn't show up on schedule.

After weeks of breathless anticipation, the Facebook IPO fizzled, with institutions having to step in and buy shares to keep the stock from slipping below the strike price of $38. This shocking and heartbreaking development will now be accompanied by the sound of a thousand fingers clattering over keys, as pundits and analysts everywhere tweet and blog and chatter over what went wrong.

But this supposes something has actually gone wrong. 

Let us remember, first, that Facebook the company had this IPO in order to go public with its stock, and raised more than $16bn for its troubles. So, they aren't unhappy: that's what they were expecting, and that's what they got. Before IPOs became carnivals of capitalism, that was actually the point.

Zuckerberg and the other Facebook pre-IPO shareholders aren't unhappy this weekend – they're rich. Yes, some of them could be wishing that they were almost incalculably rich instead of merely being the more prosaic filthy rich, but if you catch one of them at a fake German beerhall in Palo Alto bitching about this, you should punch them immediately – the way they trained us in our self-defense classes years ago, when we were all taught these techniques in case an insufferable internet millionaire douchebag might one day desperately need an attitude adjustment. 

Is it us? Are we the ones who are disappointed? I don't know – given how restricted and voodoo-y IPO stock launches are, I doubt the average reader skimming this article was in on the first day of trading. I know I don't have any Facebook stock, and I doubt you do, too.

So, who is upset? Who didn't get what they were looking for? One hint: you're looking at it, and in another age, it was used to wrap fish.

Media loves the big IPO stories. They love every part of them: they love the narrative arc; they love the idea of workers slaving away every day and then, one magical morning, getting millions and millions of dollars. They love the skullduggery of how they get set up, and the way it all seems to rest on the fate of a single day – what happens in those first moments, as the stock hits the market and demand asserts itself. 

Stories like this make financial analysts' eyes dilate, the blood quicken, the pulse sound in the ears. We all recognize it, because it's pornography. There are different types of porn: war porn, patriotism porn … and this, of course, is finance porn. You can tell it is porn because it demands nothing of the viewer, and comforts those who get off on it. But no matter how nice porn can be, it's not a dialogue. It's not news. It is spectacle, and by participating in it, we devolve the dialogue. 

We are perhaps hungry for it because we have no dialogue with the corporations. Now that labor is a relic of the past that is largely ignored, there's no battlefield to make the corporation look human, to make it fit into the narrative of a great story. There are no strikes, no unrest: workers aren't capable of raising more than a mild sense of indigestion at whatever they face, and they choke that down lest they endanger their positions. 

We have been trained to believe that a business story only exists from the top down – and through that lens, there are few things as dynamic and newsworthy as an IPO. In an environment without financial stories that the media wants to tell, the IPO becomes a bar mitzvah, a coming of age where, instead of bringing gifts, the public company showers its faithful with riches instead.

No one suffered when there wasn't an outbreak of abject mania at the Facebook IPO. In fact, maybe many of us gained: if the markets behave in a rational manner, if we do not submit to hype and hysteria, perhaps we can live a rational life within them? Work for the sake of what is done, not what is gained? Perhaps, we can dream of leaving the dotcom era behind?

Perhaps. But the lure of narrative is strong, and we are always seeking the next trend. In Fight Club, Ed Norton taught us that you are not the things you own. It's a decade later, but we may need to learn that we are not our share prices, either.

Rupert Murdoch denies claims that News Corp may sell UK newspapers

Sat, 19 May 2012 12:45:57 GMT

Mogul says News Corporation is 'firmly committed' to its papers including the Sun, Times and Sunday Times

Rupert Murdoch has denied reports that News Corp is considering spinning off its British newspapers to protect the rest of his media empire from criminal scandals.

The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times newspapers said executives at the company were looking into ways to split off the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times, published by its News International unit.

However, Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corp, said in a statement: "News Corporation remains firmly committed to our publishing businesses, including News International, and any suggestion to the contrary is wholly inaccurate. Publishing is a core component of our future."

British police are examining claims that journalists at the News of the World – a paper shut by Murdoch last July – routinely hacked into the phones of hundreds of celebrities, politicians and victims of crime to generate front-page stories.

They are also investigating whether staff hacked into computers and made illegal payments to public officials, including the police, to get ahead in their reporting. Rebekah Brooks, a former senior executive of News International and editor of the News of the World, has been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.

The Daily Telegraph and the FT said News Corp was discussing putting the News International titles into a trust.

A News International spokeswoman denied the report, saying in a statement: "There are absolutely no plans to put News International into a separate trust."

Selling the newspapers to one or more wealthy individuals was another option under consideration, the FT said, quoting two people familiar with the company.

They noted no decisions had been made and a spin-off or a sale might not happen, the FT added.

The Daily Telegraph said a proposal to go into a joint venture with a media partner was also on the table, without citing its sources.

Romney's saccharine side peeks out in new ad envisioning a Mitt presidency

Sat, 19 May 2012 12:17:00 GMT

In his first official ad of the presidential election campaign, the presumptive Republican candidate seeks to remould his image

Who

Mitt Romney has not had the easiest time of it. A brutal and bruising GOP primary campaign has finally left him in pole position as the presumptive nominee. But it has also left him "severely conservative" (to use his own words) and battling a common public image as an uncaring capitalist robber baron who likes to fire people for kicks. So how does one launch one's national campaign? With a massive rebranding effort, of course.

What

Day One is the first ad from the Romney camp since former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum dropped out and thus represents Romney's first real attempt to sell himself to the whole nation, not just potential Republican caucus/primary voters. As a result, the 30-second TV spot is a rare beast: a positive ad designed to inspire and make you feel good about His Mittness' vision of America.

When

The ad is going up in the next few days. Its positive nature is aimed at reflecting the fact that it is an official campaign ad, unlike some of the nastiness that so often emerges from Super Pac ads. In a week where Romney-supporting groups apparently toyed with playing the race card by emphasising President Barack Obama's former pastor Rev Jeremiah Wright, this Romney ad is all about being Mr Nice Guy.

Where

As usual, this ad is targeted at some key 2012 battlegrounds. The campaign has bought air time in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Iowa. All these states are in the centre or the centre-right of the battleground. That means this ad seems to be aimed at shoring up Romney support or going after soft right independents.

How

Welcome to the world that exists inside Romney's head when he lies down to go to sleep at night. "What would a Romney presidency be like?" the ad ponders as it opens with footage of a beaming, craggy-jawed Romney looking distinctly presidential. The voiceover man is not one of those gravelly-sounding gentleman from attack ads who sound like they also do trailers for slasher films. He sounds pleasant and reassuring, almost in a kindly father figure sort of way.

Then, to a jaunty soundtrack, the ad proceeds to answer its own question. "Day one: President Romney immediately approves the Keystone pipeline creating thousands of jobs that Obama blocked," it announces. It goes on: "President Romney introduces tax cuts and reforms that reward job creators." That really is meaningless boilerplate but it plays over images of hardworking business folk, a combine harvester in a vast field of grain and then – slightly incongruously – an attractive young black woman who gives the camera a sly smile.

Finally it tackles healthcare reform in yet another sign that the Romney camp is confident that Obama's biggest single domestic achievement is in fact a winner for the Republicans. "President Romney issues orders to begin replacing Obamacare with common sense healthcare reform. That's what a Romney presidency will be like." No mention there that Obamacare was inspired by Romney's own efforts at healthcare reform in Massachusetts.

But it always bears repeating: no one looks to political ads for truth or fairness. That's not their point. Instead one should be noting the repeated use of the words "President Romney" and "Romney presidency" and the use of the words "will be like" not "would/could be like". At a time when there is a growing "nasty Mitt" meme in American public opinion this ad is a dose of pure sugar aimed at reassuring people Romney is a decent all-American type of politician. It aims to slay the image of Ogre Mitt and replace it with Saccharine Mitt.

Kidnapped reporter found dead in Mexico

Sat, 19 May 2012 04:20:12 GMT

Marco Antonio Avila Garcia's body dumped in plastic bag in latest killing of a journalist amid deadly drug wars

The tortured body of a Mexican police reporter has been found on the side of a road in the northern state of Sonora on Friday. A day earlier he had been kidnapped by gunmen while waiting at a car wash.

Marco Antonio Avila Garcia's body was found inside a black plastic bag near the city of Empalme, about 68 miles south of Ciudad Obregon where he was abducted, said Sonora state prosecutors' spokesman Jose Larrinaga.

Larrinaga said police found a message signed by a cartel but would not reveal its content.

The 39-year-old reporter often wrote about organised crime for the sister newspapers Diario Sonora de la Tarde and El Regional of Ciudad Obregon, said Larrinaga.

Two weeks ago police found the mutilated bodies of three photojournalists inside plastic bags dumped in a canal in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. Last week gunmen opened fire on the offices of the El Manana newspaper in the border city of Nuevo Laredo.

Avila had been snatched and forced into a pick-up truck on Thursday by three masked gunmen as he waited for a company car to be washed in Ciudad Obregon. The reporter was married and had three small children.

Mexico has become one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists amid a government offensive against drug cartels and rivalry among crime gangs.

Mexico's National Commission on Human Rights has said 81 journalists were killed between 2000 and 2012, while another 14 have disappeared.

The commission said on Friday it had opened an investigation into the death of Rene Orta Salgado, a journalist who had quit working for El Sol de Cuernavaca newspaper in the resort city of Cuernavaca in January. Police found Orta's body inside his car's trunk last Sunday; he had apparently been strangled.

Separately, the Mexican army said it had detained eight suspected members of the Gulf cartel and seized drugs, guns and hand grenades during investigations into the 13 May discovery of 49 mutilated bodies on a highway in northern Mexico.

Mexico's defense department said the suspects were caught on Thursday.

But the department has not said whether the eight suspects were directly involved in those killings.
The department said ib Friday that a total of 44 people had been detained and 140 guns and about four tons of marijuana seized during the investigations.

Authorities had previously suggested the rival Zetas cartel was responsible for the killings.

The Hard Sell: BT

Fri, 18 May 2012 23:05:00 GMT

'It'll be that smile that keeps Simon warm through the student holidays when he's alone, smelling Anna's pillow'

It's over. Adam and Jane – the BT couple who lived out their ups, their downs and their amazing phone and internet service from BT in six years of adverts – are no longer on our TVs. But their son Joe has moved out to university, and is now caught up in an increasingly dark love triangle between himself and flatmates Simon and Anna. They live in a clean and spacious student flat. No one is eating beans from the tin or ironing their clothes using hair straighteners, and Anna makes a cup of tea without smelling the mug first. Something's not right.

When Anna reveals she's "a Duran Duran fan" (because every 19-year-old girl can't get enough of your mum's favourite band) Simon pitches in: he's really into Duran Duran too. He's not, but he can secretly download all of the albums quickly, using their amazing broadband service. Legally, of course: when they're not singing along to Rio, today's students are known to be staunch supporters of paying for music through the proper sites. When Anna hears Hungry Like The Wolf playing through Simon's open door, she smiles at him. That's a mistake. It'll be that smile that keeps Simon warm through the student holidays when he's alone, smelling Anna's pillow. That smile that makes him stifle a soft gasp when he prises a ball of her hair from her hairbrush or picks Anna's old toothbrush out of the bin. Simon will treasure that smile. Every note of Girls On Film brings Simon closer to Anna. She just doesn't know it yet.

See the ad here

Itch: The Explosive Adventures of an Element Hunter by Simon Mayo – review

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:55:06 GMT

A mad scientist, a radioactive element … Simon Mayo's romp includes scientific knowhow and an amiable hero

You'd have to work quite hard not to like Itchingham Lofte. He's an old-fashioned 14-year-old, ordinary but obsessive. He collects elements the way 14-year-olds once collected football memorabilia or stamps. "There was, he thought, no point in collecting anything else. This was everything else. It was the catalogue of everything that existed in the universe, stripped down to its 118 basic ingredients."

Itch is not halfway to his goal when, in among the fragments of Victorian arsenic-coloured wallpaper, bits of tin, lithium batteries and scrapings of match-head phosphorus, there arrives, one fateful day, a lump of something tentatively identified as element 126.

Element 126 has never been discovered. Itch's new, mysteriously warm bit of rock is intensely radioactive yet puzzlingly stable. It could make fortunes, change the world or even blow it up. Dark corporate forces would love to get their hands on this fiendish unobtainium, and the darkest corporate force of all turns out to be the international energy company that sponsors the academy Itch attends. So he is up to his neck in trouble, though never entirely out of his depth.

There is, naturally, a mad scientist, whose brilliance, arrogance and energy are precisely the qualities that 100 years ago made Professor Challenger, hero of Conan Doyle's The Lost World, so attractive to generations of young readers and opened up science as a field for glorious literary adventure. Can the naive but resourceful Itch and his enemy, the evil but brilliant Nathaniel Flowerdew, do for physical chemistry what Challenger did for dinosaurs, astrochemistry and geophysics? Probably not, but amid the teenage intrigue and heart-in-mouth escapades there are sequin flashes of real science: reminders that physical chemistry really does make things happen, and that astrochemistry and geophysics are the forces that must have fashioned and delivered the radioactive McGuffin.

Itch exploits his newly acquired awareness of chemistry to move the story along in a high-speed Hitchcockian manner, quite complex scientific ideas introduced and then dropped swiftly as the action starts again. We never get to find out much about the deadly discovery that fuels the story, except that it could solve the energy problems of the planet, or deliver a terrorist's dream, yet at the same time remain something a young boy could keep (not at all safely) in his rucksack.

One does wonder at a chief executive of an international corporation who is prepared to admit even to himself that he is one of the bad guys, and at the hippy who casually sells Itch the hot rock in the first place, but also seems to know just how dangerous it is. There are enough loose ends to drive a sequel and, sure enough, after the conclusion there is a teaser from the next instalment.

Can such adventures inspire a new generation of unashamed science geeks? Why not? WE Johns's Biggles stories and Arthur Ransome's sailing books exposed new horizons for young urban readers. Radio 2 DJ Simon Mayo has given us an amiable hero who could, in theory, do the same for the periodic table. The story has the right elements, but is that enough to set off a chain reaction?

• Tim Radford's The Address Book: Our Place in the Scheme of Things is published by Fourth Estate.

Facebook is now priced for perfection | Brent Hoberman

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:45:10 GMT

The weight of the world is now on Zuckerberg's shoulders. As co-founder of Lastminute.com, I can, in a small way, empathise

I can't claim to have had anything like the success of Mark Zuckerberg, but as Facebook floated on the Nasdaq stock exchange today, I could empathise in a very small way with what its founder must be feeling. In March 2000, following a period if intense media interest, my own company, Lastminute.com, went public, and was priced the day Nasdaq peaked, at £571m. It increased its price during an accelerated road show by more than any other European initial public offering (IPO). The thinking then was technology IPOs were like Giffin goods – the more expensive, the more demand.

Facebook is at a different stage. Back then, the internet had very few profitable giants. We were loss-making and had the revenues, as one analyst wisely pointed out, of a small pub. Facebook is very profitable, making $1bn last year, and has jaw-dropping reach. Its execution has been almost flawless (excluding the occasional privacy lapse and mobile) and it is now valued at more than $100bn – 100 times greater than our business.

Yet there are superficial similarities. Both had young founder chief executives. I was 31 when Lastminute.com went public (old by today's standards: my co-founder Martha Lane Fox was 28). I had very little real idea of what to expect from investors and of managing large teams and crazy growth. Zuckerberg has had eight years to build a world-class, experienced team around him. Facebook has the benefit of the pioneers that have gone before it, they have lowered the costs of web technology dramatically and given a new generation digital management experience.

Zuckerberg is in the mould of Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Steve Jobs of Apple, and Google's Larry Page – an idealistic, passionate, driven, impatient, obstinate, obsessive CEO, who can drive a team to long-term rather than short-term goals. He will have 57% voting control – Martha and I had no control, and were never advised about the possibilities of such things as "dual-class voting stock".

But, like Facebook, our business was a hot stock that was chased up by retail investors. We saw how this creates real stress. People bought into our business at a high valuation and believed it could only go one way. Investors see this as free money, and if it isn't (in our case the bubble burst and the stock went down 95%, until we recovered) then sentiment changes fast. In such situations, motivation has to come from the team around you, from growth and the love of customers for your product – you cannot depend on support from critical investors and an increasingly cynical media.

Despite the massive boost to his personal wealth, which is now valued at $25bn, there are things Zuckerberg will hate about going public: the results, saying the same thing over and over again to investors when he would rather be driving the business; the market sentiment that will make his stock a hedge fund plaything. He will hate being asked about the share price, as if he controlled that too. He will hate people who want him to focus on short-term profits as opposed to his long-term mission. He will probably hate having to worry about how to invest his money, as that doesn't seem to drive him except as a way of keeping the score.

Investors, in turn, should look for Zuckerberg to keep his confidence – not arrogance. For the valuation to double over five years (the sort of return investors need to believe in) they will want him focused. He will need to demonstrate that with his fantastic war chest and user base he can take the business into mobile phones, payments, identity, big data analytics, social commerce … In a similar way the lastminute.com IPO valuation was based on a belief that the business was not about selling low-margin cheap flights but would continue its expansion into a greater share of customers' leisure spend across different devices and into different nations.

The night we went public and raised £120m, Martha and I were very subdued. It felt as if we had the weight of the world, and our employees, on our shoulders, and that the company was priced for perfection. That was massive pressure. However, now I look at Zuckerberg and see someone who really does have the weight of the world on his shoulders, is only 28, and doesn't have a proper business partner.

I had hoped Facebook would resist the temptation that we also felt, to raise the price too much. In our case I'm not sure the added pressure was worth it, and in theirs they really don't need the extra money. I suspect Zuckerberg will feel that pressure, that his world is surreal. But he will be happy that he has been given this chance to continue to change the world – and follow his passion. And that his creation's future is assured for some time to come.