Conrad Black was once one of the most powerful men in the publishing business. He bought London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper in 1985 and eventually owned hundreds of newspapers throughout the U.S. and Canada. But all that changed in 2007, when a U.S. Circuit Court convicted Black of fraud and obstruction of justice. He was released from prison last year, midway through his six-and-a-half year sentence, after an appellate court dropped two charges against him. Then in June of this year, a Chicago court upheld two other charges of defrauding investors against Black, ordering him to return to prison for a 13-month sentence, which he began yesterday.

Since Wikileaks first began releasing diplomatic cables, the organization has been seen as a threat by the U.S. government and foreign officials. WikiLeaks recently published more than 134,000 diplomatic cables, but unlike previous "document dumps," WikiLeaks published the information themselves rather than working with established media partners like The New York Times and The Guardian. Previously, WikiLeaks would turn over documents to its media partners, which would study and redact the information before releasing it to the public. This time, WikiLeaks chose to release the documents without removing the names of diplomatic sources and other contacts.

Natural disasters require an incredible effort on the part of medical professionals, police, fire departments, Good Samaritans — and the media. Reporting on storms, especially hurricanes, means much more to media outlets than simple public safety information. These storms can mean big ratings, major awards, and they can make or break a reporter's career — as with The Weather Channel's Mike Seidel. Unfortunately, media histrionics can also be counterproductive to public safety.

On Tuesday morning, Rupert and James Murdoch and former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks testified in front of Parliament, and the world was watching. The questioning was the subject of widespread media coverage, and not just in the U.K. where the newspaper was sold. Here in the U.S., journalists have covered each dramatic development of the phone hacking scandal.

Yesterday, News Corp. shares rose 6 percent after reports circulated that some of the company's board members want to replace Rupert Murdoch with Charles "Chase" Carey, president, COO, and deputy chairman of the company. Murdoch would still remain chairman, though, which begs the question: would a new CEO bring about change in the way that News Corp. is governed?

So far, the News Corp. phone hacking scandal has led to the shutdown of the British tabloid News of the World, the arrests of 10 people, and the resignations of several News Corp. executives and high ranking police officials. Today, Rupert Murdoch and his son, James, will face a round of questioning before the British Parliament. And it all started with phone hacking. There’s no question that hacking is illegal and unethical. But is it difficult to do?

Rupert Murdoch and his family control most of News Corp. through their majority of voting shares. But there are other, smaller shareholders that speak up when they see something amiss in the practices of the company. Recently one shareholder, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, vied for Murdoch to change the company's disclosure policies for political contributions, and Murdoch complied. Is that indicative of how the company works, or a rare exception to the corporation's usual practices?

The fallout from the News of the World hacking scandal seems far from contained this morning, as U.S. lawmakers call for an investigation into whether any American laws were broken during the alleged hacking practices at News Corporation's British newspaper subsidiary News International. Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer, Jay Rockefeller, and Frank Lautenberg, called for the FBI to investigate the day after News Corporation announced it was pulling out its $12 billion bid to take full control of British Sky Broadcasting, a British pay-for-TV outlet.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son James — also a News Corporation executive — are refusing to appear before the British Parliament's Commons Culture Select Committee to respond to allegations of illegal practices at their News International newspaper publishing group. Both Murdochs are American citizens, and therefore cannot be compelled to testify before Parliament. Rebekah Brooks, the embattled News International executive, who is a British subject, has agreed to appear, though she is not expected to be cooperative. Meanwhile, Neil Wallis, another former News of the World editor, has been arrested by Scotland Yard.

Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire remains under fire as allegations continue to unfold — not only about the now-shuttered News of the World, but about other media outlets within the company. The Sunday Times and The Sun, both British papers owned by Murdoch’s News International, are accused of attempting to hack Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s phone, bank account and family medical records, as well as paying bribes to members of Scotland Yard officers for information about members of the royal family.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch will close Britain’s most popular newspaper, The News of the World, in a bid to prevent the outrage over the tabloid’s phone hacking scandal from infecting the other news outlets he owns. British detectives investigating the illegal phone hacking conducted by the newspaper’s staff say the number of victims could exceed 4,000.

News broke yesterday that British tabloid News of the World hacked into the cell phone of a teenage girl who disappeared in 2002 and was later found dead. The girl's family believed her to be alive, in part because a private investigator hired by the tabloid was deleting the victim's voicemails. News of the World is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and the outrage generated by the hacking scandal may affect people very close to the media mogul, and ultimately even Murdoch himself.

Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old American man living in Scotland admitted that he was behind the "Gay Girl in Damascus" blog, which, for the past six years provided thousands of persecuted gay people with hope – particularly in the Middle East. The blog was supposedly written by a woman Amina Arraf, who, according to the blog, was kidnapped last week. In response, the international media went on high alert. But within days, it became clear that Amina Arraf, was in fact, not a lesbian, not Syrian, and not even a woman. How did MacMaster manage to dupe so many?

Jim Lehrer will no longer be the main face of PBS' "NewsHour." He was the show's anchor for 36 years, but there has not been a lot of fanfare around his departure. "I didn't want to make a big to-do about it," he says. He reflects on reporting on the Kennedy assassination and what he has learned about politics and history. His new book, "Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates, from Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain" comes out in the Fall; he will continue moderating Shields and Brooks on Fridays. So what's next? "I want to write better books," Lehrer tells us.

One of the biggest PR firms in the world, Burson-Marsteller, was hired by Facebook to smear Google, essentially briefing reporters about a feature of Google's social networking service called Social Circle. And the most shocking issue might  just be the clumsiness of the PR firm, which blatantly tried to get bloggers to write an Op-Ed bashing Google. While Social Circle "is kind of creepy," says Dan Lyons, Newsweek editor who wrote the story for The Daily Beast, but what really got Facebook angry wasn't the privacy issue, but the fact that Google is also mining Facebook for their new feature. "Facebook is scared that Google might beat them at their own game," says Lyons.

The Egyptian revolution has transformed more than just the government. For decades, freedom of the press was out of reach for most of the Egyptian media, but the revolution has changed all that — to an extent. Some topics such as the military are still left unreported by most traditional outlets. Blogs like "Tahrir Diaries," a website run by 25-year-old writer and activist Mona Seif, are one of the few sources reporting on military trials and violations. 

A good government can no more exist without propaganda, said Joseph Goebbles, than good propaganda without good government." We look at how some of the world's spokespeople have tried to spin terrible truths by selling war crimes, stolen elections, and mass murder to a watchful public. Imagine that it was your job to explain to the international community, not to mention your own neighbors, why your boss is going to war against his own people.

We often hear debates about whether porn exploits women in the industry or plants seeds of immorality in the children who so easily access it online. But Cindy Gallop is more concerned with another question: What does porn do to both men and women – in terms of how they think about intimacy? Cindy is the creator of the website “Make Love Not Porn" and the author of “Make Love, Not Porn: Technology's Hardcore Impact on Human Behavior.”

Four journalists covering clashes between opposition fighters and the government forces in eastern Libya for The New York Times were reported missing, Wednesday. According to the paper, the journalists — photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario, videographer Stephen Farrell and Pulitzer Prize-winning Beirut bureau chief Anthony Shadid — were last in contact with their editors on the morning of March 15, as rebels fled from the town of Ajdabiya, where they were stationed.

Three BBC reporters were detained on Monday and held for 21 hours. One of the reporters, Goktay Koraltan, told the BBC that their experience was nothing compared to other prisoners in the detention center. "I can't describe how bad it was," he said, "they were, most of them were hooded and handcuffed really tightly, all swollen hands, broken ribs, they were in agony, they were screaming. There was a big operation going on there." The BBC said in a statement that it strongly condemned the abusive treatment of its journalists. For more on reporting from Libya is the BBC's Wyre Davies.