Did Court TV Reporter Brief Jacko DA? (NYDN)
New Jersey businessman Henry Vaccaro Sr. claims Court TV's Diane Dimond helped prosecutors gather evidence in the Michael Jackson case last March.

FCC Clears Sexy Sheridan Scene (WaPo)
Federal regulators ruled Monday there was nothing indecent about a steamy introductory segment to ABC's Monday Night Football featuring actress Nicollette Sheridan jumping into the arms of football player Terrell Owens.

New Front in Canadian Free Papers War (Toronto Star)
Rival publishers Torstar Corp. and CanWest MediaWorks have teamed up with newspaper giant Metro International SA to launch a series of free English-language dailies in several Canadian cities.

Support Building for Federal Shield Law (AP via E&P)
Legislation to require prosecutors and judges to meet strict national standards and exhaust other remedies before they could subpoena reporters has both Republicans and Democrats as sponsors in the House and Senate.

Mighty Mouse (NYT)
It is clear that Robert Iger, who will succeed Michael Eisner in September, is going to be a different kind of chief executive for the Walt Disney Company. LAT: Post to test Iger's fence-mending skills. LAT: Interest in Disney job may haunt eBay chief. NYDN: It's all in the family at Disney. Guardian: Doubts persist about Iger. CSM: Iger's challenge will be to re-animate Disney. Forbes: How Eisner rewrote the media rules. LAT Editorial: King Eisner, Prince Iger.

Administration Rejects Ruling on PR Videos (WaPo)
Rejecting an opinion from the Government Accountability Office, the Bush Administration said it is legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government's role in producing them.

56 Killed While Reporting in 2004 (Guardian)
Fifty-six journalists around the world were killed in 2004 because of their jobs—the deadliest 12 months for reporters in a decade, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported yesterday.

Martha's Slip Showing? (NYP)
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is predicting a second-quarter ad revival for its flagship magazine, but it will have a lot of ground to make up.

Newsday Auditor Kills Three Years of Reports (NYP)
As it seeks to bring an end to its circulation woes, Newsday revealed that an outside monitor had deemed the paper's previously reported figures for three more years to be unreliable.

Public TV Hires Former FCC Official (NYT)
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting said Monday that W. Kenneth Ferree, formerly head of the Federal Communications Commission's media branch, had been named chief operating officer.

Okrent on His Time at the Times (E&P)
Nearing the end of his 18-month stint as The New York Times' first public editor, Daniel Okrent compared the assignment to a root canal—but says he's glad he took it.

Lampoon Plans Stock Sale (Globe and Mail)
National Lampoon Inc., the media company that cast the late John Belushi as an irreverent fraternity boy in Animal House in 1978, is planning an $8 million stock sale designed to raise its profile on Wall Street and finance the buyout of a former owner.

Jane Pauley's Show Axed (Seattle Times)
NBC Universal Television announced it was canceling The Jane Pauley Show shortly after getting ratings for the February sweeps.

The Feminine Technique (LAT)
Deborah Tannen: Fewer women than men are comfortable writing the slash-and-burn column, but the real issue we should be questioning is the fundamental assumption that attack-dog journalism is the only kind worth writing.

Believer Heaven-Sent (WaPo)
Peter Carlson: Although the covers of The Believer all look nearly identical, you never know what you'll find inside, which is the best thing about the mag.

Women's Wear Daily Sets Its Sights on the Luxury Market (NYT)
Women's Wear Daily has long been the bible of the fashion industry. Now WWD will attempt to follow that industry's climb into the luxury goods market with a new high-end magazine called WWDScoop.

C-Span's Cockeyed Balance (WaPo)
Richard Cohen: C-SPAN's cockeyed version of fairness is so mindless that I thought for a moment its producers and I could not be talking about the same thing. This is the Crossfire mentality reduced to absurdity, if that's possible.

No Honor Among Thieves? (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)
C.J.: The day after my column item appeared, the New York Post's "Page Six," one of the country's premier gossip columns, printed a less-detailed version of the same thing.

Media Barred From Royal Wedding (Reuters)
The media are to be excluded from Prince Charles' nuptials to Camilla Parker Bowles, with Charles ever wary of comparisons between his marriages.

—David S. Hirschman