Good news and bad news for the Murdochs this morning. The good news is that Britain’s powerful TV regulator Ofcom says BSkyB can keep its valuable pay-TV licence. The bad news is the watchdog has given Rupert’s youngest son, James, a mauling for his failure to act on the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

Since its inception, Rupert Murdoch has never been out of the Guardian's media power top 10. But this year the 81-year-old tycoon has been relegated to #11, where, woe of woes, he suffers the indignity of being one spot below the man running Britain's powerful press inquiry, Lord Leveson. Oh, how are the mighty fallen.

You wouldn’t expect Rebekah Brooks’s husband to tell the press his wife is guilty of phone hacking and perverting the course of justice, but you might expect him to keep his mouth shut while she’s facing two, and possibly three, sets of criminal charges.

After all that's happened to the Murdochs in Britain this year, it’s extraordinary that one of Rupert’s immediate family could be cheered onto the stage at a major media function and clapped off at the end to rapturous applause. But that's what happened to Rupert’s second daughter Elisabeth when she rounded on her family last night.

Where is Rupert Murdoch when you need him? His favourite editor and surrogate daughter, Rebekah Brooks, has been charged with three counts of phone hacking at the News of the World and we don’t get a peep out of him.

WikiLeaks has now teamed with a bankrupt Spanish publisher, a French web upstart and a newspaper accused of bias towards the Assad regime as media partners for the release of 2.4 million Syrian government emails.

Risky, long overdue and a threat to democracy: that's the verdict of former Fairfax editors on the dramatic overhaul of Fairfax's metropolitan newspapers announced this morning.

If we learnt anything from David Cameron's appearance before the Leveson Inquiry last night it is that he and the Murdochs were even closer than we thought.

Clive Palmer announces a tilt at federal politics (and new cruise ship plans), Twiggy Forrest has another crack at Wayne Swan and Bill Shorten becomes an internet sensation.

James Murdoch maintains that he did not pick up the 'smoking gun' documents that showed phone hacking was rife at News of the World.

Paul Barry presents part one of an examination into the allegations against James Murdoch.

David Gonski beats Peter Costello for the Future Fund chairmanship, Clive Palmer wants to save newspapers and democracy: Miranda Devine-style.

No person has snatched, wielded and lost more power in the past eighteen months than Julian Assange. We spoke to one of the world's most wanted men about why he does it.

Looking as troubled as he ever did in Four Weddings and a Funeral -- and occasionally being as funny -- actor Hugh Grant delivered a depressing account to the UK media inquiry yesterday of what it's like to be pursued by Britain's tabloid newspapers.

James Murdoch utterly failed to convince British MPs last night that he is telling the truth about the News of the World phone hacking scandal. But neither did he run up the white flag, accept he'd lied to parliament or admit he'd been caught red-handed.