Rupert Murdoch told the Scottish columnist Magnus Linklater, at a dinner recently, that he would not have closed down the News of the World had he known that it was the police who had wiped the information on the cellphone of murdered schoolgirl Millie Dowler and not NoW journalists.

Robert E Webb, former Washington Bureau Chief of the Cincinnati Enquirer, who heads up the International Communications Forum in the USA, was awarded the National Press Club’s Vivian Award for 2012. 

'There are far more journalists with integrity than those who give the profession a bad name. They deserve support and encouragement,' says Stan Hazell, former editor of HTV News in Bristol, writing in the September 2012 edition of Reform magazine, UK. Faith communities, he says, can help shape the landscape of press regulation, following the Leveson enquiry into press standards.

Ms Chunmei Ma appeared to push back tears as she recited for reporters at the National Press Club in Washington DC, 17 August, the horrors of her treatment at a Chinese labor camp before fleeing to America four years ago. She was one of three Chinese women who spoke. The others were Ms Terri Wu and Ms Crystal Fang.

Bob Webb remembers Chuck Colson, who died 21 April 2012 aged 80, a brilliant lawyer from Massachusetts. Colson was one of Nixon's key aides and known as his 'hatchet man'.