The Spectator

Jon Snow's lawyers are keeping busy. Fresh from winning an outright retraction from 'The Mail on Sunday' over erroneous claims of a relationship with Precious Williams, Snow has turned to cyberspace. Madame Arcati, self-styled media clairvoyant, has received a letter asking her to remove two "defamatory" articles from her blog. Matters won't have been helped by Ms Williams channelling her side of the story through Mme Arcati. Over at the 'MoS', more obfuscation over who was to blame. One name conspicuously absent is that of Peter Wright. Even in Monday's Media Guardian feature on Snow, the 'MoS' editor did not make an appearance. 'MoS' Kremlinologists are wondering who spoke to 'The Guardian'.

Good week for

Great Ormond Street were recipients of a cheque for £50,000 from Channel 4 - one of its charity payments to make amends for the Richard and Judy 'You Say We Pay' phone scandal earlier this year, the first tranche of guilt money from the channel.

The hospital didn't even need to describe 50 pictures to the sofa couple to get its payout.

Bad week for

Feral beasts. Whom Tony Blair compared to journalists in his speech on the media last week. Still, it might be the turn of animals for a bit of rough and tumble in the press. After all, hyper-domesticated pets, such as the poodle, have been compared to the Prime Minister for a long time.

It's a rum do...

That fine feral Trevor Kavanagh, assistant editor of 'The Sun', said of Tony's Blair's attack on journalists: "He was railing against the media in the same way that sailors might rail against the weather."

Hang on, isn't that dear old Enoch Powell's line? "A politician complaining about the media is like a sailor complaining about the sea."

Good thing Trev hasn't started paraphrasing the Rivers of Blood speech in the pages of 'The Sun' yet.

Goodbye to Jane...

Jane Johnson's move to become deputy editor at the 'News of the World' leaves a bit of a headache for Emap. Johnson, who had been launch editor of 'Closer' in 2002, was promoted to editorial director to turn around 'First', its poorly performing news title. "There's a real gap in the talent pool between Jane and the rest of the staff," says my man in the magazines. "She was looking after both 'Closer' and 'First', which has no editor at the moment, so they are a bit scuppered."

The blogger's bluffing

The secret blog of a TV Controller (aged 33 and 3/₄), a satire written as if by the pen of BBC 3 controller Danny Cohen, has generated much speculation about the author's true identity. The predominant theory is that it is one of Cohen's colleagues sending off detailed and unnervingly accurate accounts to a friend at Channel 4. But the last laugh could be Cohen's. It is now said that the blog is a grand double hoax and all will be revealed at the Edinburgh TV Festival in August. Roll on the meritocracy.

Did CiF wipe clean?

Craig Murray is wondering how free comment really is at 'The Guardian'. CiF (the 'comment is free' site) ran an article by the former ambassador on John Reid's anti-terror measures. All well and good until Murray added comments questioning the paper's faithful use of the MoD's supposedly dodgy Iraq-Iran boundaries map, and said editor Alan Rusbridger was "just a cypher in a very bad wig". Murray now asserts that CiF buried the article by removing links to it, which CiF denies.