Newsweek agitates over Obama criticism. The world’s longest job application had its second instalment today, with Niall Ferguson’s latest piece for Newsweek bagging President Obama.

Followers of the brilliant, hardworking, lunatic British historian may remember his piece “Hit the Road Barack“, a purported excoriation of the President’s record, which itself earnt a firestorm of criticism for errors and obvious misinterpretation. Newsweek, an increasingly desperate publication yoked to online daily The Daily Beast, wasn’t keen on issuing clarifications and corrections, and Ferguson has now doubled-down on that piece with a foreign affairs overview “The President Fiddles As The World Burns“.

It’s the same mixture of half-truth and outright lies — Obama quit Iraq (no, the Iraqis wouldn’t consent to continued bases), refuses to consent to an Israeli pre-emptive strike (which even ex-heads of Mossad say is crazy) and “fiddles while Syria burns” (as opposed to doing what, precisely?). It rises to a fine pitch of frustration in the final passage:

“The president who was once a foreign-policy neophyte now makes much of his experience. That claim depends heavily on a program of targeted assassination that liberals would have denounced if it had been pursued by his predecessor.”

Well, liberals do denounce the drone policy — but more interestingly conservatives don’t approve what, under Bush, they would have applauded as “dealing with our enemies”. — Guy Rundle (read the full story here)

Top Gear wanes in value for Nine. The BBC and the Nine Network have radically recast their agreement for telecasting the top-rating (or formerly top-rating) Top Gear. Gone from the new agreement is any talk of a local version, as there was with SBS and the first agreement with Nine signed several years ago. Gone also is any exclusivity that Nine had to broadcast fresh episodes of the program in Australia, before the BBC could on its Knowledge channel on Foxtel.

Nine will now have to wait until each fresh episode of the program has aired on pay-TV in Australia, a big comedown for Nine and a sign of penny pinching as revenues and profits fall and the ownership outlook clouds. The original agreement with Nine also included rights to the Top Gear archive (which Nine uses on its digital GO channel). That also includes the rights to the US Top Gear which is a dreadful piece of television, as clunky as the Australian versions.

The original agreement was said to have cost Nine between $18 and $20 million because of the rights to the back catalogue of old programs and the exclusivity for each new episode. So the new agreement — each new episode will air on the BBC Knowledge channel on Foxtel before screening on Nine — is considerably higher than that high-cost deal. And Nine will have to wait eight weeks after the episode has screened on BBC Knowledge. That is likely to see Nine accumulate a small bank of episodes so it can launch them and run in a small season.

Meanwhile, BBC Worldwide is in the early stages of sorting out the future of the joint venture with ACP Magazines covering the publishing of Top Gear magazine in Australasia in the wake of the proposed sale of ACP to Bauer of Germany. Baurer is not a BBC rights holder anywhere in the world, so there will have to be negotiations to formalise that arrangement. — Glenn Dyer

One hell of a pay cut. An eagle-eyed Crikey reader spotted this on the smh.com.au this morning. The BHP Biliton chief Marius Klopper had his pay package slashed a significant $1.6 million, but that’s a little lower than what this headline claimed …

Front page of the day. Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah made a rare appearance in Beirut overnight to express outrage at the US film that denigrates Islam and has sparked violent protests across the world, calling for more demonstrations. Arabic-language Lebanon daily As Safir captured his speech …

Lachlan’s $50k pay day, settles with Fairfax

“Lachlan Murdoch has settled his defamation case against Fairfax Media out of court for $50,000. Mr Murdoch, chairman of Network Ten and also a News Corporation board director, sued Fairfax for defamation after a column made incorrect claims about his use of News Corporation’s corporate jet.” — The Australian

More phone hacking claims: now 174 cases

“News International is now facing almost 200 fresh phone-hacking claims with legal action now confirmed from individuals including the former Labour party leader Neil Kinnock, former cabinet minister Stephen Byers and Louise Woodward, the former nanny jailed in the US for killing a baby.” — The Guardian

All the (US TV) news that’s fit to print (online)

“As of Tuesday, the archive’s online collection will include every morsel of news produced in the last three years by 20 different channels, encompassing more than 1,000 news series that have generated more than 350,000 separate programs devoted to news.” — The New York Times