Fleet Street is divided, with many bitter words being exchanged between journalists from rival titles, as the Guardian came under attack for the “unlikely” allegation that NoW had deleted messages from Milly Dowler’s phone giving her mother “false hope” that she was still alive. While the fact that NoW intercepted the voicemail messages while she was still thought missing has not been disputed, some journalists have claimed that the original story led to NoW’s closure. The Financial Times reported that the dispute “triggered the most destructive outbreak of press tribalism in living Fleet Street memory“.

Full media law round-up, with upcoming case listings, Parliamentary hearings and new public judgments at Inforrm.

• Since the time of writing the round-up, the Independent has published a piece by Stephen Glover that responds to Nick Davies’ rebuttal of an earlier column. In a letter to the Independent Davies defends the Guardian’s original editorial decision, stating: “The police have updated the record. We have updated our story. It is simply misleading to take this development and to pretend that that means our story was not true”. Now Glover responds saying “[he is] sorry Mr Davies will not admit fault” and criticises what he calls a “barrage of self-justification”. Jon Slattery has the overview here.
• Kim Jong-il has died and Fleet Street Blues looks at his unlikely past as a ” great teacher of journalists” at this link.
• Finally, something looking very much like the defunct “Solicitors from Hell” has appeared online – in another form, at a different address (via John Flood’s blog).

I’ll be putting together Inforrm’s review of the year later this week. What were your media law highlights? Tweet me @jtownend, or leave a comment below. And there’s still time to add suggestions to the media law Twitter list, too.