The phrase "I don't have direct knowledge" has been thrown around often in today's Parliament hearings with Rupert and James Murdoch.

In the conference, British lawmakers grilled the Murdochs on financial details of settlements, facts about earlier phone hacking cases, political influence, and who exactly was responsible for the illegal phone hacking. Rupert Murdoch prefaced the questions with the statement, "This is the humblest day of my life."

He then distanced himself from responsibility, saying that News of the World represented just one percent of his company and that he was not told by editors about large payments to settle phone hacking cases out of court. His answers were slow and he appeared to have trouble remembering details. His son, James, kept trying to jump in and answer questions, but one Parliament member kept redirecting corporate responsibility questions back to Murdoch senior.

When asked, Rupert Murdoch said that he was "not really in touch". He claimed to talk to his senior editors about once a week, but later revised the answer to once a month. According to him, the conversations remained informal, opening with his question, "What's doing?" and stayed on topics of news stories. He insisted that he did not influence the stories. He later revised his account again, saying that he would not normally pay that much attention to British newspapers that make up just 1 percent of his business.

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction - it seems that Newton's third law is as easily applicable to the media as it is to elementary physics. It is natural that in the aftermath of the News Corp. phone hacking scandal should prompt significant questions about press regulation across the globe. So, the industry is now lying in wait to see exactly what shape these reforms will take.

Even in Australia, Murdoch's birth place, questions have been prompted about the potential for a media review, as Prime Minister Julia Gillard admitted in a speech that recent revelations in Britain have prompted "considerations about the role of the media in our democracy". There have also been calls for reviews of media legislation from the leader of the Australian Greens Party, Bob Brown.

News Ltd., the Australian subsidiary of News Corp., has pre-empted any parliamentary inquiry by announcing an internal investigation into the possibility of similar malpractice. When questioned in an interview with Reuters , CEO and Chairman of News Ltd. John Hartigan claimed to be "Hugely confident that there is no improper or unethical behaviour in our newsrooms."

The Huffington Post is again getting attention over the treatment of its writers. After Ad Age's Simon Demunco wrote about how the Huffington Post had used Ad Age's content but failed to drive significant traffic to the site in exchange, Peter Goodman, the Huffington Post's executive business editor, responded by saying that the criticism was completely valid. He said that the writer of the offending post had been suspended indefinitely.

During health pandemics and environmental catastrophes, a press debate arises every time over the thin line between informative and accurate reporting about risks and preventions and useless, if not damaging, alarmism.

We saw it during the Swine Flu of 2009 and the Avian Flu of 2003, and now it's the time of the E coli bacterium. According to the Guardian, it has killed 22 people and has infected people across 12 countries, causing alarm across Europe.

Information about the geographical origin of the outbreak is so far unclear, as is the information about which vegetable caused the epidemic.

After an initial assumption of a Spanish cucumber origin, the Guardian reported that it seems now that the outbreak was probably caused by bean sprouts grown in Germany, where the cases are centred.

Over the course of the past week, different vegetables were implicated as the source of the infection.

As Libération reported, citing AFP, the German newspapers provided extensive coverage investigating the different alleged origins of the outbreak.