A look at the stories ranking highly on various news sites.
The Telegraph's most read story says Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has confessed she no longer feels left wing. The article says the supermodel-turned-singer's reputation as a "luvvie Lefty" has been cited as a major handicap to Mr Sarkozy's re-election as the conservative president. It suggests her political change of heart is an attempt to boost support for her unpopular husband among his core right-wing electorate.
Proving popular among Guardian readers is Christopher Hitchens' article claiming that the film The King's Speech is a blatant rewriting of history. He argues that, contrary to the film's depiction, Winston Churchill was embarrassingly supportive of "pro-Nazi playboy" Edward VIII.
On the Daily Mail's most read list is a story about a rag trader making a fortune from the clothes donated to charity. It says the millionaire runs the Salvation Army's recycling banks. He sells on the donated garments to Eastern Europe, where the price has risen from less than £100 a ton to £350 over the last three years, thanks to the rise of second-hand shops.
Mirror readers prefer to catch up on Demi Moore's latest fashion show outing. The paper says a picture of 48-year-old Moore and her 16-year-old daughter makes them look like sisters despite a 32-year age difference.
In Prospect's most popular story the founder of online newspaper the Huffington Post says we should all spend less time online. Arianna Huffington also argues objectivity is overrated.
Wired magazine's most popular story takes us inside London's secret crisis-command bunker. Photographer David Moore's series The Last Things documents a complex to which no other photographer has ever gained access. He is still not certain why he was granted entry.
I'm the BBC's media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.
BBC Radio 2's Electric Proms have fallen victim to the corporation's latest-round of cost-cutting says the Guardian. Last year's event, featuring Robert Plant, Neil Diamond and Sir Elton John, is set to be its last. The Radio 2 controller, Bob Shennan, said the five-year-old spin-off from the classical music Proms was being axed because of efficiency savings.
Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, has warned that the Britain's newspapers are now at risk of facing political "retribution" in the form of statutory regulation in the wake of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. The Guardian says he gave the Hugh Cudlipp memorial lecture.
Gillian Reynolds says in the Daily Telegraph she's not convinced by the BBC's strategy of "fewer things better", after listening to director general Mark Thompson interviewed by Steve Hewlett on Radio 4's Media Show.
Children in Britain sit in front of a TV or computer screen for four-and-a-half hours a day, reports the Daily Mail. A report released by research firm ChildWise shows that youngsters now spend an average of one hour and 50 minutes online and two hours 40 minutes in front of the television every day.
Jeremy Paxman last night became the latest BBC presenter to use the c-word inadvertently on air. The Guardian says Paxman's error was the third such mistake on the corporation's output within the past two months. It says the news item related to "tongue-twisting UK Uncut", the direct action group that lobbies to ensure corporations pay their taxes.
The BBC's newspaper review says events in the Middle East are again the focus for the papers. The Times and the Guardian talk of Egypt's President Mubarak being "on the brink" after the announcement by the army that it would not use force against protesters.
Links in full
• Guardian | BBC Radio 2 axes Electric Proms
• Guardian | FT editor: press risks political retribution over phone-hacking scandal
• Guardian | Lionel Barber's Hugh Cudlipp lecture: the full text
• Telegraph | Are the World Service cuts a sign of things to come?
• Daily Mail | Screen addicts: Children spend more time in front of a computer or television every day than they spend exercising every week
• Guardian | Jeremy Paxman follows Naughtie example with on-air 'cuts' blunder
• BBC | Newspaper review
• Read my updates on Twitter
• Read my archive of media stories on Delicious
• Read Monday's Media Brief
Commentators discuss the change in income tax thresholds meaning an estimated 750,000 more people will find themselves paying 40% income tax from April.
In All Voices Ethel Smith looks at who will benefit from the change:
"The threshold for paying ordinary income tax is to be increased. This will mean that around 500,000 low paid workers will be taken out of paying income tax. It is said that the main winners will be lone parents who do not work and middle income families, particularly those with no children. This is because other changes such as those to Child Benefit and Tax Credits will affect many people negatively."
Rachel Sylvester says in the Times Nick Clegg's pledge to raise the tax threshold to £10,000 will mean more taxes elsewhere:
"As the basic threshold is increased progressively towards £10,000, it is likely that the Treasury will fund the rise at least partly from adjusting other thresholds, so that by 2015 more middle-income earners could find themselves paying the 50p top rate. Many families who already find themselves squeezed by wage freezes will not only see their taxes increased but will find their child benefit axed too, even though they don't see themselves as high earners.
"The Chancellor will be under pressure to find money from other sources too. Airline travel is likely to become more expensive under new green taxes. A debate is going on about whether the Government can really afford to cancel the planned 1p rise in fuel duty due to take effect in April - although Mr Osborne is said to be keen to head off the anger of motorists who have seen the cost of a tank of petrol soar because of high oil prices combined with the increase in VAT."
Conservative MP John Redwood argues in his blog that spending should be cut instead of taxes raised:
"The increases in Income Tax, CGT, National Insurance, VAT, and fuel duty always meant the private sector was going to take a big cut in spending power as its share of the deficit reduction. This has been made worse by the rapid rise in inflation, with big increases in fuel prices which in turn extracts more tax revenue and by the large increases in various public sector fees and charges like rail fares.
"The public debate has spent too much time talking about the spending reductions, implying they hit the economy at the end of last year and caused the poor GDP figures, when they haven't begun, and ignored the squeeze on family incomes. The government needs to take action to cut the public sector's contribution to the squeeze."
Charlie Mullins from Pimlico Plumbers says in his blog that the numbers in the deficit are just too huge to be covered by the tax rise:
"The shocking bit is that not only will this tax hike rake in £150,000,000, but that this represents only just over half of 1% of the banks' annual profit of £24,000,000,000. Worse still, if you compare this extra tax take against the UK's structural deficit of £160,000,000,000, the chancellor still needs to find an extra £159,850,000,000 to soak up the country's annual overspend!
"Those are the real figures with all the noughts on. Don't know about other people but I find the reality of it all really terrifying, and maybe it's no wonder people use the words 'millions' and 'billions' next to quite modest numbers when talking about the economy. It also makes me wonder whether or not people would be quite so keen to stand up in public and continue to argue that the answer to our problems is to spend more if they weren't able to block out the sheer size of the problem."
Philip Johnston says in the Telegraph that the way income tax is administered is key to explaining how the government will be able to change the tax boundaries so smoothly:
"The way PAYE is administered is one of the great scandals of modern government. To begin with, it has facilitated "tax creep". Before the Second World War, the tax burden in Britain was around 22 per cent; today it is above 40 per cent, largely because of the expansion of the welfare state, the NHS and state education...
"But stealth taxes are also so much easier to inflict if allowances can be subtly adjusted to draw hundreds of thousands of extra people into a higher tax band without their really noticing."
The Guardian's editorial says politicians need the support of voters who have worked hard to "drag their families up into the middle class":
"[I]t will overturn a received axiom of wisdom since Mrs Thatcher's day, by putting a tax on what Mr Blair called "aspiration". Three-quarters of a million workers will be pushed into the 40% tax bracket, while tax credit withdrawal will leave 175,000 working parents exposed to effective marginal rates of over 70%. In the theoretical worst case, which will be rare but no doubt apply to someone, Middle Englanders could be exposed to the 83% rate that old Labour levied on the super-rich. Factor in the removal of child benefit from higher-rate payers in 2013, and there are a group of middling professionals who could soon find they are little better-off - or even worse off - after a promotion."
Links in full
• Ethel Smith | All Voices | UK tax changes: The winners and the losers
• Rachel Sylvester | Times | After health and welfare, now a tax revolution
• John Redwood's Diary | The private sector squeeze
• Charlie Mullins | Pimlico Plumbers | The problem of solving the defecit - the numbers are huge!
• Philip Johnston | Telegraph | The Pay As You Earn system is a scandal
• Guardian | Squeezing middle Britain
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