Media Roundup: Not Done Yet

The overnight stories on the Conrad Black trial all focused upon the testimony of Marilyn Stitt, whose turn on the stand is not yet over. It must be an unusual experience for Richard Burt to be kept waiting, to the benefit of a KPMG auditor:

1. Rudolph Bush of the Chicago Tribune sums up Ms. Stitt's testimony during direct examination.

2. The Belleville News-Democrat has webbed the AP report on Ms. Stitt's testimony so far, including the cross-examination of her by Mark Kipnis' counsel.

3. WQAD.com has webbed a much briefer AP recap, which doesn't mention any cross-examination.

4. The Sydney Morning Herald's wrapup includes a note that Ms. Stitt asked the members of the audit committee to confirm the amount of the individual non-compete payments, which they did.

5. 1130 News has a CP note which mentions that Ms. Stitt's cross-examination isn't over yet. It was posted right at the stroke of midnight, Pacific time.

6. The New York Post has a Bloomberg four-paragraph recap.

7. The Edmonton Sun has webbed the more detailed CP write-up. It ends with: "Had there been any questions about whether the non-competes were not actually required by the buyers, as prosecutors argue, KPMG may have found otherwise, [Ms. Stitt] told prosecutor Julie Ruder."

8. Jennifer Wells of the Toronto Star conveys the impression that Ms. Stitt's testimony was actually exciting. Her report recaps not only Ms. Stitt's testimony under direct examination, but also an admission that she made under cross-examination by Michael Swartz, Mr. Kipnis' counsel. It begins with congratulating Ms. Stitt for going down to Chicago and testifying in person, and contains a quote from Conrad Black about KPMG's services: "In a letter he wrote 3 1/2 years ago, Conrad Black said that KPMG had every opportunity over the years to question the payments. Their 'failure' to do so was not, he intoned, 'a flattering reflection of their thoroughness.'"

9. The Montreal Gazette has a report by Therea Tedesco and Peter Brieger, which reports that Ms. Stitt's notes about her meeting with the audit committee recalled that she took their silence as giving assent to the non-competes.

10. The Globe and Mail has a summary of Ms. Stitt's testimony yesterday, written by Paul Waldie, which focuses on her testimony under direct.

11. So does the Chicago Sun-Times, written by Mary Wisniewski. It ends with a mention of a "'pregnant pause'" after Ms. Stitt heard no objections to the non-competes from the two members of the audit committee she had met with, those being Richard Burt and James R. Thompson.

12. Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed has a mention of the notorious "possessed" cell phone of Patrick Tuite. "Tuite told Sneed, 'I think they thought it would keep the prosecutor demons away from our Hollinger clients.'"

13. Mr. Waldie has another report, webbed in the Globe, which details a new minority-shareholder-based legal action, launched by Conrad Black against David Radler's settlement with both Hollinger International and the SEC. That agreement also committed Horizon Publishing; Horizon's second-largest shareholder is Mr. Black. He also filed a motion with Judge St. Eve to have the deal struck from the record on these grounds. It'll be decided on next month.

An update of the story contains six paragraphs at its bottom that report on the cross-examination of Ms. Stitt so far. It notes that Ms. Stitt admitted, while being questioned by Mark Kipnis' defense lawyer Michael Swartz, that the Chicago office of KPMG worked on the Hollinger Int'l account, not the Toronto one that she's with. She further testified that she personally worked on the account of Hollinger Inc., the parent company of Hollinger Int'l.

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Mark Steyn has his own take on Ms. Stitt's testimony, in which (in addition to making fun of prosecutorial inconsistencies) he pokes fun at generally-put-up-with accounting standards: "As I understand it, the upshot [on Generally Accepted Auditing Standards] is: just because you’ve had it audited doesn’t mean it will withstand an audit."

More seriously, Steve Skurka mentions, in the opener to a blog entry on the Sherry Sherrett case, that Ms. Stitt's claim, that an auditor is not expected to ferret out fraud, is flat-out wrong.

Also: Douglas Bell's latest entry in the Toronto Life Conrad Black trial blog has a long excerpt from the diary of Chris Silvester, of the Independent, and adds an unkind thing to say about the British view of the world after done with the excerpt.


Conrad Black, along with his new biography of Richard M. Nixon, have gotten a mention in "Nixon, Bush and the Writing of History" by the Century Foundation's Peter Osnos.