Breakfast Meeting: A New Bin Laden Film in the Election Cycle, and Google Settles With Publishers

By BILL BRINK

Osama bin Laden has moved back into the election cycle. Brian Stelter reports in The Times that a film about the raid that killed bin Laden will be shown by the National Geographic Channel on Nov. 4, two days before the presidential election. Netflix will stream the film a day later. The development seems sure to revive the controversy over whether a dramatization of the 2011 raid so close to the voting could help President Obama's re-election chances. The raid is considered one of his signature achievements.

A competing bin Laden film, “Zero Dark Thirty,'' by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, was originally scheduled for release before the election but producers decided last year to move it to Dec. 19 after much debate about whether it would help Mr. Obama. The new film, “Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden,” is being distributed by Harvey Weinstein; it is directed by John Stockwell, who previously directed “Into The Blue” and “Crazy/Beautiful.”

The fallout from Wednesday night's presidential debate reverberated around the news media Thursday. Jeremy W. Peters reports in The Times that the widespread perception that Mitt Romney prevailed over the president will breathe new life into coverage of the election. The political news cycle, he writes, “is being driven by a fixation on any sign of distress in either campaign. Until Wednesday night, that focus had been on the Romney campaign.''

In the meantime, the format of the debates came under renewed scrutiny amid widespread criticism of the moderator, Jim Lehrer, Brian Stelter writes. The new format called for six 15-minute conversations, each starting with a question and two-minute answers from each candidate, but both Mr. Romney and President Obama effectively trampled over the guidelines, leaving Mr. Lehrer to try to interject with phrases like “excuse me,'' “wait'' and “please.'' The debate, Mr. Stelter wr ites, drew more than 70 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

Google and book publishers settled seven years of litigation, Claire Cain Miller reports, agreeing to a deal under which allow publishers can choose whether Google can digitize their books and journals. It was a small move forward as Google tries to compete with online e-book booksellers like Amazon. Google wants to digitize every book and make them all readable and searchable online. But the company still has a bigger roadblock ahead â€" it has yet to settle with a group of authors concerned that Google is infringing on copyright by digitizing books.