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When former New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane asked earlier this year whether reporters for the paper should be “truth vigilantes,” the response was immediate and decisive: of course they should, readers said — after all, wasn’t that what journalists were supposed to be doing in the first place? It clearly is, but as Clay Shirky and others participating in a Poynter Institute forum pointed out, that job has gotten infinitely harder as the number of information sources has increased thanks to the web and social media. Checking specific facts may have gotten easier, now that anyone can do it, but is reaching any kind of consensus about the capital T truth even possible anymore?

The forum, entitled “Journalistic Ethics in a Digital Age,” was a co-venture between the Poynter Institute and CraigConnects — a project created by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark to increase public trust and accountability in journalism — and included a series of panels involving Shirky, Digital First Media CEO John Paton, Microsoft social researcher Danah Boyd and others, as well as an invitation-only audience of media industry luminaries such as author Jeff Jarvis and digital-media veteran Dan Gillmor. The event was livestreamed, and Poynter also created a live-blog of the session in Storify.

Mel Karmazin, the CEO of SiriusXM Radio, is stepping down from the company. Karmazin will depart on Feb. 1, following the expiration of his current employment agreement and a transition period. Sirius' board has launched a search committee led by Greg Maffei to seek internal and external candidates for Karmazin's successor.

Sony Corp plans to shut operations in a Tokyo office building that houses 8 percent of its Japan staff, one of the first concrete moves by the electronics and entertainment company to pave the way for 4,000 job cuts.

The move, part of a still-unfolding restructuring under Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai, had not been previously disclosed. Sony will shut down the Shinagawa Technology Center, a 31-storey building it has occupied since it was built in 1998, a company spokesman told Reuters. The 4,800 staff in the center will be relocated. The move, expected to be completed by September, is intended to cut costs and make it easier for Sony to move ahead with a realignment of its business and a retreat from its money-losing TV manufacturing operations, the spokesman said. Sony plans to reduce its global workforce by 10,000 people by March 31, including almost 4,000 in Japan.

So many political ads. So little time. What’s a TV station to do? Faced with an unprecedented flood of commercials for candidates and causes, Washington’s TV stations have had to get creative to fit them all in. Some are trimming their regular programming to squeeze in a few more ads, and some are adding more news at other hours.

• WTTG (Channel 5), the District’s Fox affiliate, for example, began bumping daily reruns of “The Simpsons” on Monday to add an extra half-hour to its 6 p.m. newscast. The expanded “News Edge” program will focus on political news — the kind of programming political advertisers demand most.
• WJLA (Channel 7), the area’s ABC affiliate, has temporarily added two weekend newscasts to its schedule for the same reason. On Saturday, the station preempted network programming and aired a two-hour movie in prime time in order to create more local ad slots. The station has occasionally shaved time from some of its weekday programming to accommodate an extra political ad or two, said Bill Lord, WJLA’s general manager.