Good morning and welcome to your daily Press Gazette media briefing on Friday, 14 March.

The Guardian has launched a paywall (of sorts). It is the latest publisher to tell readers they must pay to access the site if they refuse to accept cookies, the tiny files which sit on your web browser and anonymously track your internet browsing habits to give advertisers a better guess at selling you something you want to buy.

It is clumsy technology. If I have just bought a shed I don't need to see more adverts for outbuildings wherever I go online. But cookies seem to still be a way for free online publishers to survive in a world where ad buyers hate news.

News readers tend to be affluent and engaged, but agencies are terrified of ads appearing against challenging content (their nightmare scenario is ads for an airline on a plane crash story).

So readers must make a choice. Allow the somewhat creepy tracking technology or pay up.

Today we also report on a row at the UK Parliament, where exasperated MPs are unable to unsubscribe from propaganda sheet China Daily.

And we have the latest from Noel Clarke's £10m libel action, where he has claimed in court that his alleged victims were engaged in a conspiracy with The Guardian to smear his reputation.

On Press Gazette

Consent or pay pop-ups from The Guardian, City AM, GB News and Newsquest's Herald in Scotland. Screenshots: Press Gazette

Guardian, GB News and Newsquest among latest publishers to tell readers: ‘consent or pay’

The Guardian rolled out its new subscription tier, dubbed “Guardian Ad-Lite”, last week. Users who pay the £5 monthly fee still see advertising, but it is not personalised.

Read more

Deliveries of China Daily newspaper to MPs could be stopped

One MP said the CCP-funded newspaper is "the only thing which arrives every day, without fail".

Read more

Noel Clarke finishes giving evidence in Guardian libel trial

The third and fourth days of the trial saw Clarke and his wife describe his accusers as "acting" and a "liar".

Read more

News in brief

Hearst UK has appointed the former style director of Esquire and British GQ, Teo van den Broeke, as Esquire’s new editor-in-chief. (Press Gazette)

Rights groups have written to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal asking for Apple's closed appeal against the government's encryption-breaching order to be opened to the public, arguing it is "a matter of high public interest that must not take place in secret". (Big Brother Watch)

Search engine company Brave has pre-emptively sued News Corp after it sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding Brave stop scraping its websites and indexing its content. Brave, which incorporates AI-summarised answers into its search engine, argues it is acting within fair use and that News Corp is "bullying" it out of the market. (Reuters)

Three French publishing and authors' associations have filed a lawsuit accusing Meta of using copyrighted materials to train its AI systems, saying they are being subjected to "monumental looting". (Reuters)

TollBit, a company that promises to "monetise AI companies that scrape your website", says it has developed a tool that redirects AI web crawlers to a dedicated subdomain where they must licence publisher content via micropayments rather than scrape it for free. (Adweek)

Jonathan Dimbleby has called the Royal Television Society "cowardly" after it scrapped a plan to give a special recognition award to journalists in Gaza in order to avoid adding "fuel to the fire" surrounding a BBC documentary narrated by the son of a Hamas official. (The Times)

Reporters Without Borders has launched a mirror site for BBC News and its different language versions to help boost access in countries like China, Iran and Russia where its services are blocked. The site can be accessed here. (RSF)

The New Yorker has updated its style guide, swapping for example “web site”, “in-box,”, “Internet” and “cell phone” for “website,” “inbox”, “internet” and “cellphone”. Its famous dieresis - the dots above a vowel when it appears twice in a row - will remain. (The New York Times)

Science, Innovation and Tech Committee chair Chi Onwurah has written to Google and OpenAI asking for details of the companies' responses to the government consultation on AI and copyright. The companies declined to appear before the committee while the consultation, which closed last month, was underway.

The Journalists' Charity is hosting "a very special and very long" lunch to mark the 80th birthday of longtime supporter (and new life vice president) Jasper Carrott at Edgbaston Cricket Club on Friday 2 May. More information can be found at the link below. (Journalists’ Charity)

New Humanist publisher the Rationalist Association is merging with Humanists UK in a union that will grant many of the latter's 130,000 members access to the magazine. Humanists UK said New Humanist's print distribution will rise from 6,500 to 26,000. (Humanists UK)

Also on Press Gazette:

• As some publishers seek full return to office, most staff favour hybrid working

• News media staff share views in the great work from home debate

• With launch of AI Mode Google threatens to bleed news media dry

• Douglas Murray wins ‘substantial’ damages after Observer column error

• Top 50 news websites in the world: The Hill and AP saw largest growth in February