Trump and Kim get the front page treatment, Garnaut faces court, public broadcasting attacked across the globe, and other media tidbits of the day.

Foes or bros? The big news story of the day is undoubtedly the meeting of US President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. The  story dominated front pages in Australia today.

It challenged Brexit negotiations for front-page billing in the UK.

And produced the headline “Foes or bros”, among others, in the US.

Garnaut defamation trial begins. Former journalist turned political adviser John Garnaut has been accused of putting together a story about Chau Chak Wing in “extraordinary haste” in the first day of a defamation trial, The Australian Financial Review reports. Chau is suing Garnaut and Fairfax Media, which published a 2015 article by Garnaut when he was still the company’s China correspondent.

Bruce McClintock SC reportedly told the court Garnaut had displayed a “puerile attitude of resentment and gloating” towards Chau. Emails between Garnaut and Crikey contributor Michael Sainsbury were cited as demonstrating that Garnaut had put together his story in haste.

Aussie filmmaker Cambodian court date. Australian filmmaker James Ricketson, in detention in Phnom Penh, will face court on Friday on espionage charges. Ricketson was caught up in a media crackdown by Prime Minister Hun Sen ahead of a July election. He’s been politically outspoken over the decades he’s been visiting and filming Cambodia, and was arrested after flying a drone over an opposition rally in June last year.

Public media under attack. While the ABC faces political attacks at home, conservative politicians in the US and Europe are also going after publicly funded media. In the context of US president Donald Trump proposing to eliminate federal funding for public media, Poynter has taken a look at five European countries also facing cuts to their public broadcasting.

AT&T takeover cleared. The long-awaited legal greenlight for the US$85 billion takeover by AT&T of Time Warner has finally arrived and will clear the way for a multi-billion dollar orgy of deals in the US. First up, attention will be on the battle for assets from the Murdoch family’s 21st Century Fox. The decision to allow US telco AT&T to buy Time Warner was also a slap in the face for President Trump and his administration, who sued to block the deal. That has now failed.

US District Judge Richard Leon’s decision clears AT&T to directly enter the US and global media business via brands such as CNN, HBO, TNT and TBS. Time Warner is a major supplier of programs to commercial TV in Australia with all three commercial networks taking product. –– Glenn Dyer

Glenn Dyer’s TV Ratings. Seven’s night, although Nine and Ten could also claim success in some of the demos. Nine had a case of having absolutely nothing of interest after 7.30 pm. Over on the ABC, 7.30 suffered another weak night with 721,000 nationally, which was lower than Back In Time For Dinner (825,000) an hour later. Ten though has MasterChef with 1.16 million, the second most watched non-news program after House Rules, 1.17 million nationally. In breakfast, Sunrise with 449,000 easily beat Today with 326,000. Read the rest on the Crikey website.