The spectre of billionaire Saudi Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, an old hand at silencing journalists with legal sabre-rattling, has recently led prominent British news publications to pull the plug on articles criticising him, this week's Private Eye reveals.
Unfortunately, Private Eye isn't good enough to offer the scoop online, but here's the meat of it:
Editors at The Observer spiked an article by Nick Cohen on the Sheikh, set to run two weeks ago, and the newspaper's lawyers snipped further mentions of him from Cohen's column last Sunday.
Meawhile over at The Spectator, journalist Brendan O'Neill saw a long piece of his on the lawsuit-happy Sheikh abandoned earlier in the summer.
Ironically, the abortive coverage of bin Mahfouz has been prompted by the event that ultimately gives journos cold feet: the pulping two months ago of Alms for Jihad, a scholarly book the Sheikh claimed linked him to terrorism, by publisher Cambridge University Press.