Free Republic

The New York Times (NYT: 13.07, +0.21, +1.63%) fell as low as $12.38 this morning after its second quarter earnings missed estimates. Profits plunged 82% to $21 mn versus the $118 mn posted in the same period a year ago, a period that was helped along by the one-time sale of an asset. The share plunge is the lowest since July 1995. Print ads dollars at the Times continue to shrivel, sending operating income in a nosedive, as ad dollars continued their inexorable march toward the Internet. Hotels, automakers, airlines, all hurt by high energy prices, have pulled back sharply....

The Afghan journalist who filmed and photographed the July 12 execution of two women by the Taliban says he was detained and held for two days by authorities in Afghanistan for suspected ties to terrorists. The footage and photographs of the executions were distributed by the Associated Press and widely circulated on the Internet, giving rise to suspicions that the photographer, Rahmatullah Naikzad, was connected with the Taliban. In an exclusive telephone interview, Naikzad told FOXNews.com that he turned himself in to Afghan authorities early this week and was held in custody and investigated for 48 hours. He said officials...

I kept thinking back to all those antimilitary movies I’d seen and to left-wing journals like the New York Times, which consistently highlight military abuses and failures while obscuring and downplaying military heroism and advances. The servicemen I was training with were clearly smart, expert, and committed to excellence in the defense of their country. They also seemed a lot more mentally stable than most of the screenwriters, journalists, and academics I know, though that’s not saying much. Yet Hollywood and our left-wing media, as well as our antimilitary professoriate, can be quite convincing when, say, they portray an isolated...

NEW YORK — The "CBS Evening News" audience has taken a noticeable dip ever since the latest round of speculation over Katie Couric's job. The broadcast averaged 5.34 million viewers last week, breaking a record low for CBS News' flagship show that had been set the week before, according to Nielsen Media Research. The "CBS Evening News" - No. 3 in a three-way competition - had nearly 2.5 million fewer viewers than No. 2. NBC's "Nightly News" led with 8.02 million viewers last week (5.5 rating, 12 share), with ABC's "World News" averaging 7.79 million (5.4, 12). CBS had a...

By see-dubya • May 9, 2008 01:55 AM For what it’s worth, the New York Times reports that the U.S.’s designated new commander in Pakistan, General James Hood, has not been allowed to take up his new job. He had served as commander of Gitmo, and although he actually did away with some of the roughest forms of interrogation there and won some (grudging) praise from human rights groups, his legacy in the Middle East is tainted by Newsweek’s lie: General Hood, who took command of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay in March 2004, shortly before the Abu Ghraib...

The Washington Post Co. on Friday reported a 39 percent drop in first quarter profit, hurt by an early retirement program charge at Newsweek and a continued loss of revenue from its newspapers. The Washington-based corporation said earnings fell to $38.8 million, or $4.08 per share, compared with $63.9 million, or $6.70 per share, a year earlier. The company said revenue climbed 8 percent to $1.06 billion from $985.6 million. Quarterly results included a $15.3 million, or $1.60 per share, expense related to Newsweek's early retirement program. Even excluding the costs of the retirement program, earnings fell well below the...

One week after media reports cast doubts about Katie Couric’s future on the “CBS Evening News,” the third-place broadcast set a new record low for viewership. The “CBS Evening News” attracted an average of 5.39 million viewers last week, placing the newscast more than two million viewers behind the second-place “World News with Charles Gibson” on ABC (7.51 million). The “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” ranked No. 1 for the week with 8.17 million viewers. While the network nightly newscasts have posted audience declines for more than two decades, a new record low for the “Evening News” will likely...

The New York Times announced that it's all but a done deal that the paper will have to layoff staffers in the newsroom. The drop-dead deadline is fast approaching for the staffers in The New York Times newsroom to raise their hand and volunteer for a buyout. An internal memo from the paper's assistant managing editor, Bill Schmidt, just went out and said that "we expect" that the buyout numbers aren't looking good and that for the first time the paper will be forced to cut the newsroom through layoffs. "While layoffs have become all too common across our industry,...

America has a growing enemy within. This enemy is referred to by experts as America’s Fifth Column. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the term Fifth Column refers to “A clandestine group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s solidarity [unity] by any means at their disposal.” As Britannica notes, the term is credited to Emilio Mola Vidal, a Nationalist general during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). As four of his army columns moved on Madrid, the general referred to his militant supporters within the capital as his “fifth column,” intent on undermining the loyalist government from within....

Sometime, within the next twelve to eighteen months, the average circulation of the weekday edition of the New York Times will drop below one million. This event marks the continuing decline in the fortunes of what had been the U.S. newspaper of record as the New York Times' average circulation has been well above this level for decades. "Hey, Pinch happens."

The staff of Newsweek will shrink dramatically, after 111 staffers on its news and business sides accepted a buyout last week. Among those leaving are some of the magazine's best-known, most-admired and longest-service critics, including David Gates, David Ansen and Cathleen McGuigan. Harold Shain, a former president of the magazine who moved over to sister publication Budget Travel at the beginning of this year, is also departing. 146 staffers were offered the chance to leave the magazine, with as much as two years of their current salary as a departing bonus, depending on their age and length of service. The...

NEW YORK--Five years after the Republicans got us into war against Iraq, Democrats want to double down on a war that's even more unjustifiable and unwinnable--the one against Afghanistan. By any measure, U.S. troops and their NATO allies are getting their asses kicked in the country that Reagan's CIA station chief for Pakistan called "the graveyard of empires." Afghanistan currently produces a record 93 percent of the world's opium. Suicide bombers are killing more U.S.-aligned troops than ever. Stonings are back. The Taliban and their allies, "defeated" in 2001, control most of the country--and may recapture the capital of Kabul...

This book tells the story about how the most powerful newspaper in the world failed to inform its readers that the most horrible crime in history was taking place in occupied Europe. The New York Times did not ignore the Nazi persecution of the Jews but its failure was to make no distinction between random persecution and genocide. Laurel Leff demonstrates that the correspondents, the editors, and, especially the publisher of the Times, had the information they needed in order to grasp what was going on. Yet they quite cold-bloodedly downplayed the scale and significance of the unfolding tragedy; not...

"Bush lied, people died," has been the loopy left's mantra since 2003: The president fabricated evidence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaida's ties to Iraq to inflame support for invading Iraq. These claims have been refuted countless times, but refuse to die. The evidence of Hussein's WMDs was so convincing that Congress overwhelmingly approved the use of military force against Iraq and more than three dozen countries joined the United States in liberating Iraq. Intelligence agencies had it wrong, but stating information he had no reason to believe is false doesn't make President Bush a liar. Meanwhile,...

At one time, the American press was well-respected throughout the world. They earned that respect with hard work, honesty, and by reporting on important stories. Unfortunately, the MSM has abandoned all of those principles which has rendered them completely irrelevant. They now spend their time reporting on the latest drunken antics of celebrity tarts such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. The press now seems obsessed with whether or not Lindsay Lohan is still in rehab. Their other obsession is with the unproven and unscientific reports of global warming. Of course, they will still take time out from these issues...

SACRED HEART UNIVERSITY NEWS Contacts: Funda Alp, 203-396-8241, alpf@sacredheart.edu John Galayda, 203-371-7751, galaydaj@sacredheart.edu For Immediate Release January 8, 2008 AMERICANS SLAM NEWS MEDIA ON BELIEVABILITY Americans see: * Growing media attempts to influence public opinion and policieS * Poor quality * A strong liberal bent in most media * Fox News, CNN and NBC as the most accurate FAIRFIELD, Conn.—A Sacred Heart University Poll found significantly declining percentages of Americans saying they believe all or most of media news reporting. In the current national poll, just 19.6% of those surveyed could say they believe all or most news media reporting....

Electorates are generally known for having short memories. Unfortunately this kind of memory loss can be hazardous to the body politic and a nation’s economic welfare. This is why electorates need to be periodically reminded of the misdeeds and inordinate ambitions of those who lust for power. In a country that had an honest media this job could be safely left to crusading journalists. Unfortunately the American media are so thoroughly corrupt and politically bigoted that they have become a significant threat to America’s national security and the democratic process. In short, they have joined America’s enemies.

Abortion questioner is declared Edwards supporter (and a slobbering Anderson Cooper fan); Log Cabin Republican questioner is declared Obama supporter; lead toy questioner is a prominent union activist for the Edwards-endorsing United Steelworkers

McClatchy Takes $1.37 Billion Charge in Third Quarter, Swings to Loss SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- McClatchy Co. pinpointed the size of a previously announced accounting charge at $1.37 billion on Thursday, pushing the newspaper publishing company to a loss in the third quarter. In October, the publisher had announced it would take a charge to reflect the poor conditions in the newspaper business and its falling share price, but it did not specify the amount. McClatchy, whose papers include The Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer and The Sacramento Bee, reported a loss of $1.35 billion or $16.40 per share for...

I'm convinced that when the United States went to war in April of 2003, the media drew arms as well, and although professional neutrality is key to reporting the news, I'm not always sure how many members of the press have chosen sides. When I first got to Iraq six months ago, I had my fingers crossed. I literally had no idea what I would find. My biggest fear was that I'd see a group of very discouraged men and women trying to implement a failing policy. I thought I'd see Iraqis poorly coping with an oppressive American military. What...

Can the media make you sick? It is a real question. Do you read a news headline and get that sinking feeling in your stomach? Or have you learned to avoid those headlines completely? I know one woman who can burst into tears from reading the newspaper. A medical doctor I know feels close to despair on an everyday basis, set off by media headlines --- most of which are dubious or plain false. Other people I know hate George W. Bush, not because of anything real, but because they have been constantly indoctrinated with media falsehoods, day after day...

by Richard Lawrence Poe Monday, October 29, 2007 Permanent LinkMore Columns LAST WEEK this column unveiled Bloggergate, a massive effort by Hillary Clinton to tilt the blogosphere in her favor, by subsidizing leftwing bloggers. Hillary’s ambition to control the Internet did not form overnight. She was already pondering how to do it in 1995. Of course, no one used the word "blogger" in 1995. In those days, online forums called "newsgroups" provided the medium of choice for anti-Clinton writers. Hillary formed a special task force within the White House Counsel’s office to fight the New Media. As noted in...

Do you think our "adversary press" is on the lookout for government lies? Consider the false testimony (web site) before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte on behalf of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This is a treaty that our media want passed by the Senate. So they are letting his lies go completely unchallenged. One of the most audacious lies was that, despite the fact that the treaty carries the name "United Nations" in its title, it is not a U.N. treaty. Negroponte's testimony included several "myths"...

The powerful sway that Bill and Hillary Clinton hold over the American media has been illustrated by their successful attempt to "kill" a negative magazine story about Mrs Clinton's presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton 'could cost Democrats dear' Full coverage: US Elections 2008 According to the Politico newspaper, GQ magazine was planning to publish an article by writer Josh Green, who had previously angered the Clinton campaign by writing that the New York senator "offers no big ideas, no crusading causes" and had "plenty to talk about, but she doesn't have much to say". The planned article included details of in-fighting...

Budgets are trimmed, coverage is more perilous—and ratings are falling In late June, a suicide bomber breached security at the Baghdad hotel where the CBS News bureau is housed. The bomber’s target: Sunni sheiks meeting in the lobby. The bomb decimated the lobby and tore through the first floor. The bomber and 12 others were killed; many more were injured, including a CBS employee. Lara Logan, CBS News’ chief foreign correspondent, was on the second floor of the hotel at the time. The bomb, she recalls, "blew up underneath me." It also blew a hole in the psyche of the...

The MSM is trying out, and unfortunately succeeding with - even here at FR and in the blogosphere, a propoganda trick of burying their real lie amidst 'chaff' when trying to destroy conservative candidacies, policies and unity. The two examples I give here relate to Fred Thompson only because, as a federalist, I have been following his trek a little more closely. However, I am sure that others can give examples for all MSM targets. The first example was the "lobbying" for abortion charge. They built so much 'chaff' into that story that everyone seems to have missed their real...

July 14, 2007No party label for Democrat scandalsThomas Lifson One the most comic aspects of liberal media bias is the well-established pattern of identifying politicians caught up in scandal by party only when they are Republicans. Democrats rarely if ever are identified by party. The past week supplies a good example courtesy of the New York Times and AP, arguably the two organizations which do the most to shape national political coverage. In a Times editorial today on the outrageous abuse of taxpayer funds by Newark's former mayor Democrat Sharpe James, his political affiliation is nowhere mentioned. Sharpe James, the...

The city's mayor, riding a wave of unprecedented popularity, suddenly was hit with one of the oldest indescretions in politics. His long marriage was in trouble. Worse, the faithful wife had filed for divorce. Worse still, there was another woman.

Piolín in the morning He is the unquestionable leader the mornings. His success does not come alone, but is based on the work and the effort of his team. Piolín, is known as "big-eyed, cheeky and short", broadcasts Monday through Friday from 4:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and the Saturday from 6:00 a.m to 11:00 a.m. by New the 101.9. You can write a to him: elshowdepiolin@univision.com or also you can participate in its forum where you will have the opportunity to make more friends. Here Piolín tells you what other things he likes to do away from radio and...

A strong majority of Americans — including nearly two-thirds of Republicans — favors allowing illegal immigrants to become citizens if they pay fines, learn English and meet other requirements, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found. That is a striking show of support for the central tenet of legislation that has stalled in the Senate amid vocal opposition from conservatives to provisions allowing such a path to citizenship. Only 23% of adults surveyed opposed allowing immigrants to become legal. That bolsters the view, shared by President Bush, that the bill's opponents represent a vocal minority, whereas most people are...

The Last Straw at the Los Angeles Times by Arlene Peck The worst so-called "journalism." For years, I've been a working member of the press. There was a time when I looked with pride at my life's accomplishments. Of course, those were the days when such men as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Morrow were the role models. In recent years, I've become increasingly alarmed with the trend that I've seen among those who consider themselves 'reporters,' as well as those talking heads on the television's nightly news programs. We listen to dumbed-down, usually attractive, post-puberty 'experts' who can only...

Most people think the Nielson ratings only apply to primetime programming; however, this is a complete fallacy. Network news plays a frequently forgotten but always important roll itself. A few days ago the final May Sweep totals were announced, and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty for ‘CBS Evening News With Katie Couric.’ According to Variety, the perky anchorwoman managed an average of just 6.1 million viewers. That’s the lowest Tiffany network total since they began tracking the news in 1991! ABC’s ‘World News With Charlie Gibson’ led the way with 7.95 Million, while NBC’s ‘Nightly News With Brian Williams’...

magine an American reporter tipping off the enemy of an imminent offensive during World War II. Imagine a U.S. news company jeopardizing the secrecy of an impending operation against Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Imagine a major media outlet aiding a nation sworn to the destruction of the U.S. and Western civilization. Sadly, tragically, shamefully, we really don't have to imagine such a scenario any longer. Something like this scenario just happened when ABC News aired a broadcast by reporter Brian Ross announcing the president has approved a covert operation to destabilize the Iranian government, attributing the discovery to anonymous...

The catch: They continue their I-shall-not-dignify-that-with-a-response attitude towards charges of bias coming from the right. They react rather vigorously to such charges from the left, of course. By way of background, part one: Right-leaning bloggers have been critiquing the media -- not just in terms of opinion, but in baldly mistating easily-verified facts, for years. By way of background, part two: Left-leaning bloggers began doing this fairly recently in order to "work the refs" a bit and push reporters back towards their natural left-leaning state. By way of background, part three: Recently the left-leaning Radar Online quoted Thomas Edsall as...

NEW YORK, (AP) -- The Associated Press will freeze its basic rates for newspaper and broadcast members for a second year in a row in 2008 and is proposing changes that would allow them to customize the news services they receive, the CEO of the news cooperative said Monday. Tom Curley said the AP is "keenly aware of the challenges facing members," referring to the sluggish advertising and circulation trends at newspapers as readers turn in greater numbers to the Internet. With that in mind, Curley said the news cooperative's board has agreed to continue a freeze of basic assessments...

AS I conclude my tour of duty as the second public editor of The New York Times, here are some final thoughts and concerns about the paper and its journalism that flow from what I’ve observed over the past two years from my perch outside the newsroom.

In Dec. 2001, federal law enforcement officers were preparing to raid the offices and seize the assets of the Holy Land Foundation and Global Relief Association - two Islamic "charities" with links terrorist organizations. Two New York Times reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, acting on confidential information from a source inside a federal grand jury telephoned officials of the two foundations and asked them questions that had the effect of tipping them off to the impending investigation. A convincing argument can be made that in ferreting out secret information from a grand jury, and in placing telephone calls to...

The timing couldn't be better for the four-part "Frontline" series "News War" premiering tonight on PBS. Not only does tonight's first episode explain why non-journalists should care about the Valerie Wilson leak investigation trial unfolding in a Washington, D.C., courtroom -- it uses the probing, contextualized "Frontline" style to answer a question on a lot of lips: What's wrong with the American media? Readers didn't need a week of front-page stories about diaper-wearing astronauts and the alleged cultural significance of Anna Nicole Smith to tell them that the Fourth Estate is having an identity crisis. There's also last week's Pentagon...

A BAN ON 'VICTORY' February 4, 2007 -- Question: When is a U.S. military victory not a victory? Answer: When it's reported by The New York Times. Read the account from Baghdad in the Jan. 30 Times about a battle the previous weekend in the city of Najaf - one of the biggest engagements of the war - and you'd think that U.S. and Iraqi forces had suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of what was described as "an obscure renegade militia." "Iraqi forces were surprised and nearly overwhelmed by the ferocity" of the fighters arrayed against them, read...

The New York Times dynasty is pulling hundreds of millions of dollars out of Morgan Stanley in response to a fund manager's move, Tim Arango reports in a Fortune exclusive. NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Arthur Sulzberger Jr. survived the Jayson Blair scandal and Judith Miller's jailing, but as proxy season beckons, the publisher and chairman of The New York Times faces a new challenge. This one is from Hassan Elmasry, a London- based managing director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management who has been trying to incite a shareholder revolt against Sulzberger. Unfortunately for Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, Elmasry's campaign...

This is a bad time to be head of a publicly held media company, and it's an especially bad time to be head of the publicly held New York Times Co. The stock has been staggering for the last five years. Morgan Stanley is pushing a shareholder resolution aimed at ending the company's dual-class stock structure, which allows the Sulzberger family to control the Times despite owning only a small portion of the stock. (According to the most recent proxy, Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. owns about 5.3 percent of the company's stock.) Sulzberger has been derided everywhere for weak leadership,...

For more than a century and a half, men and women of The Associated Press have had the privilege of bringing truth to the world. They have gone to great lengths, overcome great obstacles – and, too often, made great and horrific sacrifices – to ensure that the news was reported quickly, accurately and honestly. Our efforts have been rewarded with trust: More people in more places get their news from the AP than from any other source. In the 21st century, that news is transmitted in more ways than ever before – in print, on the air and on...

The Star Tribune is being sold to a private equity firm for $530 million, the companies involved announced in a press release today. The sale to Avista Capital Partners comes eight years after The McClatchy Company purchased the Star Tribune from Cowles Media Company for $1.2 billion. The text of the press release follows. The Star Tribune is being sold by The McClatchy Company to private equity firm Avista Capital Partners, McClatchy and Avista announced today. The companies say they have a definitive agreement to sell the Star Tribune for $530 million to Avista, which has offices in New York...

Beset by calls for reform from angry shareholders and a dismal stock price on Wall Street, the beleaguered New York Times Company began to fight back last week, saying it had 'no intention' of dismantling an ownership system that gives the Ochs-Sulzberger family absolute power over the media giant.For the past century, the family has controlled the company but sharks are circling as the paper struggles to adjust to the internet and achieve market value commensurate with its place as one the world's most influential newspapers.

The so-called "drive-by media" demonstrated their power in the election results. Demoralized by negative coverage of the war in Iraq, voters brought to power a Democratic Party that will pressure the Bush Administration to leave Iraq before victory is achieved. Those who remember how a Democratic Congress paved the way for a disastrous American withdrawal from Vietnam understand that it is not too early to talk about the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq and what it will mean for U.S. national security. The so-called "dinosaur media" that played such a prominent role in the Vietnam debacle, when they...

As everyone who has closely followed this election cycle knows, the bias towards the Democrats in the so-called MSM is at all time lows. IMO, it is ten times as bad as it has ever been. That's why I'm posting this vanity, and asking all my FReeper friends, in fact every Republican, to henceforth call the "media" what they really are: "The Democrat Media." I think if we do it will stick. Truth has a way of doing that...

Grant K. HolcombOctober 17, 2006 On Monday October 9, 2006, I walked into my home to see my wife and son watching CBS Evening News just as Ms. Couric was introducing Ms. vanden Heuvel's "freeSpeech" segment. As a combat veteran I was devastated to hear such an intentional misrepresentation of the Iraq war. Because of what I heard, I was ashamed to be an American for the first time in my life. Truth, ethics, integrity, honor, professionalism, and patriotism have meaning to the vast majority of U.S. Citizens. These values are part of our nation's foundation and need to be...

Part two in a series. As Election Day rolls near, and we battle fanatical Islamic terrorists who want to annihilate us with any weapons they can lay their hands on, there are some facts we all should recognize and remember. Our national journalists play the lead role in selecting the news, issues and points of view that will be repeated almost daily. They also determine what relevant news and views are de-emphasized or suppressed. In other words, your news is managed, interpreted and slanted. Most liberals deny the media are loaded with liberals or that liberal bias enters into their...

A posting of an unredacted instant message sessions between Rep. Mark Foley and a former congressional page has apparently exposed the identity of the now 21 year-old accuser... ABC RELEASED TRANSCRIPT OF ONE CHAT BETWEEN FOLEY AND A MAN WHO WAS 18 AT THE TIME OF THE INSTANT MESSAGE EXCHANGE.... NETWORK STATED THE MESSAGE WAS TO 'UNDER AGE' TEEN... DEVELOPING... ABC ONLINE GLITCH LEADS TO IDENTITY OF FOLEY ACCUSER; FEATURED IM EXCHANGE WAS WITH 18 YEAR OLD

Routine betrayal of our country's secrets: the new CIA report - Sunday, September 24, 2006 7:01 PM The betrayal of our country's secrets has become so routine that even the FoxNewsChannel doesn't notice them -- or at least Chris Wallace and the team failed to notice them on Sunday's weekly report. And of course none of the anti-war radicals in the Democratic Party or to the left of the Democratic Party who claim to be concerned about the Constitution so that they can make life easier for our terrorist enemies have shown the slightest concern that rogue professionals in our...