Free Republic

The Washington Post suspended one of its most seasoned reporters Wednesday after editors determined that “substantial” parts of two recent news articles were taken without attribution from another newspaper. Sari Horwitz, longtime Post investigative reporter, was suspended for three months for plagiarizing sections of stories that first appeared in the Arizona Republic. The stories concerned the investigation of...Jared Lee Loughner... Horwitz copied two paragraphs from a Republic story ... when she wrote an article that was first published on The Post’s Web site March 4. A second story...included 10 paragraphs from a Republic story about a search of Loughner’s home....

Virtually every big-city newspaper in the country parrots press releases, studies and statistics from the government and special-interest groups, especially from their favorite group, the public education establishment, without questioning the validity of the information. Then newspapers wonder why they are losing intelligent readers to other media. It's not that intelligent readers have anything against parrots. They may even have them as pets and enjoy watching them at an aviary. But that doesn't mean that they want to get their news and information from them. Take the Arizona Republic. For years it has been parroting the public education establishment's claim...

I know six of the 18 members of the Arizona Republic editorial board. All six are intelligent, logical, factual, even-handed, and not the stereotypical statists of the mainstream press. Yet for some reason, the Republic's editorials on public education are the opposite. A case in point was the two-page editorial in last Sunday's opinion pages. The editorial advocated increased spending on public education, including full-day kindergarten, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that a doubling of education spending and a proliferation of top-down "fixes" over the last 30 years have not solved the root problems of academic underachievement. Unfortunately, when...

Proof of what I just wrote on pathetic press coverage About an hour ago I had sent an e-mail offering my take on the Arizona Republic's 8% drop in circulation and attaching an article of mine on the formula used by the establishment media to cover taxes and government spending. (The e-mail and article are posted at the end of this.) Since then, I have picked up the Arizona Republic and read the front-page story on cities renewing pay raises. The theme of the piece is that city workers have had to endure cuts in their cost-of-living (COLA) increases this...

Should former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling be the judge in his fraud trial? Silly question, unless you belong to the establishment media, in which case you are accustomed to the media judging its own fraudulent practices instead of letting outsiders into its cloister to make an independent judgment. A case in point: On April 21, 2004, the PBS NewsHour had a segment on the fabrications of USA Today's star reporter, Jack Kelley. Sitting in judgment of Kelley and the mainstream media in general were two guests, both cloister members. One was Geneva Overholser, an articulate journalism professor at the University...

<p>A budget is much more than a set of numbers.</p> <p>It's a document that also reflects goals, principles and assumptions.</p> <p>But not this year.</p> <p>This year, Napolitano proposes several "fiscal bridges" totaling $377 million to help balance the budget. Some of these have already been used and endorsed by elected officials in the past.</p>

<p>The Sunday Education page feature, "Your School, Your Choice," listed benefits and drawbacks of educational choices. The home-schooling "drawbacks" were stereotypical misinformation.</p> <p>Less state oversight is one of the main reasons parents choose home schooling. Our children can learn history without being taught that their country is evil and imperialistic. We can teach about sex within a moral framework we find acceptable.</p>

An online poll by GOPUSA/Arizona drawing more than 700 responses showed 96-percent support for the Protect Arizona Now (PAN) Initiative. Border invasion polls regularly draw the highest rates of participation in GOPUSA/Arizona surveys. A ProjectUSA poll was right behind with 95-percent support for PAN, as was the News/Insight Magazine poll. The scientific ROPER Poll and a CNN poll both showed 85-percent support for the initiative aimed at enforcement of immigration laws. KAET-TV pollster Bruce Merrill found widespread support for PAN extending beyond political allegiances. Seventy percent of those interviewed indicated either support or strong support for the initiative that would...

It's amazing what you can learn from the Arizona Republic. Take a chirpy front-page story on early education programs in the Nov. 19 edition. The story used 45 column-inches to explain the glories of the state providing a more "free" services and replacing parents in the rearing of kids. I learned that in a state of 5 million people and a nation of 280 million people, there is not one taxpayer who is concerned about the cost of the services, not one scholar who has debunked the value of such programs, and not one conservative or libertarian who sees a...

<p>I am still in a state of shock from reading that Arizona does not have a tax on real estate sales.</p> <p>This means that the thousands and thousands of transactions in one of the fastest-growing housing markets in the nation bring no revenue into state coffers.</p>

Someone sent me a confidential transcript of a recent strategic planning meeting of the top brass at the Arizona Republic. Just kidding, but if such a transcript did exist, it would read as follows: CEO: I want to open our annual strategic planning meeting by reviewing some numbers. Our circulation dropped 3.7 percent for the six months ending in September, in spite of being in a high-growth state. As you know, we're the highest circulation daily in the Gannett empire next to USA Today, which saw its circulation rise only .7 percent. During the same period, the Wall Street Journal...

While conservatives smugly and mistakenly believe that they are winning the ideological war because they control talk-radio, the presidency and Congress, their kids are being indoctrinated in leftist thinking in a new and more insidious way on college campus, where 90 percent of professors vote Democratic, according to surveys. Everyone has his own definition of stupidity. My definition is this: Stupidity is paying tens of thousands of dollars to have your kid receive an illiberal education instead of a classical liberal education and to see your offspring enter adulthood thinking like Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. The new method of...

Arizona Republic reporter Chip Scutari used immoderate language and lousy spelling on the front-page of the September 12 Arizona Republic to paint the fiscally conservative Club for Growth as an extremist group. Scutari said that the organization was "created to target GOP legislators who don't worship at the alter (sic) of tax cuts, economic growth and school choice." A revealing choice of words. In my experience, no Republic reporter has ever described a liberal organization as targeting Democrats who don't worship at the altar of tax increases, economic stagnation and public school collectivism and coercion. From the unbalanced political perspective...

A recent poll of Valley movers and shakers showed more than half of those surveyed support raising taxes to improve the state's fiscal health. However, respondents didn't necessarily agree on whether the hike should come from sales, property or income taxes. The recent Valley Influentials Poll, conducted by the Tempe-based O'Neil Associates, a public opinion research firm, surveyed more than 1,200 community and business leaders, including members of the Greater Phoenix Leadership and Westmarc. "The usual expectation is people are against taxes," said pollster Michael O'Neil on Wednesday. "And when you're talking to a group of business leaders, you'd think...

Although hard to believe, the following ad appeared in the help-wanted section of yesterday's Arizona Republic: Business Columnist Wanted The Arizona Republic, a Gannett newspaper with a circulation of a half-million, has an immediate opening for a business columnist. The ideal candidate will have a journalism degree and at least ten years of experience with a big-city newspaper. It is not necessary to have an in-depth knowledge of economics, finance, statistics or the philosophical, moral and historical foundations of capitalism. Nor does the candidate need to know how to conduct research. It will be a plus, however, if the candidate...

Just when you think it can't get any worse, it gets worse. I'm referring to the reporting in the Arizona Republic. The August 6 edition shows what happens when newspapers are anti-diversity. No, not racial diversity. I'm referring to a diversity of political and economic thought. In addition to a lead editorial that repeated the education establishment's canard about the state ranking 49th in per-pupil spending, the edition carried a news story on the migration of 385,000 Californians to Arizona and Nevada from 1995 to 2000. True to form, the story relied on opinions from liberal sources and none from...

The editor at the Arizona Republic yelled across the newsroom, "It's time to beat the dead horse of phony racial issues and stink up the news pages again. We're not meeting our Gannett quota for race mongering and racial pandering, and our bonuses are in jeopardy." Reporter Doug Carroll was the first to respond. Digging at the bottom of the ink barrel, he discovered a small drop of misleading racial muck that he would smear on the front page of the Local Section in the July 16, 2003, edition. Tickled pink, black and brown over Carroll's work, the editor gave...

The Arizona “Repulsive” and “Repugnant” as the “Arizona Republic” has so often been not so lovingly referred, likes to tell us how to vote, live and think. One matter dear to the heart of this newspaper is the illegal alien invader issue. We are polar opposites of the illegal-alien-cheering Gannett property. Their editorial staff is replete with Hispanics, like Ricardo Pimentel and Richard Ruelas who sing the praises of their illegal brothers, and brand critics of the illegal activities as racists and bigots.

<p>Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor shows how far you can go with an open mind and a flair for moderation.</p> <p>President Reagan, who elevated Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981, called her "a person for all seasons."</p>

A few years ago, I conducted a word search in the news archives of various big-city dailies on the words "liberal" and "conservative." The search included my hometown newspaper, the Arizona Republic, which, in a commendable effort to achieve balance on its opinion pages, is gracious enough to let this libertarian (really a classical liberal) have a guest column. The search revealed that the word "conservative" was used in a political context three times more often than "liberal" and was frequently used as a pejorative. Since then, there has been an avalanche of stories, commentaries and books on the mainstream...

<p>1. Change the statutory definition of Child Protective Services to make the safety of children paramount, and to reflect the importance of providing prevention and intervention services to families for the sake of child safety and well-being.</p> <p>2. Create a statutory presumption of neglect in cases when babies are born exposed to alcohol or illegal substances.</p>

The May 5, 2003, edition of the Arizona Republic was a keepsake edition, but not in the normal meaning of the word "keepsake." I mean it like this: For heaven's sake, keep it out of the hands of children. It could stunt their intellectual development. The edition contained the following fluff masquerading as news: - A front-page Associated Press story was titled, "Women still confined to 'pink-collar' jobs." The title conjured up images of women in handcuffs being forced at the point of a gun to take jobs as teachers, nurses, secretaries and sales clerks. The title did not read,...

I have a question for O. Ricardo Pimentel: Yo, O., where did you learn economics? Who is O. Ricardo Pimentel? He is a syndicated columnist and an opinion writer for the Arizona Republic, a Gannett newspaper with a circulation of over 500 thousand. He also is living proof that economics illiteracy is not a barrier to being a journalist. Pimentel published an op-ed on May 1 that could have been written by the Marxists with bad haircuts who used to stand on the reviewing stand in Red Square and watch the May Day parades. The Soviet Union may no longer...

Just when you thought it might be safe again to read a big-city daily without having your intelligence insulted, a dog-bites-man story leaps off the front page and bites your brain. A case in point -- or I should say, a pointless story -- was the front-page story in the April 29, 2003, edition of the Arizona Republic. This is shocking, so hold on to your chair. The story came to the conclusion -- brace yourself -- that there are "few" minorities in the top jobs of state government. Wowwwwweeee! I warned you that it was shocking. I don't know...

Nothing works with Robbie, Chip and Chris. I've tried being nice, I've tried appealing to their professional pride, and I've tried reminding them of what is taught in journalism school about balanced reporting -- to no avail. They just keep cranking out their one-sided coverage of public policy issues. Who are Robbie, Chip and Chris? They are journalists for a big-city daily with a circulation of over 500,000. They recently co-authored an above-the-fold, front-page story on the proposal of state Republican leaders to close a state budget deficit. The name of the state is irrelevant, as most states in the...

This may embarrass me. Having read only the headline to a front-page story in today's Arizona Republic (February 24, 2003), I am going to guess, here and now, how the rest of the story was covered by the reporters. Then, I will read the story and let you know if I was right or wrong. The headline to the story is this: "Deficit threatens adult ed: Legislative proposal to cut funding baffles some." The story was written by staff reporters Robbie Sherwood and Maggie Galehouse. Based on the tired, predictable, boring and unbalanced formula that the establishment press uses to...

Today's Arizona Republic business section has the most intellectually vacuous, intellectually inconsistent and contradictory article that I've read in a newspaper for years. As backdrop, due to my interest in having an intelligent, balanced press in Arizona, I had breakfast a few years ago with an assistant editor of the business section of the Arizona Republic to discuss how to improve the section to appeal to intelligent, economics-literate readers. The meeting, as you will plainly see in a moment, was fruitless. Now, ironically, the newspaper has been holding panel discussion with readers to get input on how to improve the...