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September 2, 2008, 10:32 pm Alaska Party Official Says Palin Was Not a Member By The New York Times The chairwoman of an Alaskan political party that advocates a vote on the state’s secession from the union said Tuesday that she had been mistaken when she said Gov. Sarah Palin was a member of the group. A front-page story in The New York Times on Tuesday and articles in other news media reported that Ms. Palin was a member of the Alaska Independence Party for two years in the 1990’s. The information in the Times article was based on a...

If anyone could lay claim totheir state's Republican Party, it's Deborah Burstion-Donbraye of Cleveland. The 53-year-old international business consultant is the former outreach director for the Ohio Republican Party, for starters. She helped deliver the swing state to President Bush in his 2004 re-election bid in which he garnered 16 percent of the black vote. Among her Republican credentials, Mrs. Burstion-Donbraye worked in several high-level positions during the Reagan and Bush administrations of the late 1980s and was the press secretary for George W. Bush's Texas gubernatorial campaign in 1994. In the 1980s, she was an assistant national desk editor...

First, here is a link to my post yesterday about this article: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2039487/posts To Whom It May Concern: When I first heard that Findlay, OH been chosen for an article by such a prestigious paper like the Washington Post, I was glad for our community to get the exposure. Then I read with disgust the article by Eli Saslow in our local paper. It is obvious to me that Mr. Saslow came to our city with an agenda - one to show how only unenlightened, racists believing wild and untrue stories about the candidate could possibly be against Obama. He...

It is obvious to me that reporter Eli Saslow came to our city with an agenda -- to show that only unenlightened racists who believe wild and untrue stories about Sen. Barack Obama could possibly be against the candidate. Mr. Saslow chose an older portion of town with older residents and then ascribed their supposed views to our entire city.

A Utah teenager has admitted creating a fake Asa Coon Web page on the social networking site Myspace.com. Posing as the gunman in Wednesday's shooting at Success Tech Academy in Cleveland, the 19-year-old creator of the fake Web site said in an email exchange with the Plain Dealer: "I don't generally give out personal information ... I, like many others (search for any famous person) make fake profiles on MySpace for the sole purpose of giving people a place to vent their thoughts and feelings." Several national television news organizations and Web sites have quoted from Coon's page as real....

During his Monday smackdown on the Laura Ingraham radio show, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin declined to say yes or no when Laura asked him if he had ever met or interviewed Justice Clarence Thomas before he claimed the Justice was "furious all the time." Toobin declined to say yes or no, but suggested Laura should ask Thomas. In a soundbite Ingraham aired at the top of the 10 am hour on Thursday, after his hour-long interview was done, Thomas confirmed that he granted no interview to Toobin. Thomas said he "would have no clue" who Toobin was if he saw...

Hi, I'm a blogger.

Another search through different avenues has failed to turn up AP’s source for more than 60 reports of atrocities and murders: The AP (non-)responds and another search comes up empty.

In recent years, The New Republic, one of the nation's leading magazines of political and cultural commentary, has been embarrassed by scandals involving two of journalism's original sins: fabrication of stories and plagiarism. But the latest scandal, involving the magazine's cultural critic Lee Siegel, has to do with a transgression peculiar to the Internet age: sock puppetry. A sock puppet, in Internet parlance, is a false Internet identity created for deceptive purposes. Siegel, who had been writing a culture blog for The New Republic, had started using the pseudonym "sprezzatura" on the blog's forums to praise himself and savage his...

NEW YORK From the newspaper that brought you the first-ever perfume critic comes what appears to be another first -- "futurist-in-residence." The New York Times, apparently seeking to boost its image as a forward-looking paper, announced Tuesday the appointment of Michael Rogers, a former Washington Post Company executive and Newsweek.com general manager to the newly-created title. In a release, the paper described the new position as a one-year consultant appointment to work with The New York Times Company's research and development unit. Spokeswoman Stacy Green compared the appointment to that of the paper's public editor, in that it would be...

The Fitzpatrick Plame investigation has spurred the New York Times into examining how their reporters conduct themselves. Apparently, the Gray Lady wants her staff to act more like terrorists and drug dealers. Reporters are being told to delete emails, destroy notes, and use disposable cell phones in order to stymie future investigations.

Let’s Read the G.O.P. Tea Leaves (5 Letters) To the Editor: In “How to Win by Losing” (Op-Ed, Sept. 13), Ramesh Ponnuru argues that Republicans could “win by losing” if they fail to maintain control of the House but keep the Senate in 2006, because this would put the G.O.P. in a better position to win in 2008....

AMSTERDAM — A Dutch journalist has been sacked for making up an interview with American singer-songwriter Scott Walker. The article by journalist Paul Hegeman appeared a few weeks ago in Dutch television listings magazine VPRO. Newspaper 'De Volkskrant' reported on Thursday that the deception came to light when a music journalist rang the VPRO to ask how Hegeman had managed to get an interview with Walker, who is known as reclusive and media shy. He said he did not believe Hegeman had actually spoken to Walker as he had been trying to get the founder of the Walker Brothers to...

...An Iranian expert, who is close to Tehran's thinking and did not wish to be identified, told the FT that Iran was not looking for a crisis in Lebanon at a critical moment in the nuclear diplomacy. He said Iran had received signals from members of the UN Security Council last week that it would be given more time to consider the west's proposals. It was inconceivable that Iran had ordered Hizbollah to take Israeli soldiers prisoner. Iran wanted a negotiated way out of the nuclear stand-off, he said. He argued that Israel's fierce retaliation for the abduction of the...

A longtime columnist of the Sacramento Bee who resigned amid controversy last month may have invented the existence of 43 people she wrote about over several years, an internal investigation found. The paper announced yesterday it had completed a probe into Diana Griego Erwin's writing, stating: "We have been unable to verify the existence of 43 people she named in her columns. This doesn't prove these people don't exist, but despite extensive research we have been unable to find them." Bee Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez wrote that recent tightening in editorial standards at the paper led to questions about the...

In 1981, rising young reporter Janet Cooke of the Washington Post made up an 8-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy and won a Pulitzer. When her falsification was discovered, she went into exile for more than a decade, but her journalism career remained dead. •More recently, USA Today star reporter Jack Kelley was forced to resign after editors learned he had fabricated multiple stories. The newspaper's top editor also resigned. •New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned when it was discovered that he had been making up parts of stories, including one about the Rio Grande Valley family of an early...

Attn DC Freepers: On the FRONT PAGE of today's business section, there is an article..."Big News Media Join in Push to Limit Use of Unidentified Sources" ( an excellent article, BTW..I did a search and it hasn't been posted as yet..can someone please do so?) there is a pic which I am positive is of the DC Freepers protesting a few days ago. I recognize the sign.."Newsweek Lied/ People Died"

IN the spring of 1712, the British essayist Joseph Addison rambled from pub to parlor seeking the pulse of his countrymen regarding rumors (false, it turned out) that the king of France, Louis XIV, had died. The St. James coffeehouse, Addison reported in The Spectator, was "in a Buzz of Politics." In the 18th century, "buzz" was part of what social theorists called the emerging - and powerful - bourgeois public sphere. In the 21st century, the buzz is in the blogosphere. Or at least, that's the popular mythology. As a result of their influence in incidents like the "60...

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists still wants Diana Griego Erwin as a speaker next month, despite her Wednesday resignation from The Sacramento Bee over allegations that the paper could not verify the existence of some people mentioned in her columns. Erwin, who has denied fabricating sources, told the NSNC today that she's still coming to its June 23-26 conference in Grapevine, Texas. She is scheduled to speak the morning of June 24. "She's one of the best columnists in America -- and she has a real story to tell now," said Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist/conference host Dave Lieber, who...