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A USA Today Pentagon correspondent, Tom Squitieri, resigned under pressure today after the paper learned he had lifted quotes from another newspaper for a front-page story and used several other quotes, without attribution, that were cut during the editing process. In a March 28 piece on the Army falling behind in ordering armored Humvees for Iraq, Squitieri quoted Brian Hart of Bedford, Mass., whose son was killed in the war. The same quote appeared, word for word, in the Indianapolis Star in May 2004: "My son called me the week before he was killed. He said they were getting shot...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted on Fri, Mar. 25, 2005 Media are in the middle of every story — no wonder you hate us By JOE POSNANSKI Columnist You can't stand us. You really can't stand the media. No, this is not breaking news. We've all seen those studies that show people rank journalists somewhere below Enron executives. We've all watched movies in which obnoxious reporters get in the way, hound the innocent, mess up the story, get someone killed and so on. It's been a long, long time since a reporter was a hero in a movie. No journalist can work for...

Kurtz Does CNN's Damage Control: If you were worrying that WaPo's conflicted Howie Kurtz would bend over backwards to be tough on his own CNN bosses, you can stop now. Kurtz's article ... well, let's just say that if a p.r. agent or damage control spinner produced a piece designed to try and save CNN exec Eason Jordan's job, it would be the piece Kurtz wrote in the Post today. Why? Here are some of the blatant and subtle pro-Jordan tricks: 1) Witness Protection: Kurtz has Barney Frank recalling Jordan--after he "modified" his shocking remarks--still saying shocking things at Davos about U.S. forces "maybe knowing they were killing...

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went...

LONDON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The BBC apologised on Saturday for erroneously reporting that U.S.-led and Iraqi forces may be responsible for the deaths of 60 percent of Iraqi civilians killed in conflict over the last six months. The British broadcaster said on Friday in broadcasts and a news statement that its Panorama investigative show would air a report on Sunday citing "confidential" records from Iraq's health ministry to support the contention. Iraq's health minister said the BBC misinterpreted the statistics it had received and had ignored statements from the ministry clarifying the figures. "Today, the Iraqi Ministry of Health...

As the Senate Judiciary Committee voted today on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General, we hear a speech by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh on torture from Guantanamo to Abu Gharib to Vietnam.Hersh is the author of 'Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Gharib.' He spoke last month at the Wise Free Synagogue in New York.'The amazing thing is that we have been taken over by a cult of eight or nine neo-conservatives that have somehow grapped the government.' 'Just how and why they did it so efficiently, we will have to wait for much later...

It is rare to have books exploring the legacy of a presidential administration still in its first term. It is rarer still to have the number of insider accounts that Americans have access to in 2004. “These books appear to be painting history before our eyes,” said Charlotte Abbott, news editor of Publishers Weekly. “No one in the industry of publishing can remember a time since Watergate when so many political books have come out and the public has been interested – and a lot of those Watergate titles came out after.” One of the reporters who first exposed Watergate,...

Laurie Mylroie sent out an email about Paul O'Neill's appearance on 60 Minutes last night; she notes what appears to be a major error in Ron Suskind's book, which casts doubt on the credibility of both Suskind and O'Neill. Here is the key portion of Mylroie's email: "In his appearance this evening on '60 Minutes,' Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty, based to a large extent on information from former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, made an astonishing, very serious misstatement. "Suskind claimed he has documents showing that preparations for the Iraq war were well underway before...

Contacts at WRAMC tell me that reporters from the NYT were ejected from the post yesterday after walking around and interviewing recovering soldiers. The Times people entered the facility unannounced, uninvited and unescorted. They were "asked" to leave when the PAO found out what they were up to. It is unlikely they will be invited back.

Journalists' killers 'not being brought to justice' Dominic Timms Tuesday January 18, 2005 The culprits responsible for killing more than 100 journalists and other media workers worldwide last year are only half as likely to be caught as London burglars, a leading international press group claimed today. The International Federation of Journalists said most of the 129 deaths of media staff in 2004 - the highest on record - resulted from either "deliberate attacks" by gunmen, corrupt officials, armed gangs and governments, or "nervous, unruly and ill-disciplined soldiering". In most cases, the IFJ added, the killers were still at large....

As many as 100 FBI agents, federal prosecutors and other department employees are likely to be asked—possibly as early as the next few weeks—to sign broadly worded statements waiving any confidentiality agreements they had with journalists about the anthrax case, Justice officials tell NEWSWEEK. The waiver statement was recently ordered by a federal judge at the urging of lawyers for bioterrorism expert Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who has filed a lawsuit alleging that government officials leaked damaging personal information about him in an effort to connect him with the anthrax attacks.

Leslie Stahl looked absolutely hurt and upset that Adnrew Card announced that they had the electoral votes and said it was not in good faith and without class to announce this when they, the media, haven't announced it yet. Simply incredible.

CONTROVERSY HITS ABC NEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR MARK HALPERIN... EXCLUSIVE DEVELOPING... An internal memo written by ABCNEWS Political Director Mark Halperin admonishes ABC staff during coverage of Democrat Kerry and Republican Bush -- not to 'reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable'...

North: U.S. Journalists Protecting Osama bin Laden U.S. reporters familiar with the whereabouts of terrorist ringleader Osama bin Laden, who killed at least 6,700 Americans in attacks on New York and Washington last week, are refusing to tell what they know to U.S. intelligence agencies, a former Reagan administration national security official charged Friday night. "We know that there are American correspondents, people who work for news bureaus, both print and broadcast, who have interviewed Osama bin Laden," said former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, now a Fox News Channel consultant, in an interview on the network's "Hannity & Colmes." ...

I am having a little bit of a problem with the elite media today, the elite media and the liberal left. I know, when don't I have a problem with them, right? But today I believe even the most pro-media/pro-liberal among us would have to agree that there is a massive contradiction playing out in the headlines. I am talking about the retreat of a few of the more pusillanimous countries that have made up the coalition of the willing to date and the response to it. With the Dominican Republic's announced withdrawal of their contribution to the coalition forces...

about anti-Bush SEAL This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows. To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40427 Monday, September 13, 2004 ELECTION 2004AP stands by its story about anti-Bush SEALMan with Muslim name doesn't come up on search of elite sailors Posted: September 13, 20044:06 p.m. Eastern By Ron Strom © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com An Associated Press reporter is standing by his story that describes an anti-Bush veteran as a former Navy SEAL in the face of questions about whether or not the man was in fact a member of the elite unit. The reporter, Elliott Minor says the...

Saturday, Aug. 7, 2004 10:16 p.m. EDT NY Times Blew Cover of Key Counterterror Agent An al Qaida computer expert who was secretly arrested on July 18 and has since been providing critical intelligence on the terror group's plans for coming attacks on the West was rendered useless this week when he was outed by the New York Times. Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, described by U.S. intelligence as "a one man al Qaida communications hub," was using the Internet to contact and identify al Qaida operatives throughout the world so they could be tracked and arrested by British and U.S....

Think you're getting unbiased, balanced coverage of politics? Or is there a double standard in the way the media treat Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives? My recent visit to the center of a media storm suggests there is. Consider this: A $500,000 ad buy made by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth brings searing media scrutiny and "proof" of illegal coordination based on a lawyer (me) representing both the Bush-Cheney campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans; on an accountant working for Tom DeLay's political action committee; and on a $200,000 contributor to the group who is not a major donor...

Booing the AP When the AP story about a Republican crowd booing President Bush's well-wishes for Bill Clinton first broke at 2:12 p.m., the story carried the byline of Tom Hays. After coming under fire, the AP pulled the story down. The original link now brings you to a dead page. After a brief interlude, the AP reposted the story, minus the claims that the crowd had booed Clinton's heart scare. The revised story is here. It carries the time stamp of 2:31 p.m. and, curiously, no byline. It also carried no mention of the story's previous version, nor any...

"For Shame" A leaked video reveals what Bob Dole really thinks about Bush's tactics. By Chris Suellentrop For pretty much the duration of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth controversy, the Kerry campaign has been trying to demonstrate that the smear campaign being conducted against the Democratic presidential nominee is all the more loathsome because it is part of a pattern of behavior by George W. Bush: the use of front groups to damage his campaign opponents by putting false statements into the political bloodstream. Particularly salient, Democrats believe, is the 2000 campaign conducted against John McCain during the South...