Free Republic

In the debate about Hollywood pay scales, Hollywood actors argue they are being squeezed out of pay and health benefits. "Middle-class film and TV actors -- defined by SAG as those who earn enough to qualify for the union's health insurance but less than $100,000 a year -- are hardly representative: They account for less than 5% of the guild's 122,000 members. "Nonetheless, this sliver plays an outsize role within the union because the vast majority of members don't...earn a livelihood from acting. 'If we can't reverse the trends for working-class actors, we'll cease to exist,' said SAG President Alan...

A USA Today story "High schoolers name women, black Americans 'most famous'" by Greg Toppo (no link for copyright reasons) lists the 10 most famous Americans (excluding presidents and first ladies) according to high school students. I think 8 of the 10 figures ought to be covered in history classes (excluding Oprah Winfrey and Marilyn Monroe), but it does appear that who gets taught is being determined by race and sex quotas.

For the sixth year in a row, President George W. Bush is the most admired man and Sen. Hillary Clinton the most admired woman in Gallup's annual survey. But neither winner had a very decisive win this year, with former President Bill Clinton nearly tying Bush and Hillary Clinton barely topping talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. This is the seventh time Bush has been most admired man and the 12th time Clinton has been most admired woman. These results are based on the Dec. 14-16 USA Today/Gallup poll, which asked Americans, without prompting, to say what man and woman "living today...

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20071226/edtwo26.art.htm

Link . Cannot post due to Navy Times being copyright weenies. How can the ACLU be stopped from their treasonous works?

Cannot post due to Navy Times copyright whining. Story deals with new movie dramatizing the story of LTJG Dieter Dengler, one of just a few to escape from a Communist POW camp. Critics of movie claim it is dishonest and distorted. Link

USA Today gives Condi 'demon eyes,' pulls photo Paper admits it gave secretary of state'unnatural appearance' in Web edition Posted: October 26, 20055:10 p.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Manipulated Associated Press photo of Condoleezza Rice published online by USA Today USA Today pulled a photograph of Condoleezza Rice from its website after a weblog revealed it was manipulated, giving the secretary of state a menacing, demon-eyesing stare. Original AP photo The remarkable changes were first noted by a weblog called The Pen, which cited an original version of the Associated Press photograph. After a host of weblogs highlighted the photo, the nationwide...

(CNN) -- Only one in 10 Americans said they believe Bush administration officials did nothing illegal or unethical in connection with the leaking of a CIA operative's identity, according to a national poll released Tuesday. Thirty-nine percent said some administration officials acted illegally in the matter, in which the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, was revealed. The same percentage of respondents in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said Bush administration officials acted unethically, but did nothing illegal.

Ken Paulson took over as editor at USA Today in the wake of the Jack Kelley scandal. Kelley had embarrassed the paper by writing a series of stories filled with lies. Paulson said that would never happen again. Then, he presided over USA Today's own version of the CBS Memogate scandal. Like CBS, USA Today used those bogus documents to discredit President Bush's National Guard service. But Paulson managed to exercise a form of damage control because CBS used the documents first and put them on TV. Paulson acted as if the scandal was confined to CBS. Many in 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...

"If Walter Cronkite was around today," USA Today founder Al Neuharth proclaimed in a speech in South Dakota last week, "I think John Kerry would be President" because of "the trust the people in Middle America had in Cronkite, when he returned from Vietnam opposed to the war, public opposition soon followed." As recounted by the Daily Republic in Mitchell, South Dakota, in addition to boasting of the influence of Cronkite's bias, Neuharth "said he thought if McGovern had won the presidency in 1972, U.S. troops would have pulled out from Vietnam a lot sooner with a lot fewer casualties,...

USA Today is often dismissed by critics as the "McPaper"; it is apparently considered risible in some circles that, like McDonald's and unlike, say, the New York Times, a newspaper should serve up something that people across the country actually want. For those on the go, USA Today provides a concise and to-the-point approach to the news that its more prestigious competitors lack. (In last Friday's reports on the 9/11 panel, for example, USA Today got to the panel's most important recommendation, a new national intelligence director, in less than 80 words; it took the Times over 250.) So it's...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The independent Army Times newspaper, read widely in the U.S. military, on Monday suggested Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon civilian and military leaders should be removed over the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal. "This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential -- even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war," the private weekly newspaper said in an editorial. Army Times is one of four such publications owned by the Gannett...

<p>Received another letter from Gannett Publications, publisher of USAToday, and several other newspapers. Due to contractual arrangements they have with third-party content providers, they have denied our request to allow posting of excerpts. They will only allow the posting of titles and links.</p>

AN open letter to my colleagues in the news business. The silence is getting loud. It's been nearly four months since the scandal broke. Four months since Jack Kelley, star foreign correspondent for USA Today, was found to have lied his way through his professional life for the last 13 years. He lied about where he had been, what he had seen, whom he had talked to, what they had said. He lied so much I'm only half convinced "Jack Kelley' is his real name. Yet you, my colleagues, have not asked the most important question: What does this mean...

USA Today's recent ethical troubles with their former reporter Jack Kelley are the fault of the newspaper's and their determination to expand coverage beyond the United States and make it more "upscale." "When big-time blunders occur in any workplace, the boss or bosses usually are at fault, not clerks or secretaries or salespeople," USA Today's founder Neuharth wrote in his weekly USA Today column, a copy of which Editor & Publisher obtained today. Wrote Neuharth "Not reporters, the buck stops with the boss." The column appears just days after USA Today Publisher Craig Moon received a long-awaited, confidential report from...