Two of the latest corruption/fraud stories coming out of the media, ABOUT the media, are from the New York Slimes!

I realize that this is incredibly surprising to hear about one of the most reputable news organizations in existence today, but it is important to remember that it can happen to any of us…/sarc.

The New York Times has finally admitted that it “spiked” the ACORN/Obama corrupt association story.

Acknowledging what the blogosphere has known for weeks, the New York Times finally went on record to admit that just before last Election Day it killed a politically sensitive news story involving corruption allegations that might have made the Obama campaign look bad.

But the admission on Sunday, which came seven months after NYT staff reporter Stephanie Strom’s reporting about possibly illegal coordination between the Obama campaign and ACORN last year, took the form of a snarky column from Clark Hoyt, the Old Gray Lady’s “public editor.” Hoyt used the word “nonsense” to describe the allegations of impropriety leveled against ACORN and the Obama campaign.

When isn’t the NYT snarky and condescending?  It’s not like they have the country’s or the American citizens’ best interests at heart…

A little background:

The aborted story that gave rise to the Obama/ACORN controversy centers around information provided by Anita MonCrief, a former ACORN employee whom Hoyt acknowledges “fed information to Stephanie Strom of The Times for several articles on troubles within the group.” Apparently the information MonCrief provided was good.

We know this because Strom broke a number of important stories about ACORN and surely much of the information she used came from her trusted source Anita MonCrief. In July she reported that Dale Rathke, brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, embezzled nearly $1 million from the group. She also reported that ACORN management covered up the embezzlement for eight years, withholding information even from ACORN’s national board.

The next month Strom reported that Tides Foundation founder Drummond Pike, a comrade-in-arms of liberal philanthropist George Soros, had personally covered what remained of Wade Rathke’s debt (the embezzler had agreed to a slow-as-molasses repayment plan that would have kept him in debt well into old age).

In September Strom reported on two ACORN national board members’ lawsuit aimed at forcing ACORN to provide financial documents regarding the embezzlement.

She followed up the next month with a story on ACORN’s efforts to sever its remaining ties with its founder. (Strom reported that Wade Rathke resigned as chief organizer of ACORN. In fact, Rathke was fired, as shown in the ACORN national board’s minutes of June 20, 2008, available at page 11 of the linked PDF file.)

The same month Strom wrote about an internal memo written by ACORN’s lawyer that alerted the group to potential legal problems related to its organizational structure.

But apparently MonCrief’s information was suddenly no good when it might have embarrassed the Obama campaign.

Heidelbaugh testified before a congressional committee in March that the nonprofit group violated a host of tax, campaign finance, and other laws. She said the Obama campaign sent ACORN its “maxed out donor list” and asked two of the avowedly nonpartisan group’s employees “to reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN.”

As if the withholding of a story that size during a presidential election wasn’t enough, there is also proof of plagiarism by one of NYT’s most prominent/famous columnists; Maureen Dowd.

It was a wild Sunday for New York Times columnist. It opened with her latest column in the newspaper, which closed by declaring that she had once opposed a wide-ranging probe of the uses of torture, and who authorized and knew about it, during the Bush administration but now favored it. This brought some praise liberal news sites and bloggers often critical of Dowd.

But by mid-afternoon she was on the hot seat for using a paragraph almost word-for-word from one of the most prominent liberal bloggers, Jost Marshall of Talking Points Memo, without attribution. Charges of “plagiarism” ensued.

By early evening, Dowd had admitted wrongdoing, in an email to Huffington Post, and said she wanted to apologize to Marshall. She also said that the Times would issue a correction tomorrow — and the copy was changed in her column to attribute the line of thought to Marshall.

She seemed to be suggesting, however, that she had merely heard the line of argument from a friend, who did not attribute it to Marshall. This wouldn’t explain, however, why the rather lengthy sentence, a full paragraph, matched Marshall’s writing virtually word for word.

Can I ask why this liberal rag is still in business or is used as a credible source?

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UPDATE:

Unionized employees at the New York Times newspaper on Monday ratified a 5 percent pay cut, according to a memo obtained by Reuters.

New York Times newspaper employees who are members of the New York Newspaper Guild voted 377 to 36 to ratify the pay cut agreement, which includes 10 additional paid days off, while Guild members at the Times’ digital unit ratified the agreement by a 50-0 vote, according to the memo.

The Guild members signed off on an agreement with New York Times management last week designed to save the newspaper $4.5 million.

It has been reported that the New York Times will rid themselves of their subsidiary, The Boston Globe.

Both papers are having trouble making ends meet and the New York Times must dump another paper line if it is to save some money.

Unions have a significant presence at newspaper companies and talks were underway to negotiate before making the final decision on the future of the paper.

Earlier today the Union representatives walked out during the talks.  However, it appears that the negotiations may resume a little later today or tomorrow.

The Boston Globe and its biggest union are “taking a break” until later Monday or Tuesday on talks about concessions that parent company The New York Times Co says are crucial to save the newspaper.

The union and management suspended discussions early Monday morning. They have not set a time or location for the next round of talks, a source familiar with the matter, but unauthorized to discuss it, told Reuters.

The Times Co had set midnight Sunday as the deadline to extract $20 million in cost cuts from its unions to avoid closing the Globe, which it said could lose up to $85 million this year.

The Times stepped up pressure on the unions, saying it planned to file notice with the U.S. government that warns it could shut the paper down in 60 days. Negotiations on cost cuts could continue even after that filing.

I personally think that if the paper cannot sell in this market and model its reports to be middle of the road, rather than liberal and biased, then it deserves to go under.  Free markets dictate that those companies who make poor business decisions will not stay in business.

Thankfully, at this moment in time, the Obama administration does not plan on bailing out the newspapers:

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The New York Times just like their uber-left counterparts care more about islamofascist terrorists than their own country and its citizens.

NYT also lied in an article last weekwhen describing the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.  The NYT claimed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, which will become a typical liberal talking point when arguing about Gitmo detainees and interrogation methods.  Khalid was only waterboarded a total of 5 times.  Let me repeat that again, 5 times!  Each of those times is timed specifically which was defined by law in order to meet specific conditions that would not be considered torture.  There is also a physician on site when waterboarding is used.

The New York Times reported last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, was waterboarded 183 times in one month by CIA interrogators. The “183 times” was widely circulated by news outlets throughout the world.

It was shocking. And it was highly misleading. The number is a vast inflation, according to information from a U.S. official and the testimony of the terrorists themselves.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the interrogation program told FOX News that the much-cited figure represents the number of times water was poured onto Mohammed’s face — not the number of times the CIA applied the simulated-drowning technique on the terror suspect. According to a 2007 Red Cross report, he was subjected a total of “five sessions of ill-treatment.”

Our own soldiers have been trained and waterboarded more times than all the detainees combined.  Only 3 of the detainees were ever waterboarded and 2 of those were major leaders in the radical Islam movement who had valuable information.  That information was disclosed to us through waterboarding.  If these detainees were only waterboarded 5-10 times total imagine how easy it would be for them to train for that now.

“The water was poured 183 times — there were 183 pours,” the official explained, adding that “each pour was a matter of seconds.”

The Times and dozens of other outlets wrote that the CIA also waterboarded senior Al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah 83 times, but Zubayda himself, a close associate of Usama bin Laden, told the Red Cross he was waterboarded no more than 10 times.

And again that would be 83 pours of water… entirely different than being waterboarded 83 times.  Each sessions consists of short and long pours of water and the specific time allotted per session was all laid out.

The Justice Department memos described the maximum allowed use of the waterboard on any detainee, based on tactical training given to U.S. troops to resist interrogations:

– Five days of use in one month, with no more than two “sessions” in a day;
– Up to six applications (something like a dunk) lasting more than 10 seconds but less than 40 seconds per session;
– 12 minutes of total “water application” in a 24-hour period

These lying Democrats have now put our country at incredible risk and have given our enemies plenty of ammo and ability to train and be more difficult to glean information from.  As an FYI to the peaceniks – people are evil, they are not all good in this world and there is nothing you can do to change that or control that even if you can’t understand that.  Sharing tea and crumpets with them will not resolve anything, nor will it keep your country safe.

Real American…./Sarc!  Hey NYT – did your article happen to mention that Khalid is the one who chopped off Daniel Pearl’s head?  I guess that’s acceptible to the likes of NYT… and the hypocrites on the far left.

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The New York Times and the Boston Globe are both in dire straits.  To add more fuel to the fire, the Boston Globe is owned by the New York Times and both papers are losing significant amounts of money and are experiencing severe debt problems.

As The New York Times Co. tries to bask in the glory of having bagged five Pulitzers, the company is facing a cash crunch that could put it on the path toward insolvency.

According to its first-quarter earnings report, the Times said it had cash and cash equivalents totaling $294 million.

However, $260 million of that is earmarked to pay off debt that matures in March 2010, effectively leaving the company with $34 million.

That’s a particularly precarious position to be in, given the Gray Lady posted a wider-than-expected, first-quarter loss of $74.5 million amid worsening advertising declines, and is scrambling to raise cash as it labors under a $1.3 billion debt load.

This should be an indication of ultra liberal slants on newspapers and how they fare in Capitalist environments.  Most newspapers will probably go the way of the Internet with paid member subscriptions, but it’s quite interesting how most of the papers going out of business are more liberal than right-leaning.

There should be no bailouts in a capitalist society.  These companies chose their business models and how they would present news.  If people catch on and no longer purchase the paper and the companies can no longer make a profit, well that’s just the name of the game in free markets.

Troubled by the possible shuttering of his hometown paper, Sen. John Kerry reached out to the Boston Globe on Tuesday, then called for Senate hearings to address the woes of the nation’s print media.

“To the Boston Globe family,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote to employees of the 132-year-old publication, which faces closure unless it can come up with $20 million in union concessions to parent company the New York Times by May 1. The Globe is losing $1 million a week.

“America’s newspapers are struggling to survive, and while there will be serious consequences in terms of the lives and financial security of the employees involved, including hundreds at the Globe, there will also be serious consequences for our democracy where diversity of opinion and strong debate are paramount,” Mr. Kerry said.

[...]

Mr. Kerry, who has called for Senate hearings on “the future of journalism” to begin May 6, also cited the negative influence of “agenda-driven reporting” and media conglomerates.

Of course there will be agenda-driven reportingif bailouts are received from the government.  Take for example the plan that Ms. Brooks, the newest member of Obama’s cabinet, has.

“Years of foolish policies have left us with a choice: We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses in ways that encourage robust and independent reporting and commentary, or we can watch, wringing our hands, as more and more top journalists are laid off,” she wrote in her parting column on April 9.

Brooks said this would help rescue the industry from a “death spiral” and left the government unaccountable to the journalists who must keep it honest. “[I] can’t imagine anything more dangerous than a society in which the news industry has more or less collapsed,” she wrote.

But critics say her proposal would spell an end to the independent media and make journalists reliant lapdogs.

“The day that the government gets involved in the news media you see the end of the democratic process, because an independent news media is absolutely essential to the success of a democracy,” said L. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group.

A nice lesson in common sense for Ms. Brooks is in order, however, a woman who received a bailout herself for a job she is unqualified for, probably will never get it.

You simply can’t have “independent” media when it’s receiving taxpayer money from the government.  There would always be a major conflict on interest; something that happens already, but would be much worse.  They would just become propagandists of government.  We have seen state-run media outlets in dictatorships, fascist regimes and communist countries – let’s not go that route and maybe for once we could uphold our constitution.

“The decline of print newspapers doesn’t mean the decline of journalism. What we need to have for journalism is journalists, and lots of them,” testified Ben Scott of the Free Press, a nonpartisan group for media reform.

“But we should avoid the temptation to turn to policies that resemble bailouts. We should not relax the antitrust standards to permit further consolidation. The most consolidated newspaper companies are among those in the worst financial shape today,” he said.

Last month, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, Maryland Democrat, introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act” that would allow papers to operate as nonprofits, prompting many analysts to examine the political implications of the tactic.

Let’s get back to real objective reporting, shall we?

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The New York Times is doing worse than one had expected or even hoped! 

The far left rag will require more pay cuts and job losses if they are going to try to make a profit, however, most of those cuts would have to come from the union workforce.  The unions, however, believe that the NYT can make more cuts at the top and has not done enough to eliminate the amount of wasteful upper management that still exists. 

The New York Times editor, Keller, also commented that he does not use sources such as google or drudge report for his research.  That would be too easy and make too much sense for a paper to use a “database” of articles and daily news.  That should be an indication that the New York Times just pulls most of these stories out of their butt.  Maybe they should just mark their paper “fiction” this way people may actually buy it, knowing that it is not lying to the public and deceiving them for passing off fake stories as news. 

The editor also said that “Saving the New York Times ranks up there with saving Darfur.”  I’m glad to know that the NYT considers its survival up there with an African country that has been ravaged by death and corruption, but then again the NYT is pretty corrupt itself.  I would say you should just stick a fork in the paper, she’s done, and people would be much better off.

For the first time in memory, the magazine death rate has surpassed the magazine birth rate.

The number of print magazines that folded in the first quarter reached 101 titles. By contrast, the number of print magazines that launched in the first quarter totaled 95.

The figures, from Mediafinder.com, are believed to mark the first time since statistics were kept that the number of magazines to fold beat out the number of magazines launched.

“That is definitely the trend,” said Trish Hagood, president of Oxbridge Communications, which owns Mediafinder.com, which publishes the Standard Periodical Director and the National Directory of Magazines.

When are these papers going to get it?  Start printing the objective truth and stop spinning the stories or making them up to get your liberal agenda passed.

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