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RICHMOND, Va. -- The Richmond Times-Dispatch said Saturday it fired a reporter for fabricating part of a story and has begun investigating his other work. Paul Bradley, 51, who worked in the newspaper's northern Virginia bureau, was dismissed Friday, the newspaper reported. The article, published May 17, was intended to gather reaction in Herndon to President Bush's speech on immigration. Bradley's fabrications, the Times-Dispatch said, included an interview that did not occur with the director of a center for day laborers and the misrepresentation that he had visited the center by using a Herndon dateline. Managing editor Louise C. Seals...

Truthout doesn't say they were wrong, they don't say they were right. They say: The Rove Indictment Story as of Right Now By Marc Ash, Fri May 19th, 2006 at 04:23:39 PM EDT :: Fitzgerald Investigation On Saturday afternoon, May 13, 2006, TruthOut ran a story titled, "Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators." The story stated in part that top Bush aide Karl Rove had earlier that day been indicted on the charges set forth in the story's title. The time has now come, however, to issue a partial apology to our readership for this story....

This just in from source at Black Rock: He/She is at pre-season party in The Hamptons. Other CBSers (The Suits) are there as well. The Suits confirmed: Ran Rather's contract at CBS expires in August. He has not been offered ANY type of renewal. There may be some tiny dollar (the exact fee never to be disclosed) face-saving deal but that's it, Dan is out. This comes after he "resigned" from CBS Evening News position last year in an attempt to stop the bloodletting of advertisers at CBS. As we all know, the primary cause was not so much Rather's...

The major newspapers around the nation are all chirping in harmony that all is well in newspaper-world: the Audit Bureau of Circulation's report showing huge declines in the nation's largest cities' largest newspapers are only down because internet news readership is up. Don't believe it. Two seemingly contraditory trends are happening at once: Readership is down the most in precisely the areas where the network effect would most help newspapers establish a dominance through synergism with their web sites and their hardcopy readerships: the large, urban markets. At the same time, readership is holding steady the best at newspapers whose...

According to Nancy Kruh of The Dallas Morning News , veteran New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has been stuck in a rut for years. "For several months now," Kruh writes, "as I’ve read one Iraq war column after another, one thought always comes to mind: Um, haven’t I read this before? So, yesterday, I finally immersed myself in Lexis-Nexis to try to quantify and qualify this phenomenon." What Kruh discovered is that many of Herbert's columns during the Bush presidency contain similar, interchangeable passages. She cites a number of examples that make it seem like your average Herbert column...

John Kerry announced this week's John Kerry Iraq Policy of the Week the other day: "Iraqi politicians should be told that they have until May 15 to deal with these intransigent issues and at last put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military." With a sulky pout perhaps? With hands on hips and a full flip of the hair? Did he get that from Churchill? "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we...

NEW YORK, April 20 (Reuters) - Moody's Investors Service on Thursday cut both Knight Ridder Inc. (KRI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and McClatchy Co. (MNI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) to junk status, citing McClatchy's acquisition of its bigger rival newspaper publisher. In mid-March, No. 9 U.S. newspaper publisher McClatchy said it would buy Knight-Ridder Inc. for $4.5 billion to become the second-largest U.S. newspaper chain. Downgrades, particularly to junk, tend to raise a company's borrowing costs. Moody's cut both Knight Ridder and McClatchy's bond ratings to the top junk level of "Ba1" from the bottom investment-grade rating of "Baa3." The new combined...

SEATTLE Former Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll urged editors Wednesday to guard against what he called a “milking" of the industry and increased corporate ownership whose only purpose is to make money. During a luncheon speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference here, Carroll, who serves as a guest lecturer at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University, told a roomful of editors that their business needs to defend the ideas of journalism and “rock-turning” against increased budget-cutting and bottom-line demands. Under Carroll, the Times won a shelf of Pulitzers a few years back, but he exited the...

The Politburo Diktat has a handy chart that reveals all of the connections between Mary McCarthy and the usual Democrat suspects: (hat tip: Brainster) (click on image to enlarge) If you think this chart better resembles a tea leaf than a logical network of personal and professional connections, then you're probably a healthy skeptic that likes to wait until all the facts come out and all versions of events are vetted before rushing to judgement.....

Yes,my comments on the Duke Lacrosse Case! At the exact moment it would be almost impossible to believe the Duke Lacrosse story could get any more bizarre comes one Raleigh News & Observer Columnist Ruth Sheehan in her April 13th column with a personal unsubstantiated allegation of rape against a male or males in her life TWENTY ONE years ago! ( or twenty, read carefully, it makes no sense) In two short sentences she publicly slanders every male with whom she has associated over the past two decades as well as a goodly number of females who she apparently could...

CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Entertainment announced plans to shut down the UPN and WB networks and form a new broadcast network, The CW, to be launched in the fall of 2006. The companies said the new broadcasting network will be a joint venture between Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS, with each company owning 50%. The companies said that CBS and Warner Bros. Entertainment will cease operations of their respective UPN and WB networks. The companies said WB and UPN networks will continue to broadcast their respective network schedules independently until the fall. The companies also announced...

The newspaper's problems are being watched closely in the battle between one and new media. SAN FRANCISCO — When Jeffrey Zalles needed a new cashier for his coin laundry in the South of Market district, his help-wanted ad in the San Francisco Chronicle brought just four responses. So Zalles posted a notice on Craigslist, a San Francisco-based network of websites that specialize in classified advertising. His cyber-ad drew 400 applicants. Zalles found his cashier and hasn't relied on the Chronicle since, advertising instead on the Internet and the city's array of free papers. The venerable Chronicle is struggling, and defections...

by Mark Finkelstein November 25, 2005 - 07:36. In recent NewsBusters entries, here http://newsbusters.org/node/2923 and here http://newsbusters.org/node/2939 I described how an unexpected whiff of reasonableness overtook the Today show. On successive days, Matt Lauer criticized the Democrats for trying to make political hay out of Iraq without offering any alternatives of their own. Strangely, sanity now seems to have a struck for a third day! And this in the most unlikely person of NBC reporter Jim Maceda, who only last week, as I reported here http://newsbusters.org/node/2743 was complaining that the French were not appeasing their Muslim rioters assiduously enough. This...

On Nov. 1, Private Capital Management LP, a large shareholder in numerous newspaper companies, wrote to the management of Knight Ridder asking that the nation's second largest newspaper chain "aggressively pursue the competitive sale of the company." Two days later, two other large shareholders seconded the motion. Shortly thereafter, Knight Ridder announced that it had decided to "explore" alternatives, "including a possible sale of the company." It is axiomatic on Wall Street that bear markets beget consolidation. The bear market in the newspaper industry should foretell a spate of mergers and acquisitions. But what if there are no buyers? This...

Craigslist's founder wants to change the news paradigm with high-tech grassroots journalismInterviewed by John McManus Craig Newmark is an entrepreneur whose no-frills Web listing service, Craigslist.org, has since 1995 come to dominate the classified advertising market in the Bay Area and dozens of other cities around the world. By offering almost all services for free, he may well be responsible for depriving newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News of millions of dollars a year in advertising. Even as traditional sources of news -- or "mainstream media" -- struggle to compete with the Internet, however,...

A question posed to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan at this morning’s “gaggle” by CBS White House correspondent John Roberts has attracted quite a bit of chatter on the Internet. Of course, the topic of the day is the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito, and the question from Roberts, was, “Scott, you said that – or the President said, repeatedly, that Harriet Miers was the best person for the job. So does that mean Alito is sloppy seconds, or what?” Public Eye asked Roberts about the incident and reaction and here’s what he said: “At the morning White...

Editor's Note: Seven months ago, on March 23, the above-named news organizations, along with more than two dozen other companies and membership organizations collectively representing pretty much everyone in American journalism, filed a formal motion concerning the Valerie Plame leak investigation with the federal appeals court in Washington. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was then attempting to compel grand jury testimony in the case by reporters Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller. And pretty much everyone in American journalism--as the media's amici curiae filing, excerpted below, made clear--thought Fitzgerald's subpoenas to Cooper and Miller should be quashed. But does anybody in American...

DALLAS Belo Corp. said Thursday that upcoming Audit Bureau of Circulation figures will show that its flagship Dallas Morning News will take a circulation hit of about 13% on Sundays and 9% on other days, for the most recent six-month period. It said circulation at its Providence (R.I.) Journal will be down about 1%, with The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., off 3% Sundays and 2% other days. Belo Corp. also disclosed that it received a subpoena this week from local prosecutors regarding overstated circulation figures at the Morning News. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Robert W. Decherd said the company...

CBS News' ethical standards are being challenged after veteran reporter Mike Wallace's appearance at an anti-gun Brady Center fund-raiser in Washington, D.C., last month. At the event, held at the French Embassy, Wallace played a clip of his "60 Minutes" interview with then-NRA president Charlton Heston, whom he described as the "self-righteous enemy of the Jim and Sarah Brady Bunch," reported blogger and radio host Cam Edwards at NRANews.com. Edwards said that afterwards, Wallace mocked Heston by holding up his hands, as if holding a rifle, and saying, "in my dead hands ... remember when he used to hold up...

by Mark Finkelstein October 14, 2005 - 07:10. In a deliciously ironic twist of fate, shortly before airing a segment aimed at embarrassing the Bush administration by suggesting that it had staged a video conversation between the president and soldiers in Iraq, the Today show was caught in staging . . . a video stunt. In the Bush/Iraq segment, Today screened footage indicating that prior to engaging in a video conversation with President Bush, soldiers on the ground in Iraq were given tips by a Department of Defense official. But the only advice that the official was shown as giving...

September 06, 2005 RALEIGH — There is a fetid stink in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and it’s not coming just from the fouled waters flooding New Orleans. It also wafts from the putrid reporting of the disaster by the mainstream media. From the moment Katrina made landfall the media focused on anything that could redound to the detriment of President Bush or inflame race and class tensions. Reporters and commentators ignored the dismal performance of New Orleans’ Democratic mayor and Louisiana’s Democratic governor, blaming every problem that arose on the Bush administration. Racial demagogues accused Bush and his administration...

In the aftermath of all disasters comes the assessment and the inevitable finger of blame. In the UK over the weekend and this morning I have already heard the BBC ratcheting up its anti-Bushism in its coverage. In the US, by all accounts, the liberal-dominated media coverage has already developed a 'bare-knuckle' anti-White House political bias. This even though New Orleans has never had anything remotely like a proper sea defence plan in place - the prime responsibility of local, not national, officials.                                                              America's Pompeii For a vital insight into the disgraceful coverage which...

The word went out on August 8th that Peter Jennings, an icon of American mainstream media, had died at the age of 67. In this day and age, 67 is well below the average life span in America, and it is unfortunate that the ABC News anchor died prematurely due to lung cancer. Often when someone dies, the initial commentary is rather flattering, as people with the smallest amount of good taste will not speak ill of the dead, especially before they’ve been put in the ground. There was plenty of news coverage of Jennings death, and there were a...

Mainstream journalism is running scared. It's watching its audience numbers decline and its public trust numbers drop. Newspapers, magazines, and network television news have been shaken by major scandals. The media have seen the future and it is blogging. Or at least that's the story this year. "Mainstream journalism," however you want to define it, has been under siege so long it's hard to keep track of all the people, things, and outlets that were or are still going to destroy it. Blogs, or weblogs - websites on which a person or a group of people opines about events, reports...

<p>From friends at ABC; Peter Jennings is near death. This is unconfirmed, but from usually reliable sources.</p> <p>The ABC anchor, who was born in Canada but became a US citizen, announced a few months ago that he was suffering from lung cancer. He has not made a televised appearance since.</p>

FreeRepublic – an online community "I had not been all that politically active prior to President Clinton's election," Robinson recalls. "Yes, I complained about government and politics just like everyone else … but politics was not particularly high on my list of priorities – until Slick came along." Robinson saw that the Clintons had brought a new and dangerous level of corruption to American politics. He could no longer remain aloof. "I knew that the newspapers and news media were lying and I knew that government had been encroaching on our individual rights and that our politicians were as corrupt...

CHICAGO When Lee Enterprises Inc. agreed to purchase Pulitzer Inc. for $1.46 billion, it also agreed that the flagship St. Louis Post-Dispatch will keep its longstanding liberal editorial slant for at least the next five years, according to the purchase agreement mailed to Pulitzer shareholders Friday. "For a period of at least five years following the Effective Time, Parent (Lee Enterprises) will cause the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to maintain its current name and editorial page platform statement and to maintain its news and editorial headquarters in the City of St. Louis, Missouri," the agreement states.

The leaning tower of PBS *Liberals see a conservative bent and vice versa. Meanwhile, station officials are getting nervous. By Matea Gold, Times Staff Writer SAN FRANCISCO — Public television officials are increasingly fearful that PBS is reemerging as a political football after a series of efforts by Republicans to promote more conservative perspectives on the taxpayer-supported network. Station managers and programmers gathered here for two public broadcasting conferences last week expressed growing alarm about recent actions by officials of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the private nonprofit agency charged with distributing federal funds to public broadcasters. Kenneth Tomlinson, the...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Los Angeles Times dismissed a reporter after an investigation found that his story about the death of a fraternity pledge at a state university "fell far short" of standards, the newspaper said Tuesday. An editor's note in the Times said the March 29 story by Eric Slater had numerous inaccuracies and carried quotations from two named and other unnamed sources that could not be verified. Among the errors, the paper said the story erroneously reported that the victim was alone at the time of his death. "Beyond the specific errors, the newspaper's inquiry found that...

To judge from the e-mails I received during the four years I spent on the White House beat, Post readers of all political ideologies agree: I am biased. But in which direction? A conservative magazine put me on its cover as "Dana 'Bias' Milbank." A liberal Web site made me its "Media Whore of the Week," and a posting on a liberal blog proposed "Whore" as my middle name. (I've decided to combine the "Bias" and "Whore" suggestions and make my middle name, simply, "Bore.")

Let Us Now Praise Claudia Rosett She deserves a Pulitzer Prize (or six).by Hugh Hewitt 03/17/2005 12:00:00 AM LET ME BE THE FIRST to congratulate Claudia Rosett on the receipt of her 2005 Pulitzer Prize. I am uncertain in which category she will win the honor (there are at least six--public service, investigative reporting, breaking news, national reporting, international reporting, and commentary for which she qualifies). She ought to be honored in multiple categories, in fact, for rarely has a single journalist had the run of productivity that Rosett assembled in 2004, and which continues today. Of course it...

National Enquirer columnist Mike Walker has written a devastating expose of the real Dan Rather, showing conclusively that the self-proclaimed emperor of TV news is really stark naked. In an exclusive interview Walker told NewsMax.com why he took the time to probe Dan Rather and the story behind Rathergate in his best-selling new book, "Rather Dumb: A Top Tabloid Reporter Tells CBS How to Do News." NewsMax: Mike, what made you, a celebrity columnist, write "Rather Dumb"? Walker: I never even thought about Dan Rather – he's just this wacko, weirdo guy who looked stupid when he went to Afghanistan...

When Dan Rather steps down as anchor of the "CBS Evening News" on Wednesday, the celebration of his decades as a TV journalist will be overshadowed by the continuing fallout over a report that used apparent forgeries to attack President Bush during the 2004 election, a number of media experts said. Rather's departure will come exactly 24 years to the day after he replaced Walter Cronkite in the anchor chair -- and six months and a day after he narrated a "60 Minutes Wednesday" story on Sept. 8, 2004, that accused George W. Bush of receiving preferential treatment during his...

THE WRONG sort of snow finally pushed Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, over the edge. Enraged with Russia’s hopeless weather forecasters, he has vowed to fine them for any more inaccurate, misleading or unreliable predictions. As reported in yesterday’s Times, he admonished them in the following, memorable terms: “You are giving us bullshit.” On the other side of the world, Harry G. Frankfurt, the moral philosopher and professor emeritus at Princeton University, would have smiled sagely at that remark. After decades of exploration in the thorniest thickets of philosophy, he has just published a slim treatise entitled On...

The new sister web page of Frontpage Magazine, DiscoverTheNetwork, seems to be upsetting some of our leftist brethren. The first outburst of crazed frenzy has come from Kurt Nimmo, one of the regular columnists at Counterpunch web magazine. In the first lengthy analysis of DiscoverTheNetwork, Nimmo writes a vicious attack against the new venture, in which he accuses the operators of unjustified inclusion, in a comprehensive database of the left, of Islamic terrorists and their apologists (along with, of course, leftists innocent of such connections). He writes: "Truly, Horowitz's latest endeavor is a sight to behold -- an exercise in...

 On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will be faced with the following question: Under what conditions, if any, can the government take property from you or your business for the public good? Although the question sounds straightforward enough, its answer will have profound, complex — and terribly important — consequences for the future of American social policy. Under current law, the government can take your house or land. In order to do so, it must merely show that the property is being taken for a legitimate "public use," and it must pay a fair compensation. That's [snip]But in recent years,...

Jeff Gannon Admits Past 'Mistakes,' Berates Critics Saturday, February 19, 2005; Page C01 Jeff Gannon, the former White House reporter whose naked pictures have appeared on a number of gay escort sites, says that he has "regrets" about his past but that White House officials knew nothing about his salacious activities. "I've made mistakes in my past," he said yesterday. "Does my past mean I can't have a future? Does it disqualify me from being a journalist?" Gannon chastised his critics, breaking a silence that began last week when liberal bloggers disclosed his real name, James Dale Guckert, and a...

The following is the transcript of the Friday night CNN interview of Jeff Gannon/James Guckert by Anderson Cooper. COOPER: There are many questions that have been raised about whether or not -- people raising the specter that you are somehow a White House plant. Are you a White House plant? Were you (UNINTELLIGIBLE)? GANNON: Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, how I came to be at the White House is I asked to attend a briefing. I asked the White House Press Office. They gave me a daily pass to get in. COOPER: This liberal group, Media Matters, which...

THE NEW YORK OBSERVER will report tomorrow: 'Former 60 Minutes Wednesday executive editor Josh Howard has told colleagues that before he resigns, the 23-year CBS News veteran will demand that the network retract remarks by CBS president Leslie Moonves, correct its official story line and ultimately clear his name'... In the event of a lawsuit, Mr. Howard has told associates that he would like to see Moonves put under oath to talk about his own roles in the network's stubborn, hapless defense of the flawed segment on President Bush's National Guard service. Howard has also indicated to colleagues that he...

The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie chart format. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave...

With the recent toppling of CBS's Dan Rather and now CNN's top news executive, Eason Jordan, I think we can declare without fear of contradiction that rigor mortis is settling over the carcass of the Fourth Estate. At least as we once knew it. I make this pronouncement without pleasure, and in fact, suggest that we're really witnessing a double funeral. One is for traditional journalism as the omnipotent gatekeeper of information. As bloggers - authors of Web logs - have gleefully pointed out the past several days, everyone with access to the Internet is now a journalist. Given the...

News forum that caught CBS fake National Guard documents shines light on another media blunder "I need you all to look at this photo and tell me if you think the vest is what is being issued and worn in Iraq. Also does the M-16 shown look small?" - posted on 02/01/2005 11:26:05 AM PST by Dog "Ok, some things I'd like to point out... first, that vest, and those boots, they aren't military issue, if they are I've never seen em. Next, the mag in the M4 isn't issued I believe, it looks like a mag you would buy...

Evan Thomas of Newsweek was one of the few journalists who admitted that the mainstream media wanted John Kerry to win. He said media bias was worth as many as 20 million votes for Kerry. But that doesn't mean that Newsweek is free of liberal bias. We picked up a copy of the January 10 issue and were astounded by the examples of bias contained therein. Page 5 featured a "Conventional Wisdom" segment that criticized the President for vacationing and then "taking three days" to address the Tsunami disaster. That's a lie. The President addressed the problem on the day...

Deer Shot In Cary Neighborhood With Kids Nearby Alleged Shooter Faces Misdemeanor Charges POSTED: 4:00 pm EST January 21, 2005 UPDATED: 5:19 pm EST January 21, 2005 CARY, N.C. -- An arrest is expected soon in the case of a person who killed a deer with a high-powered assault rifle in a neighborhood full of children. Police say someone shot a deer in Cary, but they want to question the person because the shooting occurred in a neighborhood full of kids.

I'm as happy as the next red-blooded, patriotic American that CBS News has been embarrassed over the Dan Rather Liargate scandal, but if anyone thinks that it will have an impact on the way in which mainstream "news" organizations conduct themselves, well, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. We all know that CBS, ABC, NBC, the New York Times, NPR and others of their ilk do not tell the truth. They lie constantly......

Dan Rather was on the run, chasing big stories from New York to Florida to Texas and back to CBS headquarters in Manhattan. In less than a week: The Republican National Convention. A deadly hurricane. An interview for a blockbuster CBS investigation. Former President Clinton's open-heart surgery. [snip] Rather, 73, recalled somewhat vaguely that he had heard from his star producer that Burkett was a "straight-talking West Texan" with a reputation as a "truth teller." Had he turned to Google, though, the CBS anchorman would have found stories painting Burkett as something quite different: a highly controversial and disgruntled retired...

CBS News turned over its entire "Face the Nation" broadcast on Sunday to inveterate Bush-basher Ted Kennedy, after refusing a White House request that they also include a Republican to rebut Kennedy's bloviations. "The White House was happy to put Dan Bartlett or somebody else on that program and CBS said, 'Thank you, No,'" reported Brit Hume on "Fox News Sunday." The CBS snub comes just a week after the network promised Bartlett, who recently moved from Communications Director to the White House counsel's job, that they'd stop skewing their coverage against the president. According to Broadcasting & Cable, CBS...

After an independent investigation concluded that much of a "60 Minutes Wednesday" segment on President Bush's service record was wrong, incomplete and unfair, four veteran CBS News executives found themselves shown the door to West 57th Street. Yet the real surprise to many observers — both inside and outside the Eye Network — was that anchor Dan Rather and longtime CBS News President Andrew Heyward weren't also asked to leave. Rather, 73, already had volunteered to step down from the anchor chair in March, though he'll continue to do reports for the network. But media watchers say Heyward, a Hastings-on-Hudson...

Mary Mapes, the CBS News producer from 60 Minutes who gave us Rathergate, has won the first journalism award given in memory of two of the worst rogues in the history of the profession, Walter Duranty and Jayson Blair. Duranty and Blair were both reporters for the New York Times, America's most corrupt newspaper. To borrow from NBA commissioner David Stern, on his decision to suspend Ron Artest and the other Indiana Pacers thugs in the recent "basketbrawl," the vote "was unanimous, 1-0." As previously detailed here, Mapes was guilty of no less than three major journalistic offenses -- her...

This week, the independent panel commissioned by CBS to look into last September's infamous "60 Minutes Wednesday" program on President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service released a damning, 224-page report on the scandal which led to the ouster of four CBS News employees. The report blasts CBS News for failing to follow "basic journalistic principles" in preparing the program, and for its "rigid and blind defense" when bloggers began to raise serious questions about the authenticity of four memos concerning Bush's Guard service. However, the report fails to weigh in conclusively on the authenticity of the memos, and refuses...