Free Republic

WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan. Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda. Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information. “I don’t believe that...

Just when you thought contemporary journalism couldn't sink any lower, along comes Ali Watkins, now 26, a reporter for the New York Times whose rapid rise through reporting's corrupt and partisan ranks includes stints at the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and Politico. Back in February, Ms. Watkins suddenly became the object of official attention when the feds seized her email and phone records as part of an investigation into a prominent Senate staffer, James Wolfe -- the former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee and a Democrat, of course. Then, in June, Wolfe was arrested and charged with lying...

Reporters at the New York Times could soon be “vulnerable” to the ax. If the ongoing round of voluntary buyouts being offered to editing staff does not get enough takers, the Gray Lady could begin another round, NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet recently warned his top department editors. “Up until now, the company had not indicated that layoffs would happen if targeted numbers weren’t achieved,” Grant Glickson, president of the NewsGuild, told Media Ink. As part of the NYT’s ongoing restructuring of its editing ranks, 109 copy editors have had their jobs eliminated. There are estimated to be about 50...

Its gun laws are among the most lenient, allowing even a disturbed man like Mr. Loughner to buy a pistol and carry it concealed without a special permit. That was before the Tucson rampage. Now, having seen first hand the horror of political violence, Arizona should lead the nation in quieting the voices of intolerance, demanding an end to the temptations of bloodshed, and imposing sensible controls on its instruments.

If the McCain/Palin ticket wins in November, the Gray Lady shouldn’t deck the halls with holly for the holiday season. No, sir, she should pad them to protect her writers who, fa-la-la bonkers over a world gone “out of joint,” will take every opportunity to resoundingly knock their noggins, hoping the next mad, wild-eyed bonk will somehow “set it right.” How can I be so sure about all this? Well, just look at how McCain’s “Palin surge” has already sent the Gray Lady’s writers into a pre-psychotic state — and not just the liberals, but resident moderate Thomas Friedman. In...

Although we have been very critical of the New York Times over its journalistic and business failings, there have been interesting signs of change there lately. The paper announced that Bill Kristol will write one column per week on its op-ed page. And yesterday there was a sensible op-ed by William Dalrymple on the decidedly mixed legacy of Benazir Bhutto. It is hard to know if there is a move back toward the center-left for the paper, but if there is one, it might well be in recognition of the looming crisis the paper faces as Rupert Murdoch begins fashioning...

The Gray Lady's Bones Are Showing David Lee Smith September 14, 2007 This is almost like watching a slow starvation. New York Times' (NYSE: NYT) advertising revenue, already on a steady slide for years, fell another 3.2% in August. The bad news is nothing new. Let's glance through the negatives, shall we? The News Media Group -- the newspapers -- saw revenue drop by 4.6% in a single month. All-important classified revenue plummeted 20% in the month, as weakness in real estate, help-wanted, and automobile ads took its toll. The hardest-hit entities were the New England Media Group, where ad...

The New York Times dramatically slashed its normal rates for a full-page advertisement for MoveOn.org's ad questioning the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. -SNIP- According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692." A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate. A Post reporter who called the Times advertising department yesterday without identifying himself was...

Having Won a Pulitzer for Exposing Data Mining, Times Now Eager to Do Its Own Data Mining by Keach Hagey May 1st, 2007 Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits. The news didn't make everyone all googly-eyed. In fact, some people at the paper's annual stockholders meeting in the New Amsterdam Theatre exchanged confused...

July 2, 2006Biased Times And Post Badmouth Bush The New York Times has done it again – laced Uncle Sam’s feet in a sack for the race between liberty and terrorism.  It revealed last week a secret monitoring program for international electronic bank transfers between Al Queda cells.This was done legally with cooperation of the Brussels-based Worldwide Interbank for Financial Telecommunication.  The “Gray Lady” of journalism (so called presumably for venerable age) considered this an encore for a similar, irresponsible revelation last December.  In that, the Times asserted the National Security Agency (NSA) was tapping illegally into telephone calls...

July 06, 2006, 1:45 a.m. Gray Lady’s Serial SpillsThis is war. By Deroy Murdock The more that emerges about the New York Times’s treasonous disclosure of the once-secret SWIFT/Terrorist Finance Tracking Program, the more unsavory its treachery appears. The Bush-hating paper’s shameless self-justifications for its misdeeds look ever flimsier. Its inadequate excuses have disappeared into a cyclone of self-contradiction. Strict punishment for the Times’s crimes (and it has behaved criminally) is in order. First, The Times’s June 23 story on the CIA and Treasury Department’s efforts to follow terrorists’ money was no isolated incident. It is one of at...

See for example this thread first. The next few lines are a test, to see if I can get the limerick to NOT show up in the "preview" window, so people will have to click to read it. The problem is NOT in you monitor. The odds are now 1 to 1. We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't deal with is therefore your own problem. I'm pleased now to pass on reports which are sure to leave libs out of sorts Heavens to Murgatroyd Can you say Schadenfreude?New York Times takes it in the...shorts!...

New York Times Accused of Toying with Treason By Jim Kouri, CPP www.MichNews.com Dec 28, 2005 From our chutzpah file comes this story: today's New York Times reports that defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda. In an article written by James Risen, who wrote the original NSA spy article, the lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so,...

Has The New York Times declared itself to be on the front line in the war against the War on Terror? The self-styled paper of record seems to be trying to reclaim the loyalty of those radical lefties who ludicrously accused it of uncritically reporting on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Yet the paper has done more than merely try to embarrass the Bush administration these last few months. It has published classified information — and thereby knowingly blown the covers of secret programs and agencies engaged in combating the terrorist threat. The most notorious example was the paper's...

<p>Ex-New York Times (search) reporter Jayson Blair (search) has agreed to write a memoir about his life and the fabrication scandal that forced him to resign from the Gray Lady and ultimately bought down the paper's top two editors, The Post has learned.</p>

A group of demonstrators marched outside the Washington bureau of the New York Times today demanding the resignation of Times Executive Editor Howell Raines. The demonstration was led by the DC Chapter of Free Republic and Accuracy in Media. Demonstrators chanted "Hey, hey, ho, ho. Howell Raines has got to go." They carried signs bearing messages like "Howell, Gerald and Arthur: New York Times Liars Club," "All the Lies That Are Fit to Print," "New York Times: Credibility Quagmire," "A Fish Rots From the Head Down. Fire Howell Raines," and others. They distributed stickers saying "I don't believe The New...

THE FOLLOWING NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL WAS PUBLISHED 8 YEARS AGO THIS SATURDAY: Diplomacy with North Korea has scored a resounding triumph. Monday's draft agreement freezing and then dismantling North Korea's nuclear program should bring to an end two years of international anxiety and put to rest widespread fears that an unpredictable nation might provoke nuclear disaster. The U.S. negotiator Robert Gallucci and his North Korean interlocutors have drawn up a detailed road map of reciprocal steps that both sides accepted despite deep mutual suspicion. In so doing they have defied impatient hawks and other skeptics who accused the...