Free Republic

Many political candidates covet the endorsement of the Palm Beach Post. Others believe it's really not that helpful. Just how valuable is the “blessing” of Post editors? Is their endorsement necessary for victory at the polls? Apparently not. BIZPAC has done some studies and surveys over the years about the power and importance of political endorsements by the Post...

Today Tucson congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) cast her first vote since she was critically injured in a January shooting. You'll recall that in the weeks that followed, the media bemoaned the incivility -- supposedly predominantly conservative in nature -- of the political debate which had allegedly created a climate of hate. But there appears to to be no firestorm over how, just last week, Arizona Daily Star cartoonist David Fitzsimmons fantasized about President Obama sending a SEAL team to assassinate Tea Party-friendly House Republicans.

The looting of a BP service station and subsequent attacks at nearby Reservoir Park Sunday was a troublesome event that soured the normally buoyant Fourth of July weekend and raised a number of questions. Among them: Why didn't Milwaukee police connect the dots faster? And where were the parents of these young people? Surveillance video taken from the BP service station shows clear pictures of dozens of youths stealing snacks, sodas and other merchandise. Some of them may have participated later in the beatings and robberies at the park. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said Wednesday that several parents have contacted...

The sexual assault case against ex IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Khan is close to collapse, it was tonight revealed. The New York hotel maid who accused Strauss-Khan of raping her in his $3,000-a-night suite, lied to investigators, law enforcement sources told the New York Times. Despite a wealth of forensic evidence against the 62-year-old, prosecutors have dismissed a lot of what the maid said about the alleged encounter, according to the newspaper.

Citing the slower-than-expected pace of the economy recovery, Gannett Co. said it plans to lay off about 700 employees as part of a broader round of cost cuts in its U.S. newspaper division. The job reductions represent about 2% of the company's work force and will affect Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing division, which consists of about 80 daily papers. Gannett, the largest U.S. publisher by circulation, also owns USA Today, which isn't part of that unit............ Gannett, which also owns TV stations, has had several rounds of layoffs and other cuts, including furloughs, in recent years to get costs in...

The nation's largest newspaper publisher is laying off another 700 employees to cope with an unrelenting advertising slump. Gannett, the owner of USA Today and more than 80 other daily U.S. newspapers, hoped to complete the cuts Tuesday. The layoffs are occurring at most Gannett newspapers but not at USA Today. The payroll reductions represent 2 percent of Gannett's 32,600 employees. The division targeted in the cutbacks employs 22,400 people at newspapers that include The Indianapolis Star and The Arizona Republic.

Most people rely on information provided by daily newspapers and television networks to be aware of current events and how those events might affect their lives. Unfortunately, many media sources have become so “politically correct” and fearful of losing advertising that they no longer serve the public, but their dwindling bottom lines. Many have heard that the Federal Reserve gave some media such as MSNBC “bail-out” money, thereby compromising their reporting. Their credibility is down the tubes. Other television is compromised with huge sums of advertising from mostly big pharma and other large multi-national companies like BP. Will they report...

Apple has quietly backed down on its "Jobs tax" rules that forced newspapers, magazines and other content providers selling iPhone and iPad subscriptions to also sell them via iTunes, with Apple getting a 30% cut. They couldn't offer subscriptions at a better price elsewhere. Now they can:

If the War Powers Act becomes moot, don’t blame Barack Obama, say the editors of the Chicago Tribune today. In order to curtail abuses of power from the executive, the legislature not only has to pass laws but also enforce them. And thus far, they’re not impressed with the Washington Way in Chi-town: Obama is on the horns of a dilemma. As a candidate, he said the president does not have the power to go to war on his own except in cases of actual or likely attack. But if he were to ask Congress to authorize the Libyan intervention,...

Did I read what Trump just told Hannity right? That he has Osama's college grades and papers? Now that would be a treasure trove, cuz I firmly believe that regardless of where Osama was born be attended college as a foreign student, lied all thru college and claimed various affiliations which he benefited from. Did I hear Trump right?

The U.S. Army has been forced to apologise over what they have deemed as 'repugnant' photographs of grinning American soldiers standing over bloodied and partially-naked Afghan bodies they had allegedly killed. The pictures were published by German news organisation Der Spiegel and were among 4,000 they have obtained. Meanwhile, commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for a public backlash and possible riots over the 'trophy' photographs, especially since it has been alleged that the Afghan civilians were unarmed and innocent. Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly...

The national Newspaper Guild has upped the ante in a strike against the Huffington Post, calling on all unpaid writers to stop contributions to the website. The 26,000-member union of media workers asked all unpaid contributors on Wednesday to withhold their work in support of a strike launched earlier this year by the art publication Visual Arts Source, whose writers had previously contributed free content to the Post. "Join us in shining a light on the unprofessional and unethical practices of this company," the Guild wrote in a press release. "Just as we would ask writers to stand fast and...

For 20 years I was a front man at the BBC, anchoring news and current affairs programmes, so I reckon nobody is better placed than me to answer the question that nags at many of its viewers — is the BBC biased? In my view, ‘bias’ is too blunt a word to describe the subtleties of the pervading culture. The better word is a ‘mindset’. At the core of the BBC, in its very DNA, is a way of thinking that is firmly of the Left. By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The...

Former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer on Monday gave WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange data on about 2,000 clients that he contends may have evaded taxes, published reports said. At a press conference in London, Elmer told reporters about 40 politicians and “pillars of society” were among the individuals he gave Assange information on, the reports said. Elmer told The Observer newspaper during the weekend that the individuals named in the data include “business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates — from both sides of the Atlantic.” Elmer once headed the Cayman Islands office...

What a bunch of garbage! An elderly Manhattan woman living on Social Security was slapped with a $100 ticket -- just for throwing away a newspaper in a city trash can. Delia Gluckin, 80, tossed the paper in a bin right outside her Inwood apartment building Saturday morning, only to be ambushed by an overzealous Department of Sanitation agent wielding a handheld computertized ticket book. "I was walking to take the subway downtown and dropped it in a trash can, and this lady in a blue uniform ran up to me," Gluckin told The Post.

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...

This past week, we learned that it was another year, another dive for newspaper circulations: 5% for dailies, and 4.5% on Sundays, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That's not as bad as some past declines, but it's still going the wrong way. As usual, they'll blame the Internet, and reject the possibility that persistent, pervasive bias and blind adherence to politically correct reporting priorities have anything to do with the results. But as I've similarly asked before, how does one explain away the fact that the only daily paper in the nation's top 25 that has shown consistent...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Circulation is still dropping at U.S. newspapers. Figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show average daily circulation fell 5 percent in the April-September period, compared with the same period a year earlier. The latest decline was not as steep as the 8.7 percent drop seen in the previous reporting period, which ran from October 2009 through March of this year.

(RTTNews) - A prominent newspaper in Mexico's border city of Ciudad Juarez has published an editorial requesting guidelines on media publishing from drug cartels operating in the city after one of its employees was shot dead by suspected drug operatives last week. The unprecedented editorial carried by the El Diario de Juarez newspaper on its front page on Sunday was prompted by the killing of Luis Carlos Santiago, 21-year-old photographer working for the paper, last week. Santiago and a co-worker was shot by unidentified gunmen in Ciudad Juarez on 17 September when they were sitting inside a parked car outside a...

Philadelphia Newspapers Up For Auction Theresa McCabe 09/15/10 - 10:06 AM EDT NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The auction for The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News is set for Sept. 23 after creditors missed Tuesday's deadline to complete their planned $139 million buyout. The two newspapers, run by private company Philadelphia Media, have been operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since February 2009. In April, a combination of hedge funds including Angelo Gordon and Alden Global Capital agreed to purchase the newspapers out of bankruptcy protection. The sale was not finalized due to unresolved labor contracts with the papers' truck...