Answering today's OFF-SET questions is Daniel Ellsberg, author, defense analyst and prominent whistleblower.
Jay Kernis - Senior Producer
June 7th, 2011
http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/07/daniel-ellsberg-all-the-crimes-richard-nixon-committed-against-me-are-now-legal
He is the subject of a documentary about his life, "The Most Dangerous Man in America," nominated for a 2010 Academy Award, which took its title from the words former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used to describe Ellsberg in 1971.
In the 1960s, Ellsberg was a high-level Pentagon official, a former Marine commander who believed the American government was always on the right side. But while working for the administration of Lyndon Johnson, Ellsberg had access to a top-secret document that revealed senior American leaders, including several presidents, knew that the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire.
Officially titled "United States-Viet Nam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense,"–the Pentagon Papers, as they became known–also showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000-page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In, 1971, Ellsberg leaked all 7,000 pages to The Washington Post, and 18 other newspapers, including The New York Times, which published them.
Not long after, he surrendered to authorities and confessed to being the leaker. Ellsberg was charged as a spy. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed on grounds of governmental misconduct against him. In April 1973, the court learned that Nixon had ordered his so-called "Plumbers Unit" to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to steal documents they hoped might make the whistle-blower appear crazy. In May, more evidence of government illegal wiretapping was revealed. The charges against Ellsberg were dropped. This led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.
The federal government has now declassified the Pentagon Papers. The Nixon Presidential Library & Museum will release the documents on June 13, forty years to the day that leaked portions of the report were published on the front page of The New York Times.
In this interview, Ellsberg says, "Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, would feel vindicated that all the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal. " (Thanks to the Patriot Act and other laws passed in recent years.) And he says all presidents since Nixon have violated the constitution, most recently President Obama, with the bombing of Libya.
Until now, the public has been able to read only the small portions of the report that you leaked. What do you think the impact of releasing all 7,000 pages might be?
The "declassification" of the Pentagon Papers–exactly forty years late–is basically a non-event. The notion that "only small portions" of the report were released forty years ago is pure hype by the Nixon Library. Nearly all of the study–except for the negotiations volumes, which were mostly declassified over twenty years ago– became available in 1971, between the redacted (censored) Government Printing Office edition and the Senator Gravel edition put out by Beacon Press.
It would be helpful if the publishers indicated, by brackets or different type, what was withheld earlier. But that would be very embarrassing to the Library and the government; I'll be surprised if they do it. Most of the omissions in the GPO edition "for security"–a ridiculous claim, since their substance was nearly all available to the world in the simultaneous Gravel/Beacon Press edition–will appear arbitrary and unjustified.
I'd really like to see someone–a journalist or an anti-secrecy NGO– compare this version in detail with the redacted white space in the 1971 GPO edition, for a measure of what the government has regarded as necessarily classified for the last forty years. And then ask: just why was most of what was released by the GPO, covering 1945 to1968, kept secret as late as 1971? Hint: it wasn't for "national security."
What that comparison would newly reveal is the blatant violation of the spirit and letter of the FOIA declassification process by successive administrations (including the present one), in rejecting frequent requests by historians and journalists for complete declassification of the Papers over the years.
But if the hype around this belated release got a new generation to read the Pentagon Papers or at least the summaries to the various volumes (my highest hope, pretty unlikely), they'd get from them as good an understanding as they could find anywhere today of our war in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon Papers didn't explicitly present that last alternative, but their release contributed to that result, eventually. Is it too much to hope that their re-release could do the same?
Yes, it is. But fortunately there are a few Congresspersons, like Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Lee, Walter Jones and Ron Paul who got that message the first time, even if the Republican and Democratic leadership hasn't, yet.
On June 23, 1971, in an interview with CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, you said, "I think the lesson is that the people of this country can’t afford to let the President run the country by himself, even foreign affairs, without the help of Congress, without the help of the public. I think we cannot let the officials of the Executive Branch determine for us what it is that the public needs to know about how well and how they are discharging their functions." How concerned are you that elected officials haven't learned those lessons?
I still stand by my cited conclusions, both for 1971 and for every single year since, including this one. But I never expected elected officials in the Executive branch (of which there are exactly two in each administration) or their myriad subordinates to "learn those lessons" or to accept them as warnings.
Leaders in the Executive branch–in every country– know what they're doing, and why they're doing it, and they always want to stay in office and keep on running things with as little interference from Congress, the public and the courts as possible: which means, with as much secrecy as they can manage. So I'm not exactly concerned that they're still at it (which is why I'm still at what I do), since that is so predictable, in every government, tyrannical or "democratic."
Our Founders sought to prevent this. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, for the first time in constitutional history,put the decision to go to war (beyond repelling sudden attacks) exclusively in the hands of Congress, not the president. But every president since Harry Truman in Korea–as the Pentagon Papers demonstrated up through LBJ, but beyond them to George W. Bush and Barack Obama–has violated the spirit and even the letter of that section of the Constitution (along with some others) they each swore to preserve, protect and defend.
However, as has been pointed out repeatedly by Glenn Greenwald, and Bruce Ackerman , David Swanson and others, no president has so blatantly violated the constitutional division of war powers as President Obama in his ongoing attack on Libya, without a nod even to the statutory War Powers Act, that post-Pentagon Papers effort by Congress to recapture something of the role assigned exclusively to it by the Constitution.
This open disregard of a ruling statute (regardless of his supposed feelings about its constitutionality, which Obama has not even bothered to express) is clearly an impeachable offense, though it will certainly not lead to impeachment–given the current complicity of the leaders of both parties–any more than President George W. Bush's misleading Congress into his crime against the peace, aggression, in Iraq, or President Johnson's lies to obtain the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
Yet the most important point, as I see it, is not the secrecy and the lying, or even the blatant disregard of the Constitution, the Presidential oath and the rule of law.
As the Pentagon Papers documented for the much of the Vietnam era (we still lack, and we still need, the corresponding Papers for the Nixon policy-making, that added over twenty thousand names unnecessarily to the Vietnam Memorial and over a million deaths in Vietnam) and the last decade confirms: the point is that the Founders had it right the first time.
As Abraham Lincoln explained their intention (in defending to his former law partner William Herndon his opposition to President Polk's deliberately provoked Mexican War): "The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."
As Lincoln put it, the alternative approach (which we have actually followed in the last sixty years) "places our President where kings have always stood." And the upshot of that undue, unquestioning trust in the president and his Executive branch is: smart people get us into stupid (and wrongful) wars, and their equally smart successors won't get us out of them.
Either we the people will press elected officials in Congress–on pain of losing their jobs–to take up their Constitutional responsibilities once again and to end by defunding our illegal, unjustifiable (and now, financially insupportable) military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and air attacks on Pakistan, Libya and Yemen: or those bloody stalemates will continue indefinitely.
In March–at the age of 79–you were arrested in front of the White House–and then again outside of Quantico military prison–while protesting in support of Army private Bradley Manning, accused of being the Wikileaks leaker. Manning, charged with 34 counts including "aiding the enemy," faces life in prison and possibly, execution. Have you been able to communicate with Bradley?
It was then almost impossible to communicate with Bradley Manning, and I have so far done so only through his few visitors. In front of the White House and at Quantico, I was attempting to communicate with those holding him prisoner, to protest the abusive and illegal conditions of his detention, amounting not only to punishment of someone not tried, convicted or sentenced but to torture forbidden by domestic and international law and the Constitution even as punishment.
Do you believe what Bradley did was necessary and heroic?
Yes.
Do you still have all 7000 pages of the Pentagon Papers?
I don't really know. Hundreds of boxes of files have gone from storage into my basement, and my old copies of the Papers may or may not be somewhere in there. I'm not going to go searching among them for the still-classified eleven words.
These days, when you find yourself thinking about Richard Nixon, what comes to mind?
Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)
He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.
That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst's office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to "incapacitate me totally" (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama's executive orders. they have all become legal.
There is no further need for present or future presidents to commit obstructions of justice (like Nixon's bribes to potential witnesses) to conceal such acts. Under the new laws, Nixon would have stayed in office, and the Vietnam War would have continued at least several more years.
Likewise, where Nixon was the first president in history to use the 54-year-old Espionage Act to indict an American (me) for unauthorized disclosures to the American people (it had previously been used, as intended, exclusively against spies), he would be impressed to see that President Obama has now brought five such indictments against leaks, almost twice as many as all previous presidents put together (three).
He could only admire Obama's boldness in using the same Espionage Act provisions used against me–almost surely unconstitutional used against disclosures to the American press and public in my day, less surely under the current Supreme Court–to indict Thomas Drake, a classic whistleblower who exposed illegality and waste in the NSA.
Drake's trial begins on June 13, the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers. If Nixon were alive, he might well choose to attend.
* * *
*MORE BIO: After graduating from Harvard in 1952 with a B.A. summa cum laude in Economics, he studied for a year at King’s College, Cambridge University, on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. Between 1954 and 1957, Ellsberg spent three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as rifle platoon leader, operations officer, and rifle company commander.
From 1957-59 he was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1962 with his thesis, Risk, Ambiguity and Decision. His research leading up to this dissertation—in particular his work on what has become known as the “Ellsberg Paradox,” first published in an article entitled "Risk, Ambiguity and the Savage Axioms"—is widely considered a landmark in decision theory and behavioral economics.
In 1959, Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation, and consultant to the Defense Department and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. In 1961 he drafted the guidance from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the operational plans for general nuclear war. He was a member of two of the three working groups reporting to the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOM) during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Ellsberg joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on the escalation of the war in Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification in the field.
On his return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the top secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.
Ellsberg is the author of three books: Papers on the War (1971), Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002), and Risk, Ambiguity and Decision (2001). In December 2006 he was awarded the 2006 Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” in Stockholm, Sweden, “. . for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example.”
Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful U.S. interventions and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing.
He is a Senior Fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
For the First Time, More People Get News Online Than From Newspapers
Jolie O'Dell
3-15-11
http://mashable.com/2011/03/15/online-versus-newspaper-news
As of the end of 2010, more people get their news from the Internet than from newspapers — and more ad dollars went to online outlets than to newspapers, too.
In surveys conducted by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 34% of respondents said they read news online within the past 24 hours (as opposed to 31% who favored newspapers); and a full 41% said they get most of their news online, 10% more than those who said they got most of their news from a newspaper.
Of course, the 18-to-29-year-old group overwhelmingly cast their vote with the web; 65% said the Internet was their main news source.
Poynter’s annual State of the Media report showed that the web was the second most popular source of news; local television news is still the number one source for the majority of people. Local TV also led in revenues, with digital media coming in second.
Also, online news media was the only medium that saw growth year-over-year; from radio to television to newspapers and magazines, every other medium saw a decline in audience.
In general, it can be said that text-based news audiences are dwindling. Only 40% of people in the study said they read the news in an online or print newspaper, a 12% drop from five years ago.
Last year marks the first time online advertising outpaced newspaper advertising. The sector grew 13.9% between 2009 and 2010 to reach a $25.8 billion total. Not all of that ad spend went to online news publications; in fact, search advertising continues to dominate the online ad spend landscape.
We’ve been watching the web’s impact on journalism for quite some time — both how the Internet is affecting newsrooms and newspapers and how it’s changing the way viewers and readers get news. With many outlets beefing up their online and mobile strategies even as print sales decline, the figures from Poynter’s research are nostalgia-inducing and predictable at the same time.
After all, once The New York Times admits print’s days are numbered, it’s pretty much a long, slow and painful downward spiral to the point that the newspaper, like the vinyl record, is a relic for collectors and anachronists.
For now, though, we continue to look forward. The Pew Project’s research showed that almost half of Americans in a survey said they got at least some of their news on a mobile device or tablet. And as tablet makers, app makers and news outlets continue to perfect the news consumption experience on that form factor, we’ll have a whole new breed to analyze and fret over this time next year.
3-15-11
http://mashable.com/2011/03/15/online-versus-newspaper-news
As of the end of 2010, more people get their news from the Internet than from newspapers — and more ad dollars went to online outlets than to newspapers, too.
In surveys conducted by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 34% of respondents said they read news online within the past 24 hours (as opposed to 31% who favored newspapers); and a full 41% said they get most of their news online, 10% more than those who said they got most of their news from a newspaper.
Of course, the 18-to-29-year-old group overwhelmingly cast their vote with the web; 65% said the Internet was their main news source.
Poynter’s annual State of the Media report showed that the web was the second most popular source of news; local television news is still the number one source for the majority of people. Local TV also led in revenues, with digital media coming in second.
Also, online news media was the only medium that saw growth year-over-year; from radio to television to newspapers and magazines, every other medium saw a decline in audience.
In general, it can be said that text-based news audiences are dwindling. Only 40% of people in the study said they read the news in an online or print newspaper, a 12% drop from five years ago.
Last year marks the first time online advertising outpaced newspaper advertising. The sector grew 13.9% between 2009 and 2010 to reach a $25.8 billion total. Not all of that ad spend went to online news publications; in fact, search advertising continues to dominate the online ad spend landscape.
We’ve been watching the web’s impact on journalism for quite some time — both how the Internet is affecting newsrooms and newspapers and how it’s changing the way viewers and readers get news. With many outlets beefing up their online and mobile strategies even as print sales decline, the figures from Poynter’s research are nostalgia-inducing and predictable at the same time.
After all, once The New York Times admits print’s days are numbered, it’s pretty much a long, slow and painful downward spiral to the point that the newspaper, like the vinyl record, is a relic for collectors and anachronists.
For now, though, we continue to look forward. The Pew Project’s research showed that almost half of Americans in a survey said they got at least some of their news on a mobile device or tablet. And as tablet makers, app makers and news outlets continue to perfect the news consumption experience on that form factor, we’ll have a whole new breed to analyze and fret over this time next year.
Friday, October 29, 2010
US Drops Out of Twenty Least Corrupt Nations
http://my.firedoglake.com/jimwhite/2010/10/26/us-drops-out-of-twenty-least-corrupt-nations-nytimes-ignores-wapo-dissembles/
US Drops Out of Twenty Least Corrupt Nations: NYTimes Ignores, WaPo Dissembles
Jim White
Tuesday October 26, 2010
In a report released today, Transparency International ranks world governments on a corruption scale from least to most corrupt. For the first time, the United States is no longer among the twenty least corrupt nations, dropping to number twenty-two on the list. Despite this important news, the New York Times appears to be ignoring the report entirely, while the Washington Post is reporting on it primarily to point out how far Russia has fallen.
For preparing the report, Transparency International provided this description of corruption and the analysis employed:
Transparency International(TI) defines corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. This definition encompasses corrupt practices in both the public and private sectors. The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranks countries according to the perception of corruption in the public sector. The CPI is an aggregate indicator that combines different sources of information about corruption, making it possible to compare countries.
From the report, we have more on how some countries declined in the corruption index:
With governments committing huge sums to tackle the world’s most pressing problems, from the instability of financial markets to climate change and poverty, corruption remains an obstacle to achieving much needed progress.
Notable among decliners over the past year are some of the countries most affected by a financial crisis precipitated by transparency and integrity deficits.
So, despite Reuters pointing out that the US has fallen out of the twenty least corrupt nations for the first time, why is it that the New York Times would ignore the story entirely, and the Washington Post would primarily note the report to point out how far Russia has fallen? [The Post article does finally, in its next to last paragraph, note the US decline out of the top twenty as being due to "financial scandals", which it doesn't describe further.] Would it be because these “papers of record” have been enablers for the process of abusing entrusted power for private gain? Reporting on mortgage fraud and the favoritism to Wall Street and large banks during the financial crisis at both of these newspapers tended to gloss over the enrichment of high level executives even when they had taken the country to the brink of financial ruin.
There is one other reason why these major newspapers should be covering Transparency International’s report. If we go to the bottom of the list, for the most corrupt nations, we see that Afghanistan is tied with Myanmar for the second most corrupt nation on the list. Iraq is next, at fourth most corrupt. By destroying the governments of these two countries and completely botching any “redevelopment” efforts, the United States has been solely responsible for dramatically increasing corruption on the global scale. Don’t look for any coverage of that point in the New York Times or Washington Post, because I guarantee it won’t happen.
It could be worse, however. Dawn.com, in Pakistan, carries the very misleading headline that Pakistan ranks 34th in the corruption index. The problem is that Transparency International presents its list with the countries numbered from least corrupt to most corrupt. On the list, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore tie for number one at least corrupt and Somalia is number 178, the most corrupt (the US is number twenty-two). Pakistan is in a three-way tie for number 143 as the 34th most corrupt nation. Why didn’t Dawn state Pakistan is 143rd instead of 34th?
US Drops Out of Twenty Least Corrupt Nations: NYTimes Ignores, WaPo Dissembles
Jim White
Tuesday October 26, 2010
In a report released today, Transparency International ranks world governments on a corruption scale from least to most corrupt. For the first time, the United States is no longer among the twenty least corrupt nations, dropping to number twenty-two on the list. Despite this important news, the New York Times appears to be ignoring the report entirely, while the Washington Post is reporting on it primarily to point out how far Russia has fallen.
For preparing the report, Transparency International provided this description of corruption and the analysis employed:
Transparency International(TI) defines corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. This definition encompasses corrupt practices in both the public and private sectors. The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranks countries according to the perception of corruption in the public sector. The CPI is an aggregate indicator that combines different sources of information about corruption, making it possible to compare countries.
From the report, we have more on how some countries declined in the corruption index:
With governments committing huge sums to tackle the world’s most pressing problems, from the instability of financial markets to climate change and poverty, corruption remains an obstacle to achieving much needed progress.
Notable among decliners over the past year are some of the countries most affected by a financial crisis precipitated by transparency and integrity deficits.
So, despite Reuters pointing out that the US has fallen out of the twenty least corrupt nations for the first time, why is it that the New York Times would ignore the story entirely, and the Washington Post would primarily note the report to point out how far Russia has fallen? [The Post article does finally, in its next to last paragraph, note the US decline out of the top twenty as being due to "financial scandals", which it doesn't describe further.] Would it be because these “papers of record” have been enablers for the process of abusing entrusted power for private gain? Reporting on mortgage fraud and the favoritism to Wall Street and large banks during the financial crisis at both of these newspapers tended to gloss over the enrichment of high level executives even when they had taken the country to the brink of financial ruin.
There is one other reason why these major newspapers should be covering Transparency International’s report. If we go to the bottom of the list, for the most corrupt nations, we see that Afghanistan is tied with Myanmar for the second most corrupt nation on the list. Iraq is next, at fourth most corrupt. By destroying the governments of these two countries and completely botching any “redevelopment” efforts, the United States has been solely responsible for dramatically increasing corruption on the global scale. Don’t look for any coverage of that point in the New York Times or Washington Post, because I guarantee it won’t happen.
It could be worse, however. Dawn.com, in Pakistan, carries the very misleading headline that Pakistan ranks 34th in the corruption index. The problem is that Transparency International presents its list with the countries numbered from least corrupt to most corrupt. On the list, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore tie for number one at least corrupt and Somalia is number 178, the most corrupt (the US is number twenty-two). Pakistan is in a three-way tie for number 143 as the 34th most corrupt nation. Why didn’t Dawn state Pakistan is 143rd instead of 34th?
Friday, October 2, 2009
Political Columnist William Safire Dies At 79
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113255309
Political Columnist William Safire Dies At 79
by David Folkenflik
September 27, 2009
William Safire, the savvy speech stylist who turned phrases for President Nixon and later conjured up Pulitzer Prize-winning contrarian columns for The New York Times, died Sunday at 79. Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty said he died of pancreatic cancer at a hospice in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington, D.C.
"I join with my father in saying how much everyone at The New York Times is saddened by Bill Safire's death," New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a written statement. "For decades, Bill's columns ... delighted our readers with his insightful political commentary, his thoughtful analysis of our national discourse and, of course, his wonderful sermons on the use and abuse of language. Bill will be greatly missed."
Safire is perhaps best known now as the first true conservative columnist for The New York Times or as the phrase-parsing wordsmith for the Times' Sunday magazine in his column on language usage. But Safire's life and career served up ample proof that there are second — and even third — acts in American life.
He was born in New York City on Dec. 17, 1929, as William Safir, but later added the "e" to match his name's spelling to pronunciation. Safire attended Syracuse University, started public life as a reporter and, after a stint in the U.S. Army and then another turn as a reporter, became a resourceful publicist; and then he got a big break.
In 1959, at the Moscow World's Fair, he lured the young American Vice President Richard Nixon into the model home built by Safire's client.
A crush of reporters trapped Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The ensuing "kitchen debate" between the two drew international attention for the combative American politician — as well as plenty of headlines for the home builder.
The former vice president, impressed, stayed in touch and Safire found himself writing speeches for Nixon's successful presidential campaign in 1968. That November, Safire took a story from the campaign trail and wove it into Nixon's victory speech. The president-elect spoke of a small town he had visited:
"Five times the population was there in the dust," Nixon recalled. "Almost impossible to see, but a teenager held up the sign: 'Bring us together.' And that will be the great objective of this administration at the outset, to bring the American people together."
Safire joined a White House press office stocked with talented and now-famous figures, including Patrick Buchanan, Diane Sawyer and David Gergen. And Safire was particularly playful as he drafted speeches for key White House officials. But many of them, rather than drawing Americans together, were caustic and divisive during a time of wars and mass protests.
One classic Safire coinage surfaced in a speech he wrote for Vice President Spiro Agnew, who was lashing out at critics of the Nixon administration. Safire decided to lean on alliteration as Agnew memorably dismissed the "nattering nabobs of negativism." (A nabob, naturally, being a governor of an Indian state during the Mogul empire.)
"The code of the speechwriters is, you never claim a phrase," Safire told NPR's Renee Montagne in 2008. "But the vice president did say, 'I got that from Safire.' And it was either that or 'the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.' And he went with the better one."
Safire left the Nixon administration in early 1973 and began writing periodic columns for The Washington Post. Later that year, as the Watergate abuses of power scandal continued to snowball, Arthur Sulzberger Sr., publisher of The New York Times, tapped him to become the paper's first conservative op-ed columnist. It caused a small uproar within the paper and journalism circles. Such leading writers as former Times reporter David Halberstam argued it was a betrayal to hire a Nixon apologist — someone who had crafted rhetoric for an administration whose abuses of power were becoming more evident.
For conservatives and Republicans, his presence at the Times gave them hope.
"Here he was just sitting smack dab in the middle of this very liberal newspaper, and giving no quarter nor asking for any, and writing just what he thought about conservative issues and not backing down," former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein told NPR when Safire retired from his political column in 2005. "And this was a great beacon to us in the years of darkness."
And Safire's critics started to cool down when it emerged that his telephones had been tapped, too.
Safire did indeed write largely in favor of Republican and conservative causes, but a strong libertarian streak led him to avoid any orthodoxy. He frequently trumpeted subsequent presidential scandals, largely but not exclusively involving Democrats, such as "Lance-gate" — the banking affair that dragged down Bert Lance, President Jimmy Carter's budget director.
Safire won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978 for those columns; as the selection committee dryly put it, his writing was "credited with compelling the Carter Administration to rethink the career of Mr. Lance." And yet the episode was revealing in another way, too. Sharp-edged in print, Safire was quite amiable in person. The writer and disgraced presidential staffer later became close friends.
Over the years, Safire devised other memorable coinages: For example, he called then-first lady Hillary Clinton "a congenital liar" for saying she had not wanted to fire members of the White House travel staff in an early flap of the Clinton presidency. And he also pursued his own fixed ideas, even when others believed they were untrue. He wrote favorably several times about the claim that a key al-Qaida plotter had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official ahead of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Although Bush administration officials cited it to help justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Czech government said it couldn't vouch for the incident, and the 9/11 Commission concluded there was no credible evidence it occurred.
But Safire would not be defined by politics alone. Since 1979, he wrote a weekly language column for the Sunday Times magazine section, and he also wrote historical novels, spy thrillers and political dictionaries.
It was all part of his lifelong drive to explore language and meaning. Safire once told NPR that political rhetoric sought out "word pictures."
"For example, when somebody 'leaves under a cloud.' That's been used so often that it lost its punch," Safire said. "But when you say someone 'leaves in a hail of dead cats,' all of a sudden, that'll wake somebody up. And a vivid metaphor can make a speech, and also it can make a charge."
He is survived by his wife, the former Helene Belmar Julius, a model, pianist and jewelry designer; their two children, Mark and Annabel; and a granddaughter.
Political Columnist William Safire Dies At 79
by David Folkenflik
September 27, 2009
William Safire, the savvy speech stylist who turned phrases for President Nixon and later conjured up Pulitzer Prize-winning contrarian columns for The New York Times, died Sunday at 79. Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty said he died of pancreatic cancer at a hospice in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington, D.C.
"I join with my father in saying how much everyone at The New York Times is saddened by Bill Safire's death," New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a written statement. "For decades, Bill's columns ... delighted our readers with his insightful political commentary, his thoughtful analysis of our national discourse and, of course, his wonderful sermons on the use and abuse of language. Bill will be greatly missed."
Safire is perhaps best known now as the first true conservative columnist for The New York Times or as the phrase-parsing wordsmith for the Times' Sunday magazine in his column on language usage. But Safire's life and career served up ample proof that there are second — and even third — acts in American life.
He was born in New York City on Dec. 17, 1929, as William Safir, but later added the "e" to match his name's spelling to pronunciation. Safire attended Syracuse University, started public life as a reporter and, after a stint in the U.S. Army and then another turn as a reporter, became a resourceful publicist; and then he got a big break.
In 1959, at the Moscow World's Fair, he lured the young American Vice President Richard Nixon into the model home built by Safire's client.
A crush of reporters trapped Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The ensuing "kitchen debate" between the two drew international attention for the combative American politician — as well as plenty of headlines for the home builder.
The former vice president, impressed, stayed in touch and Safire found himself writing speeches for Nixon's successful presidential campaign in 1968. That November, Safire took a story from the campaign trail and wove it into Nixon's victory speech. The president-elect spoke of a small town he had visited:
"Five times the population was there in the dust," Nixon recalled. "Almost impossible to see, but a teenager held up the sign: 'Bring us together.' And that will be the great objective of this administration at the outset, to bring the American people together."
Safire joined a White House press office stocked with talented and now-famous figures, including Patrick Buchanan, Diane Sawyer and David Gergen. And Safire was particularly playful as he drafted speeches for key White House officials. But many of them, rather than drawing Americans together, were caustic and divisive during a time of wars and mass protests.
One classic Safire coinage surfaced in a speech he wrote for Vice President Spiro Agnew, who was lashing out at critics of the Nixon administration. Safire decided to lean on alliteration as Agnew memorably dismissed the "nattering nabobs of negativism." (A nabob, naturally, being a governor of an Indian state during the Mogul empire.)
"The code of the speechwriters is, you never claim a phrase," Safire told NPR's Renee Montagne in 2008. "But the vice president did say, 'I got that from Safire.' And it was either that or 'the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.' And he went with the better one."
Safire left the Nixon administration in early 1973 and began writing periodic columns for The Washington Post. Later that year, as the Watergate abuses of power scandal continued to snowball, Arthur Sulzberger Sr., publisher of The New York Times, tapped him to become the paper's first conservative op-ed columnist. It caused a small uproar within the paper and journalism circles. Such leading writers as former Times reporter David Halberstam argued it was a betrayal to hire a Nixon apologist — someone who had crafted rhetoric for an administration whose abuses of power were becoming more evident.
For conservatives and Republicans, his presence at the Times gave them hope.
"Here he was just sitting smack dab in the middle of this very liberal newspaper, and giving no quarter nor asking for any, and writing just what he thought about conservative issues and not backing down," former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein told NPR when Safire retired from his political column in 2005. "And this was a great beacon to us in the years of darkness."
And Safire's critics started to cool down when it emerged that his telephones had been tapped, too.
Safire did indeed write largely in favor of Republican and conservative causes, but a strong libertarian streak led him to avoid any orthodoxy. He frequently trumpeted subsequent presidential scandals, largely but not exclusively involving Democrats, such as "Lance-gate" — the banking affair that dragged down Bert Lance, President Jimmy Carter's budget director.
Safire won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978 for those columns; as the selection committee dryly put it, his writing was "credited with compelling the Carter Administration to rethink the career of Mr. Lance." And yet the episode was revealing in another way, too. Sharp-edged in print, Safire was quite amiable in person. The writer and disgraced presidential staffer later became close friends.
Over the years, Safire devised other memorable coinages: For example, he called then-first lady Hillary Clinton "a congenital liar" for saying she had not wanted to fire members of the White House travel staff in an early flap of the Clinton presidency. And he also pursued his own fixed ideas, even when others believed they were untrue. He wrote favorably several times about the claim that a key al-Qaida plotter had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official ahead of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Although Bush administration officials cited it to help justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Czech government said it couldn't vouch for the incident, and the 9/11 Commission concluded there was no credible evidence it occurred.
But Safire would not be defined by politics alone. Since 1979, he wrote a weekly language column for the Sunday Times magazine section, and he also wrote historical novels, spy thrillers and political dictionaries.
It was all part of his lifelong drive to explore language and meaning. Safire once told NPR that political rhetoric sought out "word pictures."
"For example, when somebody 'leaves under a cloud.' That's been used so often that it lost its punch," Safire said. "But when you say someone 'leaves in a hail of dead cats,' all of a sudden, that'll wake somebody up. And a vivid metaphor can make a speech, and also it can make a charge."
He is survived by his wife, the former Helene Belmar Julius, a model, pianist and jewelry designer; their two children, Mark and Annabel; and a granddaughter.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Ace Hoffmann, Thomas Friedman & Nuclear Power
September 24th, 2009
When I first read Thomas Friedman's most recent use of denigrating terminology ("wimps") to describe those who disagreed with him, I thought he was just a bit emotional.
Then I went back through the record, and this Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times author actually is rather habitual about it. Those who opposed his gas tax idea in 2006 were also "wimps," and in 2008 they had no "guts." Now, any environmentalist who opposes nuclear power has earned the moniker.
Friedman hasn't changed.
And nor has the New York Times. They are the classic newspaper of America, they provide the indelible historic record, and even in this electronic era, they still hold sway over public opinion, political discourse, and thus, over public policy, as only a few other media outlets can even aspire to, let alone, come close to.
And so they are the perfect place for a nincompoop to poop nincomshit. Hence, Friedman has found a home.
Friedman is playing dirty, rotten pool with the facts, but how could such shoddy material slip past the editors at the New York Times? Not by accident. Unflagging support for government policies on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and for various wars, despots, agendas and so forth, have been a part of The New York Times' editorial process for decades.
The government loves a public that is asleep about the dangers of nukes. Friedman wants to help with that. Romancing France's nuclear policies is especially useful right now for the pro-nuclear agenda, because the two large French nuclear "corporations" (arms of the government, really, especially in the case of AREVA) are both buying American nuclear power companies, enrichment companies, mining companies, etc.. Once invested, they will use local employees to sway public policy based on French government interests, not those of the majority of Americans, who want to preserve our land and protect our children's DNA. Radiation destroys our DNA, and the way the French handle their nuclear problems is to lie about them, to sink protestor's boats (and even kill protesters), and to bribe foreign workers. Yet Friedman calls us "wimps" for not embracing their murderous nuclear habit. The French also smoke a lot more cigarettes than, say, Californians. Just thought I'd mention it.
Friedman would love to whip the public into a fierce frenzy. He uses the word "wimps" to describe those who oppose his point of view. Wimps are made to be broken, of course. By bigger wimps.
The opposite of building more nukes isn't just "not building more nukes." It's also shutting down the ones that are currently operating. But that view never makes it into the venerable (by some vestige of their former reputation) New York Times. Only "build a lot more nukes" versus "build a few more nukes" or maybe, once in a while, "don't build any more right now." But NEVER will the New York Times give space to "shut 'em all down immediately" which is, actually, the scientifically, economically, and medically sound thing to do. Thus, the patriotic thing to do. Not doing so allows about 10 tons of hazardous high-level radioactive waste to be produced each day in America, for which no valid (safe, economical) solution exists because plain old physics gets in the way. Friedman calls Yucca Mountain "totally safe." He's totally wrong. And getting the waste to Yucca Mountain isn't safe, either. And leaving it where it is? That's the worst choice of all. Ten tons worse every day in America, and about 50 tons worse around the world.
Global warming? Radiation is "hotter than hell." Each radioactive burst is a little fire, its "heat" stirs and shakes up everything around it: It spins molecules around, making poisonous mirrors of themselves. It destroys DNA. It breaks large signal proteins. It puts holes in cell walls. It creates thousands of "free radicals" at once.
And there are so many radioactive atoms released in a nuclear accident! It is so great a number, that nobody expresses radiation in raw numbers. It is often filtered down into Curies, for instance. A Curie is 37 billion atomic disintegrations per second.
Chernobyl released about 15 billion Curies of radiation, in mixed isotopes. Chernobyl has probably killed 300,000 people, yet pro-nukers claim it only killed 60 or 100 or some other unrealistic number, because they swear that a little radiation is good for you, because, they say, it stimulates the immune system. This flawed and simplistic hypothesis is known as "Hormesis." Randomly poisoning our children with excess radiation should not be allowed at all, but it is.
Your immune system will be plenty stimulated throughout your life. This is an unnecessary and unwarranted additional burden.
Being allowed to release what lax regulators call "small" amounts of radiation into the environment is a fundamental principle of business -- of economic survival -- for virtually ALL commercial nuclear facilities. They MUST leak or they will, themselves, become overwhelmed with radiation.
Supposedly "only" 15 million Curies of radiation were released at Three Mile Island, although the exact amount is unknown and it could be ten times that, or worse. Yet Friedman naively believes that there were "no deaths or injuries" from TMI. Not one? It doesn't even fit the official government description of Linear, No Threshold (LNT) effects from radiation, which is the theory that radiation effects occur at any dose, and in a ratio according to dose size.
The LNT theory, widely accepted in the scientific community, and in direct contradiction to Hormesis, does NOT mean that a low dose only causes a mild illness. Instead, it suggests that the rate of cancers will be approximately proportional to dose. But cancer's no fun, even if only a few people get it. I've had it. More than a few people are getting it. And radiation is a primary cause of cancer, leukemia, heart disease, and a thousand other ailments.
Friedman calls those who do not endorse the random killing of humans and other living things "wimps." What are we to do when the New York Times allows him to do this, and lets him call anyone who opposes his views "wimps" year after year? Challenge him to a duel? How uncivilized! Ask them to print our responses? How hopeless!
Scorn them on the Internet? Sure, it's a start.
************************************************
** Ace Hoffman, Owner & Chief Programmer, The Animated Software Co.
** POB 1936, Carlsbad CA 92018
** U.S. & Canada (800) 551-2726; elsewhere: (760) 720-7261
** home page: www.animatedsoftware.com
** email: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
************************************************
When I first read Thomas Friedman's most recent use of denigrating terminology ("wimps") to describe those who disagreed with him, I thought he was just a bit emotional.
Then I went back through the record, and this Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times author actually is rather habitual about it. Those who opposed his gas tax idea in 2006 were also "wimps," and in 2008 they had no "guts." Now, any environmentalist who opposes nuclear power has earned the moniker.
Friedman hasn't changed.
And nor has the New York Times. They are the classic newspaper of America, they provide the indelible historic record, and even in this electronic era, they still hold sway over public opinion, political discourse, and thus, over public policy, as only a few other media outlets can even aspire to, let alone, come close to.
And so they are the perfect place for a nincompoop to poop nincomshit. Hence, Friedman has found a home.
Friedman is playing dirty, rotten pool with the facts, but how could such shoddy material slip past the editors at the New York Times? Not by accident. Unflagging support for government policies on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and for various wars, despots, agendas and so forth, have been a part of The New York Times' editorial process for decades.
The government loves a public that is asleep about the dangers of nukes. Friedman wants to help with that. Romancing France's nuclear policies is especially useful right now for the pro-nuclear agenda, because the two large French nuclear "corporations" (arms of the government, really, especially in the case of AREVA) are both buying American nuclear power companies, enrichment companies, mining companies, etc.. Once invested, they will use local employees to sway public policy based on French government interests, not those of the majority of Americans, who want to preserve our land and protect our children's DNA. Radiation destroys our DNA, and the way the French handle their nuclear problems is to lie about them, to sink protestor's boats (and even kill protesters), and to bribe foreign workers. Yet Friedman calls us "wimps" for not embracing their murderous nuclear habit. The French also smoke a lot more cigarettes than, say, Californians. Just thought I'd mention it.
Friedman would love to whip the public into a fierce frenzy. He uses the word "wimps" to describe those who oppose his point of view. Wimps are made to be broken, of course. By bigger wimps.
The opposite of building more nukes isn't just "not building more nukes." It's also shutting down the ones that are currently operating. But that view never makes it into the venerable (by some vestige of their former reputation) New York Times. Only "build a lot more nukes" versus "build a few more nukes" or maybe, once in a while, "don't build any more right now." But NEVER will the New York Times give space to "shut 'em all down immediately" which is, actually, the scientifically, economically, and medically sound thing to do. Thus, the patriotic thing to do. Not doing so allows about 10 tons of hazardous high-level radioactive waste to be produced each day in America, for which no valid (safe, economical) solution exists because plain old physics gets in the way. Friedman calls Yucca Mountain "totally safe." He's totally wrong. And getting the waste to Yucca Mountain isn't safe, either. And leaving it where it is? That's the worst choice of all. Ten tons worse every day in America, and about 50 tons worse around the world.
Global warming? Radiation is "hotter than hell." Each radioactive burst is a little fire, its "heat" stirs and shakes up everything around it: It spins molecules around, making poisonous mirrors of themselves. It destroys DNA. It breaks large signal proteins. It puts holes in cell walls. It creates thousands of "free radicals" at once.
And there are so many radioactive atoms released in a nuclear accident! It is so great a number, that nobody expresses radiation in raw numbers. It is often filtered down into Curies, for instance. A Curie is 37 billion atomic disintegrations per second.
Chernobyl released about 15 billion Curies of radiation, in mixed isotopes. Chernobyl has probably killed 300,000 people, yet pro-nukers claim it only killed 60 or 100 or some other unrealistic number, because they swear that a little radiation is good for you, because, they say, it stimulates the immune system. This flawed and simplistic hypothesis is known as "Hormesis." Randomly poisoning our children with excess radiation should not be allowed at all, but it is.
Your immune system will be plenty stimulated throughout your life. This is an unnecessary and unwarranted additional burden.
Being allowed to release what lax regulators call "small" amounts of radiation into the environment is a fundamental principle of business -- of economic survival -- for virtually ALL commercial nuclear facilities. They MUST leak or they will, themselves, become overwhelmed with radiation.
Supposedly "only" 15 million Curies of radiation were released at Three Mile Island, although the exact amount is unknown and it could be ten times that, or worse. Yet Friedman naively believes that there were "no deaths or injuries" from TMI. Not one? It doesn't even fit the official government description of Linear, No Threshold (LNT) effects from radiation, which is the theory that radiation effects occur at any dose, and in a ratio according to dose size.
The LNT theory, widely accepted in the scientific community, and in direct contradiction to Hormesis, does NOT mean that a low dose only causes a mild illness. Instead, it suggests that the rate of cancers will be approximately proportional to dose. But cancer's no fun, even if only a few people get it. I've had it. More than a few people are getting it. And radiation is a primary cause of cancer, leukemia, heart disease, and a thousand other ailments.
Friedman calls those who do not endorse the random killing of humans and other living things "wimps." What are we to do when the New York Times allows him to do this, and lets him call anyone who opposes his views "wimps" year after year? Challenge him to a duel? How uncivilized! Ask them to print our responses? How hopeless!
Scorn them on the Internet? Sure, it's a start.
************************************************
** Ace Hoffman, Owner & Chief Programmer, The Animated Software Co.
** POB 1936, Carlsbad CA 92018
** U.S. & Canada (800) 551-2726; elsewhere: (760) 720-7261
** home page: www.animatedsoftware.com
** email: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
************************************************
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Resolution condemning Honduras coup ignored
http://theoggblog.com/?p=111
Resolution condemning Honduras coup ignored by New York Times
Jul 17th, 2009 by Chuck Ogg.
The situation is getting worse in Honduras. US representatives Bill Delahunt, José Serrano and Jim McGovern are pushing a resolution condemning the coup.
But you wouldn’t know this reading the New York Times.
In fact, the story no longer merits front-page headlines. If you dig deeper, you discover that the chief negotiator said Thursday a series of compromises had been achieved between the two “camps” claiming the right to rule Honduras. We are given a sense of optimism with the caution that tensions remain high and conflicts remain–particularly about who will be president. But this agreement is presented as progress. Still they repeat the lies of the coup leaders “fears” about President Zelaya seeking another term and subvert the Constitution. And in the name of “objectivity,” the criminal gang of coup leaders are referred to by the more clinical term “de facto government.”
To it’s credit the New York Times reported correctly the CID-Gallup poll showing Zelaya remains more popular than his installed replacement, with, 46 percent of Hondurans hold a favorable opinion of Zelaya, compared to 30 percent for Micheletti.” Apparently many did not, according to FAIR’s Counterspin, reporting instead figuresd skewed the opposite direction.
But missing from all such news sources have the most serious developments. According to the School of the Americas Watch, the situation has been getting worse, with the “The Committee of Family Members of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH)” publishing a report “detailing hundreds of cases of human rights abuses committed by the coup regime, including four political assassinations.”
Fortunately Zelaya’s supporters are not limited to Honduras, they exist here in the United States as well. The House resolution 630 condemns “the June 28 military coup in Honduras, led by graduates of the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC).”
Resolution condemning Honduras coup ignored by New York Times
Jul 17th, 2009 by Chuck Ogg.
The situation is getting worse in Honduras. US representatives Bill Delahunt, José Serrano and Jim McGovern are pushing a resolution condemning the coup.
But you wouldn’t know this reading the New York Times.
In fact, the story no longer merits front-page headlines. If you dig deeper, you discover that the chief negotiator said Thursday a series of compromises had been achieved between the two “camps” claiming the right to rule Honduras. We are given a sense of optimism with the caution that tensions remain high and conflicts remain–particularly about who will be president. But this agreement is presented as progress. Still they repeat the lies of the coup leaders “fears” about President Zelaya seeking another term and subvert the Constitution. And in the name of “objectivity,” the criminal gang of coup leaders are referred to by the more clinical term “de facto government.”
To it’s credit the New York Times reported correctly the CID-Gallup poll showing Zelaya remains more popular than his installed replacement, with, 46 percent of Hondurans hold a favorable opinion of Zelaya, compared to 30 percent for Micheletti.” Apparently many did not, according to FAIR’s Counterspin, reporting instead figuresd skewed the opposite direction.
But missing from all such news sources have the most serious developments. According to the School of the Americas Watch, the situation has been getting worse, with the “The Committee of Family Members of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH)” publishing a report “detailing hundreds of cases of human rights abuses committed by the coup regime, including four political assassinations.”
Fortunately Zelaya’s supporters are not limited to Honduras, they exist here in the United States as well. The House resolution 630 condemns “the June 28 military coup in Honduras, led by graduates of the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC).”
Monday, June 29, 2009
The New York Times and Iran
“Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism. It is perhaps too much to hope that Iran’s experience will prevent the rest of Mossadeqs in other countries, but that experience may at least strengthen the hands of more reasonable and far-seeing leaders.”
New York Times, August 1954
This quote should be remembered whenever mainstream pundits claim those in the Middle East aren't ready for democracy. In fact, Iran had a vibrant democracy over 50 years ago, and it was squashed by the CIA and US oil companies because Mossadeq was demanding a fair cut for the Iranian people on the oil business.
Likewise any talk in the mainstream press claiming outrage over election fraud in Iran shouldn't be taken seriously after the Bush swindles of 2000 and 2004. At this point, the US establishment has less credibility defending democracy than it does condemning torture and war crimes.
Ahmadinejad's reelection may be a con, but I've yet to see any evidence of it, even if the dude is a creep. At this point, this just looks like another attempted electoral coup funded by the Orwellian named National Endowment for Democracy to put another guy who will shove the IMF agenda down his country's throat while feigning to be a paragon of democracy...
http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/pers-j19.shtml
The New York Times and Iran: Journalism as state provocation
19 June 2009
Bill Van Auken
In an editorial published Thursday entitled “Iran’s Nonrepublic,” the New York Times once again denounced the country’s presidential elections, declaring that “government authorities bulldozed the results” and that the victory of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was “bogus.”
At the same time, echoing a statement made by President Barack Obama the day before, the newspaper warned, “Given its history with Iran, the United States must take special care not to be seen as interfering.”
The Times editorial board does not believe that this stricture applies to itself. Since the results of the June 12 election were announced, the newspaper has pursued a journalistic policy of out-and-out provocation in service of the imperialist interests that official Washington insists it must not be seen as pursuing.
The Times observes no standard of journalistic objectivity, reporting as fact that the Iranian election was stolen, without providing a scintilla of proof to back it up. Instead, it uncritically repeats the insistence of the Mousavi camp that it is so.
The newspaper has not even bothered to report, much less analyze, the vote totals, which are readily available by both city and province and refute the claims made that the ballots were rigged to give Ahmadinejad a 60 percent margin across the board.
On the contrary, they show that Mousavi won—in some cases by a two-to-one margin—precisely in the areas that are now the center of the election protests—the wealthier suburbs of Tehran, Shiraz and elsewhere.
The US has intense interests in Iran, with the Obama administration fighting wars on its eastern and western borders. There is, moreover, the long history of hostility between the two countries, stemming from Washington’s previous domination of Iran and its oil wealth through its dictatorial client regime under the Shah, and the revolution that brought that regime to an end. Given these interests and this history, conscientious coverage of Iranian politics, particularly by US journalists, calls for not only objectivity, but also sensitivity to Washington’s intervention in Iran’s affairs and attempts to influence its politics.
The Times coverage, however, exhibits no such objectivity whatsoever. The newspaper has simply ignored commentary from prominent analysts of the region who have suggested that the claims of a rigged election are not supported by the evidence. These include Anthony Cordesman, the chief military strategy and Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Hillary Mann Leverett, the former chief Iran analyst on George W. Bush’s National Security Council, and her husband Flynt Leverett, a long time CIA analyst and NSC staffer, who together wrote a column entitled “Ahmadinejad won. Get over it;” and George Friedman, the head of the Stratfor private intelligence service.
All of them said that the right-wing populist Ahmadinejad retained substantial popular support in Iran, particularly among the rural poor and more oppressed social layers, and warned against “Iran experts” who based their analyses on wishful thinking and contact with a more affluent, English-speaking minority in Iran.
The fact that the Times employs its claims of fraud to demand a new election—calling the Guardian Council’s call for recounting ballots a “cynical gesture”—is highly significant. The newspaper is not interested in correcting vote fraud, but rather in bringing pressure to bear within the Iranian state to effect a political coup.
This was spelled out explicitly Thursday by Times foreign affairs columnist Roger Cohen, who speculated that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “will come to view Ahmadinejad as a liability.” He continued, “In Mousavi he has a credible vehicle for a reform of the regime that serves to preserve it... The supreme leader can find the means to reverse course.”
This succinctly sums up Washington’s aims—to exert pressure on the Iranian state to carry out a change at the top that will render the regime more amenable to US interests in the region and more open to American capital within Iran. The concern for democracy, while sincerely held by millions of Iranians, is for the Times, as for the US government, merely a pretext.
No doubt there were instances of vote-rigging in Iran, but this is the rule, not the exception, in elections around the globe. And not infrequently, particularly in the so-called lesser developed countries, elections end in charges of fraud by the losing party that trigger mass demonstrations and even armed clashes.
Just last April, elections in Moldova ended in violent protests, with the losing party claiming fraud and the winning one saying it was the victim of an attempted coup. In November of last year in Nicaragua, nationwide local elections in which the opposition claimed irregularities led to confrontations involving thousands of people armed with bats, rocks, machetes and guns. Last July, charges of election fraud led to mass rioting in the capital of Mongolia. There is no record of the Times becoming particularly exercised about any of these events.
Particularly instructive is the attitude taken by the newspaper toward the disputed 2006 presidential election in Mexico, when the conservative candidate Felipe Calderon—with just 36 percent of the vote and amid substantiated charges of gross electoral fraud—claimed victory over his left-nationalist opponent, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The Times called for no new election then, and was largely indifferent to the evidence that the election had been rigged. While the massive crowds that took to the streets of Mexico City were comparable to those seen in Tehran, the newspaper showed only disdain for the protesters.
On July 7, just five days after the contested vote totals were announced, the Times haughtily editorialized: “Mr. Lopez Obrador has occasionally furthered his political career by inviting supporters to take to the streets... but he should resist inciting mass protests, which would harm Mexico’s stability and add to his image as a less-than-committed democrat.”
In Mexico, the victim of vote fraud was told to stand down in the interests of “stability,” while mass protests by his supporters were portrayed as a threat to democracy—the exact inverse of the newspaper’s approach to the Iranian events. Why the difference? In Mexico, the candidate favored by Washington won, and in Iran, the White House seeks not stability, but destabilization.
Even closer to home, the approach of the newspaper to the claims of a stolen Iranian election stands in stark contrast to the open theft of the 2000 election by the Republican Party, which only two years before had sought to carry out an extra-constitutional coup against an elected president by means of a bogus impeachment—an operation that the Times had helped legitimize.
In that election, it was not a matter of the government offering a partial recount of disputed ballots in Florida, but a direct intervention by the US Supreme Court to stop a statewide recount that had been ordered by the Florida Supreme Court to insure that all votes were properly counted. Did the Times advocate mass protests or demand a new election? Far from it. The newspaper made itself an accomplice to this unprecedented assault on democratic rights—the suppression of the vote to install the candidate who had lost the popular vote nationally.
In the course of the bitter battle over the Florida vote, a Times editorial demanded an end to “wild talk of vote-stealing and coups d’état”—precisely what was happening. And after the US Supreme Court selected Bush, negating the will of the majority of voters, the newspaper demanded that the decision be accepted in order to “unify the nation.” It praised Democratic candidate Al Gore for capitulating, calling it “a patriotic duty.”
Neither the Times nor the US government are in a position to give lessons to Iran or anyone else on the subject of democracy. The American electoral system, rife with fraud, is controlled lock, stock and barrel by two parties of big business whose national candidates are vetted for their loyalty to a financial oligarchy.
Leading US politicians—including John Kerry in an op-ed piece published by the Times Thursday—have insisted that the US must keep a low profile in Iran because of its role in organizing the 1953 coup that overthrew the nationalist prime minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, and ushered in the 26-year torture regime of the Shah. By the same token, the editors of the Times should keep their mouths shut.
In 1953, their correspondent in Tehran, Kennett Love, was not only a willing conduit for CIA disinformation, but acknowledged participating directly in the coup. He subsequently wrote of giving an Iranian army tank column instructions to attack Mossadeq’s house. Afterwards, the Times celebrated the coup and demanded unconditional support for the Shah’s regime.
Little has changed since. It is not difficult to find evidence that the Times acts—both in its news coverage and its editorial line—as a major instrument of US foreign policy. Its main function is to provide justifications for the policies pursued by American imperialism around the globe, while manipulating public opinion at home and abroad to support them. As the “newspaper of record,” it sets the agenda for much of the US media, which echoes its line.
There was, of course, the well-known and criminal role played by the newspaper in promoting—and through its senior correspondent Judith Miller helping to fabricate—the lies of the Bush administration about “weapons of mass destruction” that were used as the pretext for the war against Iraq.
Then there was the newspaper’s endorsement of the abortive April 2002 coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The Times praised the sections of the Venezuelan military that had “intervened and handed power to a respected business leader.” It argued that, as a result of the armed overthrow of an elected president, “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened.” It likewise helped Washington cover its tracks, claiming—incredibly—that the coup was “a purely Venezuelan affair.”
More recently, there was the newspaper’s response—both its reporting and editorials—to the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war. Using the same methods as in Iran—contempt for journalistic objectivity, the retailing of claims made by Washington and its allies as fact and disregarding of all evidence to the contrary—the Times presented the war as an unprovoked act of Russian aggression. It willfully ignored undeniable evidence that the fighting began as an unprovoked and brutal attack by Georgian forces on Tskhinvali, the capital of Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia.
The Times cast the conflict as “Russia’s war of ambition,” an attempt by Vladimir Putin “to re-impose by force and intimidation as much of the old Soviet sphere of influence as he can get away with.” Facts on the ground, reported by monitors in Georgia from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) among others, belied this account and pointed to the US using Georgia as its proxy in an act of aggression against Russia itself.
In the case of the present crisis in Iran, the Times has employed all of these methods of distortion and deceit on a grand scale, in an effort that was prepared well before the elections were held.
Leading this effort is Executive Editor Bill Keller, who is arguably the most morally compromised editor in the US today—and that’s saying something! It was Keller who, at the request of the Bush administration, withheld a story on the National Security Agency’s illegal domestic spying operation until after the 2004 election, playing what may have been a decisive role in delivering Bush a second term.
He was recently dispatched to Tehran to write “Memos from Iran.” The extraordinary character of this assignment is shown in the fact that between taking over as the newspaper’s senior editor in July 2003 and his trip to Iran, Keller—the newspaper’s man in Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet Union—is credited by the Times web site with writing precisely six articles, none of them news stories.
Keller’s presence is evidence that the Times is involved in a major operation. He was accompanied to Tehran by a number of others, including the vicious anti-socialist foreign affairs columnist Roger Cohen. A veteran propagandist for US imperialist interests, Cohen has churned out justifications for the US intervention in the Balkans, the war against Iraq, the US policy in Georgia, and now the destabilization effort in Iran.
In the days of Kennett Love, the CIA put journalists on its payroll to secure their collaboration. With the likes of Keller and Cohen, this is no longer necessary. The lavishly-paid senior columnists and editors at the Times don’t need to be bribed. Their social interests are naturally in sync with the aims of US imperialist policy.
The seamless intersection of the news and views published in America’s leading newspaper with the interests of US imperialism and its ruling elite is both a symptom and contributing factor in the advanced decay of democratic processes in the United States.
It poses the urgent necessity of building a new independent socialist media of the working class, the task being carried forward by the World Socialist Web Site.
New York Times, August 1954
This quote should be remembered whenever mainstream pundits claim those in the Middle East aren't ready for democracy. In fact, Iran had a vibrant democracy over 50 years ago, and it was squashed by the CIA and US oil companies because Mossadeq was demanding a fair cut for the Iranian people on the oil business.
Likewise any talk in the mainstream press claiming outrage over election fraud in Iran shouldn't be taken seriously after the Bush swindles of 2000 and 2004. At this point, the US establishment has less credibility defending democracy than it does condemning torture and war crimes.
Ahmadinejad's reelection may be a con, but I've yet to see any evidence of it, even if the dude is a creep. At this point, this just looks like another attempted electoral coup funded by the Orwellian named National Endowment for Democracy to put another guy who will shove the IMF agenda down his country's throat while feigning to be a paragon of democracy...
http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/pers-j19.shtml
The New York Times and Iran: Journalism as state provocation
19 June 2009
Bill Van Auken
In an editorial published Thursday entitled “Iran’s Nonrepublic,” the New York Times once again denounced the country’s presidential elections, declaring that “government authorities bulldozed the results” and that the victory of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was “bogus.”
At the same time, echoing a statement made by President Barack Obama the day before, the newspaper warned, “Given its history with Iran, the United States must take special care not to be seen as interfering.”
The Times editorial board does not believe that this stricture applies to itself. Since the results of the June 12 election were announced, the newspaper has pursued a journalistic policy of out-and-out provocation in service of the imperialist interests that official Washington insists it must not be seen as pursuing.
The Times observes no standard of journalistic objectivity, reporting as fact that the Iranian election was stolen, without providing a scintilla of proof to back it up. Instead, it uncritically repeats the insistence of the Mousavi camp that it is so.
The newspaper has not even bothered to report, much less analyze, the vote totals, which are readily available by both city and province and refute the claims made that the ballots were rigged to give Ahmadinejad a 60 percent margin across the board.
On the contrary, they show that Mousavi won—in some cases by a two-to-one margin—precisely in the areas that are now the center of the election protests—the wealthier suburbs of Tehran, Shiraz and elsewhere.
The US has intense interests in Iran, with the Obama administration fighting wars on its eastern and western borders. There is, moreover, the long history of hostility between the two countries, stemming from Washington’s previous domination of Iran and its oil wealth through its dictatorial client regime under the Shah, and the revolution that brought that regime to an end. Given these interests and this history, conscientious coverage of Iranian politics, particularly by US journalists, calls for not only objectivity, but also sensitivity to Washington’s intervention in Iran’s affairs and attempts to influence its politics.
The Times coverage, however, exhibits no such objectivity whatsoever. The newspaper has simply ignored commentary from prominent analysts of the region who have suggested that the claims of a rigged election are not supported by the evidence. These include Anthony Cordesman, the chief military strategy and Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Hillary Mann Leverett, the former chief Iran analyst on George W. Bush’s National Security Council, and her husband Flynt Leverett, a long time CIA analyst and NSC staffer, who together wrote a column entitled “Ahmadinejad won. Get over it;” and George Friedman, the head of the Stratfor private intelligence service.
All of them said that the right-wing populist Ahmadinejad retained substantial popular support in Iran, particularly among the rural poor and more oppressed social layers, and warned against “Iran experts” who based their analyses on wishful thinking and contact with a more affluent, English-speaking minority in Iran.
The fact that the Times employs its claims of fraud to demand a new election—calling the Guardian Council’s call for recounting ballots a “cynical gesture”—is highly significant. The newspaper is not interested in correcting vote fraud, but rather in bringing pressure to bear within the Iranian state to effect a political coup.
This was spelled out explicitly Thursday by Times foreign affairs columnist Roger Cohen, who speculated that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “will come to view Ahmadinejad as a liability.” He continued, “In Mousavi he has a credible vehicle for a reform of the regime that serves to preserve it... The supreme leader can find the means to reverse course.”
This succinctly sums up Washington’s aims—to exert pressure on the Iranian state to carry out a change at the top that will render the regime more amenable to US interests in the region and more open to American capital within Iran. The concern for democracy, while sincerely held by millions of Iranians, is for the Times, as for the US government, merely a pretext.
No doubt there were instances of vote-rigging in Iran, but this is the rule, not the exception, in elections around the globe. And not infrequently, particularly in the so-called lesser developed countries, elections end in charges of fraud by the losing party that trigger mass demonstrations and even armed clashes.
Just last April, elections in Moldova ended in violent protests, with the losing party claiming fraud and the winning one saying it was the victim of an attempted coup. In November of last year in Nicaragua, nationwide local elections in which the opposition claimed irregularities led to confrontations involving thousands of people armed with bats, rocks, machetes and guns. Last July, charges of election fraud led to mass rioting in the capital of Mongolia. There is no record of the Times becoming particularly exercised about any of these events.
Particularly instructive is the attitude taken by the newspaper toward the disputed 2006 presidential election in Mexico, when the conservative candidate Felipe Calderon—with just 36 percent of the vote and amid substantiated charges of gross electoral fraud—claimed victory over his left-nationalist opponent, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The Times called for no new election then, and was largely indifferent to the evidence that the election had been rigged. While the massive crowds that took to the streets of Mexico City were comparable to those seen in Tehran, the newspaper showed only disdain for the protesters.
On July 7, just five days after the contested vote totals were announced, the Times haughtily editorialized: “Mr. Lopez Obrador has occasionally furthered his political career by inviting supporters to take to the streets... but he should resist inciting mass protests, which would harm Mexico’s stability and add to his image as a less-than-committed democrat.”
In Mexico, the victim of vote fraud was told to stand down in the interests of “stability,” while mass protests by his supporters were portrayed as a threat to democracy—the exact inverse of the newspaper’s approach to the Iranian events. Why the difference? In Mexico, the candidate favored by Washington won, and in Iran, the White House seeks not stability, but destabilization.
Even closer to home, the approach of the newspaper to the claims of a stolen Iranian election stands in stark contrast to the open theft of the 2000 election by the Republican Party, which only two years before had sought to carry out an extra-constitutional coup against an elected president by means of a bogus impeachment—an operation that the Times had helped legitimize.
In that election, it was not a matter of the government offering a partial recount of disputed ballots in Florida, but a direct intervention by the US Supreme Court to stop a statewide recount that had been ordered by the Florida Supreme Court to insure that all votes were properly counted. Did the Times advocate mass protests or demand a new election? Far from it. The newspaper made itself an accomplice to this unprecedented assault on democratic rights—the suppression of the vote to install the candidate who had lost the popular vote nationally.
In the course of the bitter battle over the Florida vote, a Times editorial demanded an end to “wild talk of vote-stealing and coups d’état”—precisely what was happening. And after the US Supreme Court selected Bush, negating the will of the majority of voters, the newspaper demanded that the decision be accepted in order to “unify the nation.” It praised Democratic candidate Al Gore for capitulating, calling it “a patriotic duty.”
Neither the Times nor the US government are in a position to give lessons to Iran or anyone else on the subject of democracy. The American electoral system, rife with fraud, is controlled lock, stock and barrel by two parties of big business whose national candidates are vetted for their loyalty to a financial oligarchy.
Leading US politicians—including John Kerry in an op-ed piece published by the Times Thursday—have insisted that the US must keep a low profile in Iran because of its role in organizing the 1953 coup that overthrew the nationalist prime minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, and ushered in the 26-year torture regime of the Shah. By the same token, the editors of the Times should keep their mouths shut.
In 1953, their correspondent in Tehran, Kennett Love, was not only a willing conduit for CIA disinformation, but acknowledged participating directly in the coup. He subsequently wrote of giving an Iranian army tank column instructions to attack Mossadeq’s house. Afterwards, the Times celebrated the coup and demanded unconditional support for the Shah’s regime.
Little has changed since. It is not difficult to find evidence that the Times acts—both in its news coverage and its editorial line—as a major instrument of US foreign policy. Its main function is to provide justifications for the policies pursued by American imperialism around the globe, while manipulating public opinion at home and abroad to support them. As the “newspaper of record,” it sets the agenda for much of the US media, which echoes its line.
There was, of course, the well-known and criminal role played by the newspaper in promoting—and through its senior correspondent Judith Miller helping to fabricate—the lies of the Bush administration about “weapons of mass destruction” that were used as the pretext for the war against Iraq.
Then there was the newspaper’s endorsement of the abortive April 2002 coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The Times praised the sections of the Venezuelan military that had “intervened and handed power to a respected business leader.” It argued that, as a result of the armed overthrow of an elected president, “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened.” It likewise helped Washington cover its tracks, claiming—incredibly—that the coup was “a purely Venezuelan affair.”
More recently, there was the newspaper’s response—both its reporting and editorials—to the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war. Using the same methods as in Iran—contempt for journalistic objectivity, the retailing of claims made by Washington and its allies as fact and disregarding of all evidence to the contrary—the Times presented the war as an unprovoked act of Russian aggression. It willfully ignored undeniable evidence that the fighting began as an unprovoked and brutal attack by Georgian forces on Tskhinvali, the capital of Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia.
The Times cast the conflict as “Russia’s war of ambition,” an attempt by Vladimir Putin “to re-impose by force and intimidation as much of the old Soviet sphere of influence as he can get away with.” Facts on the ground, reported by monitors in Georgia from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) among others, belied this account and pointed to the US using Georgia as its proxy in an act of aggression against Russia itself.
In the case of the present crisis in Iran, the Times has employed all of these methods of distortion and deceit on a grand scale, in an effort that was prepared well before the elections were held.
Leading this effort is Executive Editor Bill Keller, who is arguably the most morally compromised editor in the US today—and that’s saying something! It was Keller who, at the request of the Bush administration, withheld a story on the National Security Agency’s illegal domestic spying operation until after the 2004 election, playing what may have been a decisive role in delivering Bush a second term.
He was recently dispatched to Tehran to write “Memos from Iran.” The extraordinary character of this assignment is shown in the fact that between taking over as the newspaper’s senior editor in July 2003 and his trip to Iran, Keller—the newspaper’s man in Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet Union—is credited by the Times web site with writing precisely six articles, none of them news stories.
Keller’s presence is evidence that the Times is involved in a major operation. He was accompanied to Tehran by a number of others, including the vicious anti-socialist foreign affairs columnist Roger Cohen. A veteran propagandist for US imperialist interests, Cohen has churned out justifications for the US intervention in the Balkans, the war against Iraq, the US policy in Georgia, and now the destabilization effort in Iran.
In the days of Kennett Love, the CIA put journalists on its payroll to secure their collaboration. With the likes of Keller and Cohen, this is no longer necessary. The lavishly-paid senior columnists and editors at the Times don’t need to be bribed. Their social interests are naturally in sync with the aims of US imperialist policy.
The seamless intersection of the news and views published in America’s leading newspaper with the interests of US imperialism and its ruling elite is both a symptom and contributing factor in the advanced decay of democratic processes in the United States.
It poses the urgent necessity of building a new independent socialist media of the working class, the task being carried forward by the World Socialist Web Site.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Threat to shut Boston Globe shows no paper is safe
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMOeYS0Bw15Z529QnNhsjMUVu6swD97C1PVG0
Threat to shut Boston Globe shows no paper is safe
By VERENA DOBNIK
4-4-9
NEW YORK (AP) — When it bought the Boston Globe for a record $1.1 billion in 1993, the New York Times Co. added one of the nation's most acclaimed and profitable newspapers to its empire.
But analysts say the 137-year-old Globe has been a money-loser in recent years, and the Times, now $1.1 billion in debt, is threatening to shut down Boston's pre-eminent paper unless it gets $20 million in union concessions.
Faced with the global recession and declining revenues, the newspaper business is reeling — one major paper has already folded this year and several others are seeking bankruptcy protection. But the threat to the Globe, announced Friday on the Globe's Web site, has shocked some industry insiders, who say it shows no one is safe.
"It is a huge warning shot across the bow of the newspaper industry. If this can happen to the storied Boston Globe, pretty much nothing is safe," said Boston University communications professor Tobe Berkovitz.
Of the major dailies that have gone down, none has the cachet of the Globe, he said.
The threat to close the paper "sends a very clear message to all employees and unions of surviving newspapers — that this is not business as usual," said Ken Doctor, a media analyst with the research firm Outsell. "This is uncharted territory."
The Times bought the Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion — the highest price ever for a single American newspaper — getting one of the country's most respected papers. The Globe has won 20 Pulitzer Prizes and has been lauded for some of its work, including its coverage of Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal.
But since its purchase, the Globe has gone through several rounds of layoffs and buyouts. As readership shifts to online news, the newspaper's average weekday circulation fell 10 percent to 323,983 for the six months ending Sept. 30, compared to the same six-month period in 2007, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Advertising revenues industrywide have plunged by more than 16 percent in 2008, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
Newspapers all "have a sword over their heads," said Doctor. If the industry wants to survive, he said, "everyone has to give some blood."
The Globe reported the Times' demands a day after executives from the Times delivered its ultimatum to leaders of the Globe's 13 unions. Boston Newspaper Guild president Daniel Totten told the Globe the concessions could include pay cuts, the end of company pension contributions and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees. The Guild is the Globe's biggest union, representing more than 700 editorial, advertising, and business employees.
But some say the Times' threat may be a negotiating tactic as it strives to shed its debt, which stood at $1.1 billion at the end of 2008. It recently sold 21 floors of its new midtown Manhattan headquarters building for $225 million, asked most employees to accept a 5 percent pay cut through the end of the year and secured a $250 million infusion from a Mexican billionaire by agreeing to pay an abnormally high interest rate of 14 percent in addition to giving him potentially valuable stock warrants.
"We're a long way from a newspaper that needs to be shut down. I think it's a bargaining strategy," said Alan Mutter, a former journalist-turned-entrepreneur who writes a blog called Reflections of a Newsosaur. He said he doesn't think the Globe is in imminent danger of folding.
Globe spokesman Bob Powers declined to comment Saturday; Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis did not immediately return a call for comment.
Doctor said the Times' threat to close the Globe parallels what Hearst Corp. did with the money-losing San Francisco Chronicle, threatening to shut it down barring concessions. Chronicle staffers took 120 buyouts last week, but the paper's seeking 150.
Elsewhere, Scripps Co. stopped publication earlier this year of Colorado's oldest newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, in Denver. Major newspaper companies that have filed for bankruptcy protection in recent months include the owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Newspapers like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and another venerable Boston publication, The Christian Science Monitor, stopped daily publication in favor of online news.
Matt Storin, who was the editor of the Globe when the Times purchased it, said he was shocked and saddened when he saw Friday's headline. The threat to close it "is obviously a negotiating tactic, but one that has to be taken seriously," said Storin, who now teaches journalism at Notre Dame University.
"I do think it's obvious that the Times would like to get the Globe off its books," he said. "It's possible they're trying to reduce costs because they have a prospective buyer who is negotiating on that basis."
Associated Press Writer Jay Lindsay contributed to this report from Boston.
Threat to shut Boston Globe shows no paper is safe
By VERENA DOBNIK
4-4-9
NEW YORK (AP) — When it bought the Boston Globe for a record $1.1 billion in 1993, the New York Times Co. added one of the nation's most acclaimed and profitable newspapers to its empire.
But analysts say the 137-year-old Globe has been a money-loser in recent years, and the Times, now $1.1 billion in debt, is threatening to shut down Boston's pre-eminent paper unless it gets $20 million in union concessions.
Faced with the global recession and declining revenues, the newspaper business is reeling — one major paper has already folded this year and several others are seeking bankruptcy protection. But the threat to the Globe, announced Friday on the Globe's Web site, has shocked some industry insiders, who say it shows no one is safe.
"It is a huge warning shot across the bow of the newspaper industry. If this can happen to the storied Boston Globe, pretty much nothing is safe," said Boston University communications professor Tobe Berkovitz.
Of the major dailies that have gone down, none has the cachet of the Globe, he said.
The threat to close the paper "sends a very clear message to all employees and unions of surviving newspapers — that this is not business as usual," said Ken Doctor, a media analyst with the research firm Outsell. "This is uncharted territory."
The Times bought the Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion — the highest price ever for a single American newspaper — getting one of the country's most respected papers. The Globe has won 20 Pulitzer Prizes and has been lauded for some of its work, including its coverage of Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal.
But since its purchase, the Globe has gone through several rounds of layoffs and buyouts. As readership shifts to online news, the newspaper's average weekday circulation fell 10 percent to 323,983 for the six months ending Sept. 30, compared to the same six-month period in 2007, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Advertising revenues industrywide have plunged by more than 16 percent in 2008, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
Newspapers all "have a sword over their heads," said Doctor. If the industry wants to survive, he said, "everyone has to give some blood."
The Globe reported the Times' demands a day after executives from the Times delivered its ultimatum to leaders of the Globe's 13 unions. Boston Newspaper Guild president Daniel Totten told the Globe the concessions could include pay cuts, the end of company pension contributions and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees. The Guild is the Globe's biggest union, representing more than 700 editorial, advertising, and business employees.
But some say the Times' threat may be a negotiating tactic as it strives to shed its debt, which stood at $1.1 billion at the end of 2008. It recently sold 21 floors of its new midtown Manhattan headquarters building for $225 million, asked most employees to accept a 5 percent pay cut through the end of the year and secured a $250 million infusion from a Mexican billionaire by agreeing to pay an abnormally high interest rate of 14 percent in addition to giving him potentially valuable stock warrants.
"We're a long way from a newspaper that needs to be shut down. I think it's a bargaining strategy," said Alan Mutter, a former journalist-turned-entrepreneur who writes a blog called Reflections of a Newsosaur. He said he doesn't think the Globe is in imminent danger of folding.
Globe spokesman Bob Powers declined to comment Saturday; Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis did not immediately return a call for comment.
Doctor said the Times' threat to close the Globe parallels what Hearst Corp. did with the money-losing San Francisco Chronicle, threatening to shut it down barring concessions. Chronicle staffers took 120 buyouts last week, but the paper's seeking 150.
Elsewhere, Scripps Co. stopped publication earlier this year of Colorado's oldest newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, in Denver. Major newspaper companies that have filed for bankruptcy protection in recent months include the owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Newspapers like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and another venerable Boston publication, The Christian Science Monitor, stopped daily publication in favor of online news.
Matt Storin, who was the editor of the Globe when the Times purchased it, said he was shocked and saddened when he saw Friday's headline. The threat to close it "is obviously a negotiating tactic, but one that has to be taken seriously," said Storin, who now teaches journalism at Notre Dame University.
"I do think it's obvious that the Times would like to get the Globe off its books," he said. "It's possible they're trying to reduce costs because they have a prospective buyer who is negotiating on that basis."
Associated Press Writer Jay Lindsay contributed to this report from Boston.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Mexican Billionaire Invests in Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/business/media/20times.html
Mexican Billionaire Invests in Times Company
By ERIC DASH
January 19, 2009
The New York Times Company said Monday it had reached an agreement with the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú for a $250 million loan intended to help the newspaper company finance its businesses.
Under the terms of the deal, Mr. Slim, who already owns 6.9 percent of the Times Company, would invest $250 million in the form of six-year notes with warrants that are convertible into common shares, the company said in a statement. The notes also carry a 14 percent interest rate, with 11 percent paid in cash and 3 percent in additional bonds.
The deal comes as the Times Company looks to raise money amid flagging advertising sales and approaching deadlines to pay back $1.1 billion in debt in the next few years.
The company will use the proceeds from the transaction to refinance its existing debt. One of its two $400 million revolving credit lines is set to expire in May. The $250 million investment should help free some of the company’s borrowing capacity.
“This agreement provides us with increased financial flexibility to continue to execute on our long-term strategy,” Janet L. Robinson, chief executive of the Times Company, said in a statement. “We continue to explore other financing initiatives and are focused on reducing our total debt through the cash we generate from our businesses and other decisive steps.”
The company has also put its stake in the Boston Red Sox up for sale and said last year that it would borrow as much as $225 million against its new headquarters in Manhattan through a sale-leaseback agreement.
Mr. Slim will receive no representation on the company’s board or any shares with special voting rights like those of the Sulzberger family, which controls the company. Nonetheless, when Mr. Slim exercises the warrants, he will be among the largest single shareholders in the Times Company, owning up to 17 percent of the common shares outstanding.
The Sulzberger family members own about 19 percent of company and control it with a special class of voting shares.
Mr. Slim, one of the wealthiest people in the world, controls phone companies and has major investments in retailing, construction, banking, insurance, railroads and mining. In March, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at $60 billion.
Mr. Slim first approached the Times Company in November, people briefed on the discussions said.
A version of this article appeared in print on January 20, 2009, on page B11 of the New York edition.
Mexican Billionaire Invests in Times Company
By ERIC DASH
January 19, 2009
The New York Times Company said Monday it had reached an agreement with the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú for a $250 million loan intended to help the newspaper company finance its businesses.
Under the terms of the deal, Mr. Slim, who already owns 6.9 percent of the Times Company, would invest $250 million in the form of six-year notes with warrants that are convertible into common shares, the company said in a statement. The notes also carry a 14 percent interest rate, with 11 percent paid in cash and 3 percent in additional bonds.
The deal comes as the Times Company looks to raise money amid flagging advertising sales and approaching deadlines to pay back $1.1 billion in debt in the next few years.
The company will use the proceeds from the transaction to refinance its existing debt. One of its two $400 million revolving credit lines is set to expire in May. The $250 million investment should help free some of the company’s borrowing capacity.
“This agreement provides us with increased financial flexibility to continue to execute on our long-term strategy,” Janet L. Robinson, chief executive of the Times Company, said in a statement. “We continue to explore other financing initiatives and are focused on reducing our total debt through the cash we generate from our businesses and other decisive steps.”
The company has also put its stake in the Boston Red Sox up for sale and said last year that it would borrow as much as $225 million against its new headquarters in Manhattan through a sale-leaseback agreement.
Mr. Slim will receive no representation on the company’s board or any shares with special voting rights like those of the Sulzberger family, which controls the company. Nonetheless, when Mr. Slim exercises the warrants, he will be among the largest single shareholders in the Times Company, owning up to 17 percent of the common shares outstanding.
The Sulzberger family members own about 19 percent of company and control it with a special class of voting shares.
Mr. Slim, one of the wealthiest people in the world, controls phone companies and has major investments in retailing, construction, banking, insurance, railroads and mining. In March, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at $60 billion.
Mr. Slim first approached the Times Company in November, people briefed on the discussions said.
A version of this article appeared in print on January 20, 2009, on page B11 of the New York edition.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
TOP 25 Daily Papers in New FAS-FAX
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003878040
TOP 25 Daily Papers in New FAS-FAX
By E&P Staff
Published: October 27, 2008
NEW YORK Here are the top 25 daily papers ranked for the six-month period ending September 2008 based on a Monday-through-Friday average, according to the new FAS-FAX from the Audit Bureau of Circulations released today. The percent change compares this period to the same period a year ago.
USA TODAY -- 2,293,310 -- 0.01%
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL -- 2,011,999 -- 0.01%
NEW YORK TIMES -- 1,000,665 -- (-3.58%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES -- 739,147 -- (-5.20%)
DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK -- 632,595 -- (-7.16%)
NEW YORK POST -- 625,421 -- (-6.25%)
THE WASHINGTON POST -- 622,714 -- (-1.94%)
CHICAGO TRIBUNE -- 516,032 -- (-7.75%)
HOUSTON CHRONICLE -- 448,271 -- (-11.66%)
NEWSDAY -- 377,517 -- (-2.58%)
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC -- 361,333 -- (-5.51%)
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- 339,430 -- (-7.07%)
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS -- 338,933 -- (-9.28%)
BOSTON GLOBE -- 323,983 -- (-10.18%)
STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS -- 322,360 -- (-4.26%)
STAR-LEDGER, NEWARK, N.J. -- 316,280 -- (-10.40%)
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES -- 313,176 -- (-3.94%)
PLAIN DEALER, CLEVELAND -- 305,529 -- (-8.58%)
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER -- 300,674 -- (-11.06%)
DETROIT FREE PRESS -- 298,243 -- (-6.84%)
THE OREGONIAN -- 283,321 -- (-8.45%)
THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION -- 274,999 -- (-13.62%)
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE -- 269,819 -- (-3.00%)
ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES -- 268,935 -- (-6.88%)
THE SACRAMENTO BEE -- 253,249 -- (-4.22%)
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Paul Krugman Wins Nobel Economics Prize
Robalini's Note: In many ways, this has more long-term impact than anything which will happen in November. With Stiglitz having already won in 2001, all that is needed is Robert Reich winning to make a liberal economist hat trick. Just as important, we're starting to see a rejection of the Milton Friedman cult and the University of Chicago school of thought.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axpy67IVqPj8
Princeton's Paul Krugman Wins Nobel Economics Prize
By Benedikt Kammel
Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on trade theory.
Krugman, 55, received the prize ``for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity,'' said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which selects the winners. His work explained how economies of scale influence trade and urbanization.
``It's a total surprise,'' Krugman said in a telephone interview.
Krugman gained his reputation in economics by contributing to strategic trade theory, contending that countries could steal a march on other nations by subsidizing strategic industries. He has found broader fame with his newspaper columns that regularly criticize President George W. Bush's policies.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television on Oct. 10, Krugman said the current financial turmoil had similarities with the Great Depression. ``The parallels are stronger than I thought they would be,'' he said. ``We developed a financial system that is out of control. The only things people want to buy are T-bills and water.''
The Nobel laureate said today he saw little danger of a move toward protectionism in the U.S., no matter which party wins in next month's elections.
Protectionism
``There may be a standstill, or slowdown at least, on new trade agreements, but I find reversal on trade agreements implausible,'' he said in remarks via telephone to a group of reporters in Stockholm. ``Full-scale protectionism I don't see.''
He has argued the benefits of subsidies are generally marginal. He has also been praised for his work on the development of industrial clusters and his equations on the impact of economic shocks on the current account, exchange rates and capital flows.
In 1991, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal by the American Economic Association, which is awarded to the best economist under the age of 40.
Krugman was born in Long Island and studied economics at Yale University. He obtained a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977 before joining Princeton University. From 1982 to 1983 he served on the White House Council of Economic Advisers, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. He has published a series of books and his ability to turn complicated economic theory into understandable prose led to him write an opinion column for the New York Times for the past eight years.
Previous Winners
Alfred Nobel, the Swede who invented dynamite, in his will in 1896 established awards for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature. The economics prize was set up by Sweden's central bank in 1968. Former winners include Milton Friedman, Amartya Sen and Friedrich August von Hayek.
The award's official name is ``The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.'' The prize consists of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.41 million), a gold medal and a diploma.
To contact the reporters on this story: Rich Miller in Washington o rmiller28@bloomberg.net; Simon Kennedy in Washington at skennedy4@bloomberg.net
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axpy67IVqPj8
Princeton's Paul Krugman Wins Nobel Economics Prize
By Benedikt Kammel
Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on trade theory.
Krugman, 55, received the prize ``for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity,'' said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which selects the winners. His work explained how economies of scale influence trade and urbanization.
``It's a total surprise,'' Krugman said in a telephone interview.
Krugman gained his reputation in economics by contributing to strategic trade theory, contending that countries could steal a march on other nations by subsidizing strategic industries. He has found broader fame with his newspaper columns that regularly criticize President George W. Bush's policies.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television on Oct. 10, Krugman said the current financial turmoil had similarities with the Great Depression. ``The parallels are stronger than I thought they would be,'' he said. ``We developed a financial system that is out of control. The only things people want to buy are T-bills and water.''
The Nobel laureate said today he saw little danger of a move toward protectionism in the U.S., no matter which party wins in next month's elections.
Protectionism
``There may be a standstill, or slowdown at least, on new trade agreements, but I find reversal on trade agreements implausible,'' he said in remarks via telephone to a group of reporters in Stockholm. ``Full-scale protectionism I don't see.''
He has argued the benefits of subsidies are generally marginal. He has also been praised for his work on the development of industrial clusters and his equations on the impact of economic shocks on the current account, exchange rates and capital flows.
In 1991, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal by the American Economic Association, which is awarded to the best economist under the age of 40.
Krugman was born in Long Island and studied economics at Yale University. He obtained a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977 before joining Princeton University. From 1982 to 1983 he served on the White House Council of Economic Advisers, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. He has published a series of books and his ability to turn complicated economic theory into understandable prose led to him write an opinion column for the New York Times for the past eight years.
Previous Winners
Alfred Nobel, the Swede who invented dynamite, in his will in 1896 established awards for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature. The economics prize was set up by Sweden's central bank in 1968. Former winners include Milton Friedman, Amartya Sen and Friedrich August von Hayek.
The award's official name is ``The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.'' The prize consists of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.41 million), a gold medal and a diploma.
To contact the reporters on this story: Rich Miller in Washington o rmiller28@bloomberg.net; Simon Kennedy in Washington at skennedy4@bloomberg.net
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Google to Digitize Newspaper Archives
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/technology/09google.html
September 9, 2008
Google to Digitize Newspaper Archives
By MIGUEL HELFT
SAN FRANCISCO — Google has begun scanning microfilm from some newspapers’ historic archives to make them searchable online, first through Google News and eventually on the papers’ own Web sites, the company said Monday.
The new program expands a two-year-old service that allows Google News users to search the archives of some major newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time, that were already available in digital form. Readers will be able to search the archives using keywords and view articles as they appeared originally in the print pages of newspapers.
Under the expanded program, Google will shoulder the cost of digitizing newspaper archives, much as the company does with its book-scanning project. Google angered some book publishers because it had failed to seek permission to scan books that were protected by copyrights. It will obtain permission from newspaper publishers before scanning their archives.
Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., will place advertisements alongside search results, and share the revenue from those ads with newspaper publishers.
Initially, the archives will be available through Google News, but the company plans to give newspapers a way to make their archives available on their own sites.
“This is really good for newspapers because we are going to be bringing online an old generation of contributions from journalists, as well as widening the reader base of news archives,” said Marissa Mayer, vice president for search products and user experience at Google.
But many newspaper publishers view search engines like Google as threats to their own business. Many of them also see their archives as a potential source of revenue, and it is not clear whether they will willingly hand them over to Google.
“The concern is that Google, in making all of the past newspaper content available, can greatly commoditize that content, just like news portals have commoditized current news content,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell, a research company.
Google said it was working with more than 100 newspapers and with partners like Heritage Microfilm and ProQuest, which aggregate historical newspaper archives in microfilm. It has already scanned millions of articles.
Other companies are already working with newspapers to digitize archives and some sell those archives to schools, libraries and other institutions, helping newspapers earn money from their historical content.
The National Digital Newspaper Program, a joint program of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, is creating a digital archive of historically significant newspapers published in the United States from 1836 to 1922. It will be freely accessible on the Internet.
Newspapers that are participating in the Google program say it is attractive.
“We wouldn’t be talking about digitization if Google had not entered this arena,” said Tim Rozgonyi, research editor at The St. Petersburg Times. “We looked into it years back, and it appeared to be exceedingly costly.”
Mr. Rozgonyi said that the newspaper might be able to generate additional revenue from the digital archives by producing historical booklets or commemorative front pages. But he said that increasing sales was not the primary objective of the digitization program.
“Getting the digitized content available is a wonderful thing for people of this area,” he said. “They’ll be able to go to our site or Google’s and tap into 100 years of history.”
Pierre Little, publisher of The Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which has been published since 1764 and calls itself “North America’s Oldest Newspaper,” said many readers visit the newspaper’s Web site to look for obituaries and conduct research on their ancestors.
“We could envision that thousands of families would be attracted to our archives to search for people who came over to the New World,” Mr. Little said. “We hope that will be a financial windfall for us.”
Brad Stone contributed reporting.
September 9, 2008
Google to Digitize Newspaper Archives
By MIGUEL HELFT
SAN FRANCISCO — Google has begun scanning microfilm from some newspapers’ historic archives to make them searchable online, first through Google News and eventually on the papers’ own Web sites, the company said Monday.
The new program expands a two-year-old service that allows Google News users to search the archives of some major newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time, that were already available in digital form. Readers will be able to search the archives using keywords and view articles as they appeared originally in the print pages of newspapers.
Under the expanded program, Google will shoulder the cost of digitizing newspaper archives, much as the company does with its book-scanning project. Google angered some book publishers because it had failed to seek permission to scan books that were protected by copyrights. It will obtain permission from newspaper publishers before scanning their archives.
Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., will place advertisements alongside search results, and share the revenue from those ads with newspaper publishers.
Initially, the archives will be available through Google News, but the company plans to give newspapers a way to make their archives available on their own sites.
“This is really good for newspapers because we are going to be bringing online an old generation of contributions from journalists, as well as widening the reader base of news archives,” said Marissa Mayer, vice president for search products and user experience at Google.
But many newspaper publishers view search engines like Google as threats to their own business. Many of them also see their archives as a potential source of revenue, and it is not clear whether they will willingly hand them over to Google.
“The concern is that Google, in making all of the past newspaper content available, can greatly commoditize that content, just like news portals have commoditized current news content,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell, a research company.
Google said it was working with more than 100 newspapers and with partners like Heritage Microfilm and ProQuest, which aggregate historical newspaper archives in microfilm. It has already scanned millions of articles.
Other companies are already working with newspapers to digitize archives and some sell those archives to schools, libraries and other institutions, helping newspapers earn money from their historical content.
The National Digital Newspaper Program, a joint program of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, is creating a digital archive of historically significant newspapers published in the United States from 1836 to 1922. It will be freely accessible on the Internet.
Newspapers that are participating in the Google program say it is attractive.
“We wouldn’t be talking about digitization if Google had not entered this arena,” said Tim Rozgonyi, research editor at The St. Petersburg Times. “We looked into it years back, and it appeared to be exceedingly costly.”
Mr. Rozgonyi said that the newspaper might be able to generate additional revenue from the digital archives by producing historical booklets or commemorative front pages. But he said that increasing sales was not the primary objective of the digitization program.
“Getting the digitized content available is a wonderful thing for people of this area,” he said. “They’ll be able to go to our site or Google’s and tap into 100 years of history.”
Pierre Little, publisher of The Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which has been published since 1764 and calls itself “North America’s Oldest Newspaper,” said many readers visit the newspaper’s Web site to look for obituaries and conduct research on their ancestors.
“We could envision that thousands of families would be attracted to our archives to search for people who came over to the New World,” Mr. Little said. “We hope that will be a financial windfall for us.”
Brad Stone contributed reporting.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Average weekday circulation at US newspapers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080428/ap_on_hi_te/newspapers_circulation_list
Average weekday circulation at the top 20 US newspapers
By The Associated Press
Mon Apr 28, 2008
Average paid weekday circulation of the nation's 20 largest newspapers for the six-month period ending in March, as reported Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percentage changes are from the comparable year-ago period.
1. USA Today, 2,284,219, up 0.3 percent
2. The Wall Street Journal, 2,069,463, up 0.4 percent
3. The New York Times, 1,077,256, down 3.9 percent
4. Los Angeles Times, 773,884, down 5.1 percent
5. New York Daily News, 703,137, down 2.1 percent
6. New York Post, 702,488, down 3.1 percent
7. The Washington Post, 673,180, down 3.6 percent
8. Chicago Tribune, 541,663, down 4.4 percent
9. Houston Chronicle, 494,131, down 1.8 percent
10. The Arizona Republic, 413,332, down 4.7 percent
11. Newsday, Long Island, 379,613, down 4.7 percent
12. San Francisco Chronicle, 370,345, down 4.2 percent
13. Dallas Morning News, 368,313, down 10.6 percent
14. The Boston Globe, 350,605, down 8.3 percent
15. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., 345,130, down 7.4 percent
16. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 334,150, down 5.1 percent
17. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, 330,280, down 4.2 percent
18. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 326,907, down 8.5 percent
19. Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul, 321,984, down 6.7 percent
20. St. Petersburg Times, Florida, 316,007, down 2.1 percent
___
Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations
Average weekday circulation at the top 20 US newspapers
By The Associated Press
Mon Apr 28, 2008
Average paid weekday circulation of the nation's 20 largest newspapers for the six-month period ending in March, as reported Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percentage changes are from the comparable year-ago period.
1. USA Today, 2,284,219, up 0.3 percent
2. The Wall Street Journal, 2,069,463, up 0.4 percent
3. The New York Times, 1,077,256, down 3.9 percent
4. Los Angeles Times, 773,884, down 5.1 percent
5. New York Daily News, 703,137, down 2.1 percent
6. New York Post, 702,488, down 3.1 percent
7. The Washington Post, 673,180, down 3.6 percent
8. Chicago Tribune, 541,663, down 4.4 percent
9. Houston Chronicle, 494,131, down 1.8 percent
10. The Arizona Republic, 413,332, down 4.7 percent
11. Newsday, Long Island, 379,613, down 4.7 percent
12. San Francisco Chronicle, 370,345, down 4.2 percent
13. Dallas Morning News, 368,313, down 10.6 percent
14. The Boston Globe, 350,605, down 8.3 percent
15. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., 345,130, down 7.4 percent
16. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 334,150, down 5.1 percent
17. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, 330,280, down 4.2 percent
18. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 326,907, down 8.5 percent
19. Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul, 321,984, down 6.7 percent
20. St. Petersburg Times, Florida, 316,007, down 2.1 percent
___
Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations
Thursday, May 1, 2008
New York Times: Chavez's Takeover Spree
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=22&media_view_id=10102
New York Times: Chavez's Takeover Spree (4/24/08)
After cheering the cancellation of Venezuelan democracy in 2002, the New York Times editors recently weighed in with advice to the opponents of Venezuela's democratically elected president on how "to deal another blow for democracy" in Venezuela:
Mr. Chávez lost last year’s referendum because students, business leaders, members of the usually ineffectual opposition and some former supporters were willing to work together.
They have an opportunity to deal another blow for democracy in this November’s elections. The vast majority of Venezuela's state governors and mayors are Chávez supporters. Defeating them at the polls would send a clear message that Venezuelans are truly fed up with Mr. Chávez's incompetent and authoritarian ways.
Writing of Chávez's nationalization of steel and cement companies, the Times writes, "What is certain is that the country’s economy will suffer," citing "bungled management" at state-owned companies and the danger of scaring away "much-needed private investment." "Even soaring oil prices aren’t helping," the Times declares.
Reality check: Last year, according to the CIA, Venezuela's economy grew by 8.3 percent. By comparison, Mexico, which also benefits from higher oil prices, but has a conservative government that tends to follow U.S. economic advice, grew by 3 percent--just a bit above population growth. One gets the impression that the Times cares about the economic prospects of Venezuelans about as much as it cares about their democracy.
New York Times: Chavez's Takeover Spree (4/24/08)
After cheering the cancellation of Venezuelan democracy in 2002, the New York Times editors recently weighed in with advice to the opponents of Venezuela's democratically elected president on how "to deal another blow for democracy" in Venezuela:
Mr. Chávez lost last year’s referendum because students, business leaders, members of the usually ineffectual opposition and some former supporters were willing to work together.
They have an opportunity to deal another blow for democracy in this November’s elections. The vast majority of Venezuela's state governors and mayors are Chávez supporters. Defeating them at the polls would send a clear message that Venezuelans are truly fed up with Mr. Chávez's incompetent and authoritarian ways.
Writing of Chávez's nationalization of steel and cement companies, the Times writes, "What is certain is that the country’s economy will suffer," citing "bungled management" at state-owned companies and the danger of scaring away "much-needed private investment." "Even soaring oil prices aren’t helping," the Times declares.
Reality check: Last year, according to the CIA, Venezuela's economy grew by 8.3 percent. By comparison, Mexico, which also benefits from higher oil prices, but has a conservative government that tends to follow U.S. economic advice, grew by 3 percent--just a bit above population growth. One gets the impression that the Times cares about the economic prospects of Venezuelans about as much as it cares about their democracy.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2007
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3235
Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2007
Media Beat (12/22/07)
By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon
Many journalists qualified for the sixteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, but only a few were able to win recognition for turning in one of the truly stinkiest media performances of the year. As the judges for this un-coveted award, we have done our best to confer this honor on the most deserving.
And now, the winners of the P.U.-litzers for 2007:
SPINNING FOR ANOTHER WAR AWARD -- Michael Gordon of The New York Times
Continuing where he left off before the Iraq invasion, when he used unnamed official sources to produce wildly inaccurate page-one articles on Iraq’s alleged weapons threat, Gordon in February wrote a front-page story with the stunning claim that Iran’s Supreme Leader had approved sending lethal explosives into Iraq to attack U.S. soldiers. (Even President Bush soon backed away from the claim.) Readers might have had trouble assessing Gordon’s charges -- which were, as usual, almost entirely based on anonymous sources: “United States intelligence asserts ... Administration officials said ... Some American intelligence experts believe ...” After analyzing the article, blogger Jonathan Schwarz speculated that “Gordon is not an actual person, but rather a voice-activated tape recorder.”
“SOMETHING ABOUT A RETRO MACHO MAN” AWARD -- Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball
With a worshipful media wind pushing actor and former senator Fred Thompson toward the presidential race in June, Matthews lauded Thompson’s “sex appeal” and “star quality.” The hardballer was nearly rapturous as he said: “Can you smell the English Leather on this guy, the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man`s shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved? Do you smell that sort of -- a little bit of cigar smoke? You know, whatever.”
Four years earlier, when George Bush flew onto an aircraft carrier to celebrate “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq, Matthews had gushed at length about the president’s looks and how Americans love “a guy who has a little swagger. We like having a hero as president. We’re not like the Brits.”
“AMERICANS DON’T WANT UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE” AWARD -- Jeff Greenfield of CBS, et al.
Reflecting what became mainstream media’s conventional wisdom in the wake of Michael Moore’s SiCKO documentary, CBS correspondent Greenfield explained that the U.S. lacks a universal healthcare system not because of the powerful insurance lobby -- but because “Americans are just different.” He quoted an academic who said Americans, unlike Canadians and Europeans, don’t want government involvement in healthcare: “It’s a cultural difference.”
Actually, CBS’s own poll of Americans had found 64 percent supporting the view that the federal government should “guarantee health insurance for all” -- with 60 percent approving of higher taxes to pay for it. A CNN poll found 64 percent American support for the idea that “government should provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes.”
“3-H CLUB” PRIZE -- Too Many to Name
At the same time they’re imposing their own fixations on candidates, elite political reporters like to pretend that they have absolutely no idea why the candidates are struggling to overcome those fixations. A Dec. 11 Washington Post article deadpanned: “[John] Edwards has faced challenges of his own, namely ‘the three H’s’ -- his expensive haircut, his hedge fund work after the 2004 election, and his sprawling homestead.”
Dozens of news reports in major outlets have deployed the “three H’s” shorthand, many implying that Edwards -- unlike the wealthy candidates who never mention the poor -- is a hypocrite when he discusses poverty. In July, the Post’s John Solomon devoted an entire investigative article to Edwards’ pricey haircuts: “It is some kind of commentary on the state of American politics that as Edwards has campaigned,” mused the reporter, “his hair seems to have attracted as much attention, as say, his position on healthcare.” Gee, how did that happen?
RISKY DEMOCRATS AWARD -- L.A. Times, Washington Post
If you believe certain political pundits and reporters, Democrats are continuously pushing “risky” proposals that are off-putting to the American public. In November, a Los Angeles Times report -- headlined “Democrats Calculate Risk on Tax Hikes” -- called proposed Democratic tax hikes on wealthier Americans “a major political gamble.” (Unmentioned was the fact that Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich and was re-elected, or that a Gallup poll shows 66 percent of Americans think “upper income people” don’t currently pay enough taxes.) Days later, a Washington Post report was headlined “Climate is a Risky Issue for Democrats; Candidates Back Costly Proposals.” (Unmentioned was the Post’s own poll showing that 70 percent of Americans think the federal government “should do more” on global warming; only 7 percent said “it should do less.”) Listening to press corps cautions may heighten Democratic timidity -- but it hasn’t won many national elections.
SPINNING HAWKS INTO DOVES AWARD -- ABC, CNN, Fox, CBS and others
There’d be little news value in Iraq war boosters returning from a brief trip to Iraq and endorsing troop escalation. But by presenting two self-acknowledged Iraq war supporters -- Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon -- as doves, national outlets created a fictitious story line and major media push this summer in support of the war.
Few media “experts” had argued more relentlessly for war in 2002 than Pollack, author of “The Case for Invading Iraq.” Yet here was ABC anchor Charles Gibson this July: “A bit of a surprise today on Iraq. Two long and persistent critics of the Bush administration’s handling of the war today wrote a column in The New York Times saying that after a recent eight-day visit to Iraq, they find significant changes taking place.” CNN called them “two fierce critics.” A Fox reporter claimed the duo had “changed their views after seeing some of the military successes first-hand.” CBS spoke of how O’Hanlon “now believes [the troop surge] should be continued” -- even though he’d written a national column seven months earlier: “A Skeptic’s Case for the Surge.”
PUTTING CLOTHES ON THE EMPEROR PRIZE -- New York Times
After numerous inside accounts of the Iraq invasion and other policies had exposed Vice President Cheney as a true believer who often put ideology ahead of data and facts, readers may have thought The New York Times was joking when it reported in February on the impact that the perjury trial of Cheney’s chief of staff would have on the vice president. According to the newspaper of record: “The trial has chipped away at the public image of Mr. Cheney as a sober-minded policy architect.”
“IT’S TRUE BECAUSE WE SAID IT” AWARD -- CNN’s Lou Dobbs
To prove his claim that illegal immigrants were bringing “once eradicated diseases” into our country, Dobbs featured a CNN reporter in 2005 who claimed that the U.S. had seen only 900 cases of leprosy for 40 years -- but that “there have been 7,000 in the past three years.” This year, in May, Dobbs was challenged on the shocking statistic by Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes, who cited a federal report saying there were 7,000 leprosy cases over the last 30 years. Dobbs response: “If we reported it, it’s a fact.”
Stahl: “How can you guarantee that to me?”
Dobbs: “Because I’m the managing editor, and that’s the way we do business. We don’t make up numbers, Lesley. Do we?”
You do, Lou. The Centers for Disease Control report that new leprosy cases in the U.S. have been on the decline for close to 20 years (with 166 cases in 2005).
THE LOU DOBBS US-vs.-THEM AWARD -- Bill O’Reilly of Fox News
Talking to Sen. John McCain in May, O’Reilly said: “But do you understand what The New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part of, and so am I. And they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right.”
“WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLFOWITZ” AWARD -- Newsweek
As he was being forced out of his job as World Bank president in May, Paul Wolfowitz was described by Newsweek as “a man whose managerial talents do not appear to rise to the level of his analytical prowess. By most accounts, Wolfowitz is a genteel, brilliant figure ...” The Newsweek piece -- headlined “With the Best of Intentions” -- didn’t mention how the brilliant and analytical former Deputy Defense Secretary had insisted just before invading Iraq that the country had no history of ethnic strife, that the U.S. would not need to deploy more than 100,000 troops, or that the war might cost as little as $10 billion. (So far it has cost about $500 billion.)
Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2007
Media Beat (12/22/07)
By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon
Many journalists qualified for the sixteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, but only a few were able to win recognition for turning in one of the truly stinkiest media performances of the year. As the judges for this un-coveted award, we have done our best to confer this honor on the most deserving.
And now, the winners of the P.U.-litzers for 2007:
SPINNING FOR ANOTHER WAR AWARD -- Michael Gordon of The New York Times
Continuing where he left off before the Iraq invasion, when he used unnamed official sources to produce wildly inaccurate page-one articles on Iraq’s alleged weapons threat, Gordon in February wrote a front-page story with the stunning claim that Iran’s Supreme Leader had approved sending lethal explosives into Iraq to attack U.S. soldiers. (Even President Bush soon backed away from the claim.) Readers might have had trouble assessing Gordon’s charges -- which were, as usual, almost entirely based on anonymous sources: “United States intelligence asserts ... Administration officials said ... Some American intelligence experts believe ...” After analyzing the article, blogger Jonathan Schwarz speculated that “Gordon is not an actual person, but rather a voice-activated tape recorder.”
“SOMETHING ABOUT A RETRO MACHO MAN” AWARD -- Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball
With a worshipful media wind pushing actor and former senator Fred Thompson toward the presidential race in June, Matthews lauded Thompson’s “sex appeal” and “star quality.” The hardballer was nearly rapturous as he said: “Can you smell the English Leather on this guy, the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man`s shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved? Do you smell that sort of -- a little bit of cigar smoke? You know, whatever.”
Four years earlier, when George Bush flew onto an aircraft carrier to celebrate “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq, Matthews had gushed at length about the president’s looks and how Americans love “a guy who has a little swagger. We like having a hero as president. We’re not like the Brits.”
“AMERICANS DON’T WANT UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE” AWARD -- Jeff Greenfield of CBS, et al.
Reflecting what became mainstream media’s conventional wisdom in the wake of Michael Moore’s SiCKO documentary, CBS correspondent Greenfield explained that the U.S. lacks a universal healthcare system not because of the powerful insurance lobby -- but because “Americans are just different.” He quoted an academic who said Americans, unlike Canadians and Europeans, don’t want government involvement in healthcare: “It’s a cultural difference.”
Actually, CBS’s own poll of Americans had found 64 percent supporting the view that the federal government should “guarantee health insurance for all” -- with 60 percent approving of higher taxes to pay for it. A CNN poll found 64 percent American support for the idea that “government should provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes.”
“3-H CLUB” PRIZE -- Too Many to Name
At the same time they’re imposing their own fixations on candidates, elite political reporters like to pretend that they have absolutely no idea why the candidates are struggling to overcome those fixations. A Dec. 11 Washington Post article deadpanned: “[John] Edwards has faced challenges of his own, namely ‘the three H’s’ -- his expensive haircut, his hedge fund work after the 2004 election, and his sprawling homestead.”
Dozens of news reports in major outlets have deployed the “three H’s” shorthand, many implying that Edwards -- unlike the wealthy candidates who never mention the poor -- is a hypocrite when he discusses poverty. In July, the Post’s John Solomon devoted an entire investigative article to Edwards’ pricey haircuts: “It is some kind of commentary on the state of American politics that as Edwards has campaigned,” mused the reporter, “his hair seems to have attracted as much attention, as say, his position on healthcare.” Gee, how did that happen?
RISKY DEMOCRATS AWARD -- L.A. Times, Washington Post
If you believe certain political pundits and reporters, Democrats are continuously pushing “risky” proposals that are off-putting to the American public. In November, a Los Angeles Times report -- headlined “Democrats Calculate Risk on Tax Hikes” -- called proposed Democratic tax hikes on wealthier Americans “a major political gamble.” (Unmentioned was the fact that Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich and was re-elected, or that a Gallup poll shows 66 percent of Americans think “upper income people” don’t currently pay enough taxes.) Days later, a Washington Post report was headlined “Climate is a Risky Issue for Democrats; Candidates Back Costly Proposals.” (Unmentioned was the Post’s own poll showing that 70 percent of Americans think the federal government “should do more” on global warming; only 7 percent said “it should do less.”) Listening to press corps cautions may heighten Democratic timidity -- but it hasn’t won many national elections.
SPINNING HAWKS INTO DOVES AWARD -- ABC, CNN, Fox, CBS and others
There’d be little news value in Iraq war boosters returning from a brief trip to Iraq and endorsing troop escalation. But by presenting two self-acknowledged Iraq war supporters -- Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon -- as doves, national outlets created a fictitious story line and major media push this summer in support of the war.
Few media “experts” had argued more relentlessly for war in 2002 than Pollack, author of “The Case for Invading Iraq.” Yet here was ABC anchor Charles Gibson this July: “A bit of a surprise today on Iraq. Two long and persistent critics of the Bush administration’s handling of the war today wrote a column in The New York Times saying that after a recent eight-day visit to Iraq, they find significant changes taking place.” CNN called them “two fierce critics.” A Fox reporter claimed the duo had “changed their views after seeing some of the military successes first-hand.” CBS spoke of how O’Hanlon “now believes [the troop surge] should be continued” -- even though he’d written a national column seven months earlier: “A Skeptic’s Case for the Surge.”
PUTTING CLOTHES ON THE EMPEROR PRIZE -- New York Times
After numerous inside accounts of the Iraq invasion and other policies had exposed Vice President Cheney as a true believer who often put ideology ahead of data and facts, readers may have thought The New York Times was joking when it reported in February on the impact that the perjury trial of Cheney’s chief of staff would have on the vice president. According to the newspaper of record: “The trial has chipped away at the public image of Mr. Cheney as a sober-minded policy architect.”
“IT’S TRUE BECAUSE WE SAID IT” AWARD -- CNN’s Lou Dobbs
To prove his claim that illegal immigrants were bringing “once eradicated diseases” into our country, Dobbs featured a CNN reporter in 2005 who claimed that the U.S. had seen only 900 cases of leprosy for 40 years -- but that “there have been 7,000 in the past three years.” This year, in May, Dobbs was challenged on the shocking statistic by Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes, who cited a federal report saying there were 7,000 leprosy cases over the last 30 years. Dobbs response: “If we reported it, it’s a fact.”
Stahl: “How can you guarantee that to me?”
Dobbs: “Because I’m the managing editor, and that’s the way we do business. We don’t make up numbers, Lesley. Do we?”
You do, Lou. The Centers for Disease Control report that new leprosy cases in the U.S. have been on the decline for close to 20 years (with 166 cases in 2005).
THE LOU DOBBS US-vs.-THEM AWARD -- Bill O’Reilly of Fox News
Talking to Sen. John McCain in May, O’Reilly said: “But do you understand what The New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part of, and so am I. And they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right.”
“WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLFOWITZ” AWARD -- Newsweek
As he was being forced out of his job as World Bank president in May, Paul Wolfowitz was described by Newsweek as “a man whose managerial talents do not appear to rise to the level of his analytical prowess. By most accounts, Wolfowitz is a genteel, brilliant figure ...” The Newsweek piece -- headlined “With the Best of Intentions” -- didn’t mention how the brilliant and analytical former Deputy Defense Secretary had insisted just before invading Iraq that the country had no history of ethnic strife, that the U.S. would not need to deploy more than 100,000 troops, or that the war might cost as little as $10 billion. (So far it has cost about $500 billion.)
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Think censor: Apple's lawyers shut down rumor site
http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/12/20/apple_censor/index.html
Think censor: Apple's lawyers shut down rumor site
A new Apple innovation: Sue your journalistic hounds into silence.
By Farhad Manjoo
Dec. 20, 2007 In December, 2005, Nicholas Ciarelli, a well-connected young tech journalist who went by the pen name Nick de Plume, published a juicy bit of dish on his Web site. According to "highly reliable sources," Apple would soon be releasing "a bare bones, G4-based iMac without a display," he wrote.
Ciarelli's site, Think Secret, was known as among the more reliable in the vibrant online community of Apple rumor pages, which seek to feed an ardent community's hunger for inside information from a company legendary for keeping its lips sealed. This latest piece was big news, and it got even bigger when Apple went on the offensive -- the company filed suit against Think Secret and "unnamed individuals" who'd given the site its secrets.
The action, of course, confirmed the accuracy of Ciarelli's story. A few days after filing the suit, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the Mac Mini, exactly the kind of computer Ciarelli had fingered.
Apple's case briefly made Ciarelli an online cause célèbre. Digital rights activists argued that he, like established journalists, was entitled to coverage under California's reporter's shield law, which protects journalists from giving up information on their sources. Apple disagreed, saying he had broken trade secrets laws -- and a judge sided with the company.
Today brings news that Apple prevailed completely. According to a "settlement" the company entered into with Ciarelli, Ciarelli will close Think Secret. Writing in the strained voice of a Soviet prisoner, he reported the news in a press release on his site:
Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a positive solution for both sides. As part of the confidential settlement, no sources were revealed and Think Secret will no longer be published. Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret's publisher, said "I'm pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits."
A positive solution for both sides? Sure, Ciarelli gets to keep his sources -- a good thing -- but the settlement is a win for him only in the way that a person who gets mugged can be thankful he wasn't knifed, too.
Apple wins everything here, closing down a journalist who did exactly what reporters are supposed to do -- establishing contacts with insiders to shed light on a secret much in public demand.
Imagine if Dick Cheney were able to do the same thing to the New York Times, to shut down the paper for reporting on the "trade secret" of NSA surveillance, say?
Or do you think it's too much to equate a company protecting its innovation with a government protecting illegal activity?
Granted the stakes are vastly different. But what's the functional difference here, the difference as it regards our notions of journalism and a free press? What are reporters looking into corporate trade secrets -- about environmental pollution or fraud or other chicanery -- supposed to take from this settlement? Shut up or else, that's what.
Am I mistaken, or was Apple the firm that once plumbed George Orwell for a famous TV ad? Probably I'm mistaken.
Think censor: Apple's lawyers shut down rumor site
A new Apple innovation: Sue your journalistic hounds into silence.
By Farhad Manjoo
Dec. 20, 2007 In December, 2005, Nicholas Ciarelli, a well-connected young tech journalist who went by the pen name Nick de Plume, published a juicy bit of dish on his Web site. According to "highly reliable sources," Apple would soon be releasing "a bare bones, G4-based iMac without a display," he wrote.
Ciarelli's site, Think Secret, was known as among the more reliable in the vibrant online community of Apple rumor pages, which seek to feed an ardent community's hunger for inside information from a company legendary for keeping its lips sealed. This latest piece was big news, and it got even bigger when Apple went on the offensive -- the company filed suit against Think Secret and "unnamed individuals" who'd given the site its secrets.
The action, of course, confirmed the accuracy of Ciarelli's story. A few days after filing the suit, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the Mac Mini, exactly the kind of computer Ciarelli had fingered.
Apple's case briefly made Ciarelli an online cause célèbre. Digital rights activists argued that he, like established journalists, was entitled to coverage under California's reporter's shield law, which protects journalists from giving up information on their sources. Apple disagreed, saying he had broken trade secrets laws -- and a judge sided with the company.
Today brings news that Apple prevailed completely. According to a "settlement" the company entered into with Ciarelli, Ciarelli will close Think Secret. Writing in the strained voice of a Soviet prisoner, he reported the news in a press release on his site:
Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a positive solution for both sides. As part of the confidential settlement, no sources were revealed and Think Secret will no longer be published. Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret's publisher, said "I'm pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits."
A positive solution for both sides? Sure, Ciarelli gets to keep his sources -- a good thing -- but the settlement is a win for him only in the way that a person who gets mugged can be thankful he wasn't knifed, too.
Apple wins everything here, closing down a journalist who did exactly what reporters are supposed to do -- establishing contacts with insiders to shed light on a secret much in public demand.
Imagine if Dick Cheney were able to do the same thing to the New York Times, to shut down the paper for reporting on the "trade secret" of NSA surveillance, say?
Or do you think it's too much to equate a company protecting its innovation with a government protecting illegal activity?
Granted the stakes are vastly different. But what's the functional difference here, the difference as it regards our notions of journalism and a free press? What are reporters looking into corporate trade secrets -- about environmental pollution or fraud or other chicanery -- supposed to take from this settlement? Shut up or else, that's what.
Am I mistaken, or was Apple the firm that once plumbed George Orwell for a famous TV ad? Probably I'm mistaken.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Your FCC At Work
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/your-fcc-at-work_b_72387.html
Marty Kaplan
Your FCC At Work
Posted November 13, 2007
Read More: Fcc, FCC Chairman, FCC Chairman's New York Times Op-Ed, FCC Media Consolidation, Kevin Martin, Kevin Martin FCC, Kevin Martin's New York Times Op-Ed, Media Consolidation, Newspaper Industry, Newspapers, Radio, Radio Station Ownership, Breaking Politics News
In the most bizarre example yet of GOP corporate welfare, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has taken to the op-ed page of the New York Times to propose that -- in order to save the newspaper industry -- big-city papers should now be permitted to purchase a television or radio station in their market.
His rationale is breathtaking. To appreciate it, you first have to set aside some inconvenient truths. Like the finding of one of the FCC's own studies of localism (a quality that the law mandates the FCC to encourage) -- a study suppressed because they didn't like the results -- that television stations with distant owners (like, say, corporations that own chains of newspapers) do a worse job at localism than locally-owned stations. Or the finding of another FCC study that radio-newspaper cross-ownership "is associated with significantly less news coverage" on the radio station. Or the analysis of the FCC's own data that shows that cross ownership leads to less total newsgathering in a market, because the other stations realize they can't compete on news, so they focus on sports, weather or something else, like freeway chases or celebrity crime. You also have to ignore the underlying economic facts of the newspaper industry, which totally undermine Chairman Martin's "endangered species" argument.
But just put all that out of your mind, and focus instead on the nub of his argument: the reason that newspapers should be allowed to own television or radio stations is that those broadcast outlets are cash cows. And just why are they so profitable? Chairman Martin doesn't connect these dots, but let's do it for him.
It's because the FCC doesn't require them to pay a penny in exchange for their licenses to broadcast over the public's airwaves.
It's because the FCC lets television stations renew their licenses every eight years by sending a postcard to Washington, rather than requiring them to demonstrate that they serve the public interest.
It's because television and radio stations can broadcast whatever they want on the public's airwaves, without regard to fair representation of diverse points of view.
It's because the FCC has allowed television and radio station ownership to become a white boys' club, without regard to the public interest that might be served by minority or women ownership.
It's because those stations not only have largely abandoned, with impunity, their obligation to cover local politics and public affairs -- they have found in political advertising a gusher of revenue.
So let's put Chairman Martin's argument together.
The public has given away, for free, its airwaves, to stations that generally do a dreadful job covering politics in their news programming, but that reap big bucks from political candidates, who in turn get the billions they spend on political ads from the public, and now the public is being asked to cut the newspaper industry in on that extortion racket in order to save democracy.
Next thing you know, we'll be asked to give tax breaks to oil companies. Oh, wait.
Marty Kaplan
Your FCC At Work
Posted November 13, 2007
Read More: Fcc, FCC Chairman, FCC Chairman's New York Times Op-Ed, FCC Media Consolidation, Kevin Martin, Kevin Martin FCC, Kevin Martin's New York Times Op-Ed, Media Consolidation, Newspaper Industry, Newspapers, Radio, Radio Station Ownership, Breaking Politics News
In the most bizarre example yet of GOP corporate welfare, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has taken to the op-ed page of the New York Times to propose that -- in order to save the newspaper industry -- big-city papers should now be permitted to purchase a television or radio station in their market.
His rationale is breathtaking. To appreciate it, you first have to set aside some inconvenient truths. Like the finding of one of the FCC's own studies of localism (a quality that the law mandates the FCC to encourage) -- a study suppressed because they didn't like the results -- that television stations with distant owners (like, say, corporations that own chains of newspapers) do a worse job at localism than locally-owned stations. Or the finding of another FCC study that radio-newspaper cross-ownership "is associated with significantly less news coverage" on the radio station. Or the analysis of the FCC's own data that shows that cross ownership leads to less total newsgathering in a market, because the other stations realize they can't compete on news, so they focus on sports, weather or something else, like freeway chases or celebrity crime. You also have to ignore the underlying economic facts of the newspaper industry, which totally undermine Chairman Martin's "endangered species" argument.
But just put all that out of your mind, and focus instead on the nub of his argument: the reason that newspapers should be allowed to own television or radio stations is that those broadcast outlets are cash cows. And just why are they so profitable? Chairman Martin doesn't connect these dots, but let's do it for him.
It's because the FCC doesn't require them to pay a penny in exchange for their licenses to broadcast over the public's airwaves.
It's because the FCC lets television stations renew their licenses every eight years by sending a postcard to Washington, rather than requiring them to demonstrate that they serve the public interest.
It's because television and radio stations can broadcast whatever they want on the public's airwaves, without regard to fair representation of diverse points of view.
It's because the FCC has allowed television and radio station ownership to become a white boys' club, without regard to the public interest that might be served by minority or women ownership.
It's because those stations not only have largely abandoned, with impunity, their obligation to cover local politics and public affairs -- they have found in political advertising a gusher of revenue.
So let's put Chairman Martin's argument together.
The public has given away, for free, its airwaves, to stations that generally do a dreadful job covering politics in their news programming, but that reap big bucks from political candidates, who in turn get the billions they spend on political ads from the public, and now the public is being asked to cut the newspaper industry in on that extortion racket in order to save democracy.
Next thing you know, we'll be asked to give tax breaks to oil companies. Oh, wait.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Busted & Crimes of The Times
Greg Palast <palast@mailings.gregpalast.com>
Busted & Crimes of The Times
By Greg Palast
August 1, 2007. Cutely buried in the 18th paragraph in a story about Alberto Gonzales on Sunday was a slyly-worded updated confession by the New York Times that, in 2004, the Bush Administration leaned on its editors to spike a story about illegal invasions of citizens' private records ("data mining"). The Times editors smothered the story. They finally ran it - a year later - after Bush was safely re-elected.
As a journalist, this makes me want to throw up.
For two reasons: First, while The Times was covering up Bush's KGB-style data-mining operation, the Palast team was revealing its secrets. We published confidential FBI memos detailing horrific schemes for illegal spying using Bush's favored contractor, a company called ChoicePoint Inc.
The second reason The Times 'confession' makes me ill: While the publishers at the Paper of Record were counting their millions, the Palast Investigative Fund was slowly going broke.
Well, we've made it: Last Friday, the main-stream US media, through the venerable PBS program 'NOW', finally broadcast our reportage on the "caging" of voters, a story we first broke 3 years ago. BEFORE the 2004 election.
We've made it in another way: Friday was also the day I was informed that the Palast Investigative Fund was dead broke, technically bankrupt, with way less than zero in the account.
Bluntly: if we don't get some help, and fast, we're sunk. We are throwing staff overboard and halting some operations while we seek funds to keep afloat.
I'm pleading with you to do three things:
1. Watch PBS 'NOW' on voter 'caging'. Then, if you think our work is important . . .
2. Donate at least $100 (tax deductible) to the Palast Investigative Fund. With heartfelt gratitude, I'll send you a personalized, signed copy of Armed Madhouse (hardbound or paperback, your choice), or the DVD "Big Easy to Big Empty," the untold story of the drowning of New Orleans.
(For $250, I'll sign and send a whole BOX of Raw Journalism: 2 books: Armed Madhouse and Impeach the President, 2 DVDs: Big Easy to Big Empty and American Blackout, the Audio Book Armed Madhouse and the Spoken Word CD Live from the Armed Madhouse). Or simply make an open no-gift donation for a sum of your choice. (All options and many other signed items can be found at the Palast Investigative Fund Homepage.)
3. Pass on this note, post it and make certain your group and friends sign on to GregPalast.com, read our work, and support it.
I do not take one dime of pay from the Fund. 100% of your donation goes to our investigators, cameramen and women, operating costs and equipment. Yes, we get fees from BBC, Vanity Fair and Harper's but that doesn't cover the bills. Not even close.
If we can get your support, we can follow-up on our investigation of The Scheme to Swipe 2008. We're finding that 'caging' is the tip of the fraud-berg. With your help, we can also take on the Vultures, the bond speculators who are preying on Africa's poorest.
We are lucky to have prestigious outlets for our work, but the research is funded wholly by citizens like you, not by media moguls. And the content proves it. Our much-praised investigation in New Orleans was financed entirely by a score of selfless donors.
It's up to you. Real investigative reporting is a money-burning task. And a team effort. Please support our team by donating at least $100 to the not-for-profit Investigative Fund.
Bequests and in-kind donations are also appreciated.
Pick up the New York Times each day and for your $500 a year, you get all the news they find fit to print. Or donate a fraction of that for your signed copy of Armed Madhouse or The Best Democracy Money Can Buy for the real story on the prosecutor firings, caging and all the news that gives them fits.
Yours,
Greg Palast
The Palast Investigative Fund of the International Humanities Center is a 501c(3) not-for-profit educational foundation. Donate by sending a check for Palast Investigative Fund to International Humanities Center/Palast Investigative Fund, PO Box 923, Malibu, CA 90265 . For information regarding bequests or in-kind donations: contact Palast [at] GregPalast.com. For regular monthly contributions go to: Recurring Donations.
A further note on the The Crimes of the The Times
If I single out The New York Times, it's because they are the BEST America has to offer, Lord help us. If you haven't lost your lunch yet, read what the Sunday Times said in paragraph 18 . Only now does The Times tell us:
"The first known assertion by administration officials that there had been no serious disagreement within the government about the legality of the N.S.A. [data mining] program came in talks with New York Times editors in 2004. IN AN EFFORT TO PERSUADE THE EDITORS NOT TO DISCLOSE THE EAVESDROPPING PROGRAM, SENIOR OFFICIALS REPEATEDLY CITED THE LACK OF DISSENT AS EVIDENCE OF THE PROGRAM'S LAWFULNESS."
In other words, the Bush enforcers told The Times (and apparently its editors accepted without question) that there was no major dissent at the top levels of government over this Spies-R-Us scheme. That is, The Times blindly swallowed the very assertion that Senators now term, 'perjury.'
The Times waited until the election had passed and billions of records were illegally "mined." And they got the Pulitzer for it. Congrats!
In the 2005 Pulitzer article I re-read this tantalizing tidbit:
"Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted."
Really?? Did they mean "useful to John Conyers"?
I called The Times editor Bill Keller with two questions:
Question 1. What ELSE haven't you told us at Bush's behest?
But the key is Question 2. WHICH "senior officials" successfully spiked your report?
Whether you call them "senior officials" or "Bush bullies," those who muscle news reporters are not "sources" whose identities deserve protection.
If you're afraid, Mr. Keller, just tell me their initials. AG? KR?
Maybe I'll get an answer. In a year.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Armed Madhouse (2007) and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2004).
For more information, go to http://www.gregpalast.com/
Busted & Crimes of The Times
By Greg Palast
August 1, 2007. Cutely buried in the 18th paragraph in a story about Alberto Gonzales on Sunday was a slyly-worded updated confession by the New York Times that, in 2004, the Bush Administration leaned on its editors to spike a story about illegal invasions of citizens' private records ("data mining"). The Times editors smothered the story. They finally ran it - a year later - after Bush was safely re-elected.
As a journalist, this makes me want to throw up.
For two reasons: First, while The Times was covering up Bush's KGB-style data-mining operation, the Palast team was revealing its secrets. We published confidential FBI memos detailing horrific schemes for illegal spying using Bush's favored contractor, a company called ChoicePoint Inc.
The second reason The Times 'confession' makes me ill: While the publishers at the Paper of Record were counting their millions, the Palast Investigative Fund was slowly going broke.
Well, we've made it: Last Friday, the main-stream US media, through the venerable PBS program 'NOW', finally broadcast our reportage on the "caging" of voters, a story we first broke 3 years ago. BEFORE the 2004 election.
We've made it in another way: Friday was also the day I was informed that the Palast Investigative Fund was dead broke, technically bankrupt, with way less than zero in the account.
Bluntly: if we don't get some help, and fast, we're sunk. We are throwing staff overboard and halting some operations while we seek funds to keep afloat.
I'm pleading with you to do three things:
1. Watch PBS 'NOW' on voter 'caging'. Then, if you think our work is important . . .
2. Donate at least $100 (tax deductible) to the Palast Investigative Fund. With heartfelt gratitude, I'll send you a personalized, signed copy of Armed Madhouse (hardbound or paperback, your choice), or the DVD "Big Easy to Big Empty," the untold story of the drowning of New Orleans.
(For $250, I'll sign and send a whole BOX of Raw Journalism: 2 books: Armed Madhouse and Impeach the President, 2 DVDs: Big Easy to Big Empty and American Blackout, the Audio Book Armed Madhouse and the Spoken Word CD Live from the Armed Madhouse). Or simply make an open no-gift donation for a sum of your choice. (All options and many other signed items can be found at the Palast Investigative Fund Homepage.)
3. Pass on this note, post it and make certain your group and friends sign on to GregPalast.com, read our work, and support it.
I do not take one dime of pay from the Fund. 100% of your donation goes to our investigators, cameramen and women, operating costs and equipment. Yes, we get fees from BBC, Vanity Fair and Harper's but that doesn't cover the bills. Not even close.
If we can get your support, we can follow-up on our investigation of The Scheme to Swipe 2008. We're finding that 'caging' is the tip of the fraud-berg. With your help, we can also take on the Vultures, the bond speculators who are preying on Africa's poorest.
We are lucky to have prestigious outlets for our work, but the research is funded wholly by citizens like you, not by media moguls. And the content proves it. Our much-praised investigation in New Orleans was financed entirely by a score of selfless donors.
It's up to you. Real investigative reporting is a money-burning task. And a team effort. Please support our team by donating at least $100 to the not-for-profit Investigative Fund.
Bequests and in-kind donations are also appreciated.
Pick up the New York Times each day and for your $500 a year, you get all the news they find fit to print. Or donate a fraction of that for your signed copy of Armed Madhouse or The Best Democracy Money Can Buy for the real story on the prosecutor firings, caging and all the news that gives them fits.
Yours,
Greg Palast
The Palast Investigative Fund of the International Humanities Center is a 501c(3) not-for-profit educational foundation. Donate by sending a check for Palast Investigative Fund to International Humanities Center/Palast Investigative Fund, PO Box 923, Malibu, CA 90265 . For information regarding bequests or in-kind donations: contact Palast [at] GregPalast.com. For regular monthly contributions go to: Recurring Donations.
A further note on the The Crimes of the The Times
If I single out The New York Times, it's because they are the BEST America has to offer, Lord help us. If you haven't lost your lunch yet, read what the Sunday Times said in paragraph 18 . Only now does The Times tell us:
"The first known assertion by administration officials that there had been no serious disagreement within the government about the legality of the N.S.A. [data mining] program came in talks with New York Times editors in 2004. IN AN EFFORT TO PERSUADE THE EDITORS NOT TO DISCLOSE THE EAVESDROPPING PROGRAM, SENIOR OFFICIALS REPEATEDLY CITED THE LACK OF DISSENT AS EVIDENCE OF THE PROGRAM'S LAWFULNESS."
In other words, the Bush enforcers told The Times (and apparently its editors accepted without question) that there was no major dissent at the top levels of government over this Spies-R-Us scheme. That is, The Times blindly swallowed the very assertion that Senators now term, 'perjury.'
The Times waited until the election had passed and billions of records were illegally "mined." And they got the Pulitzer for it. Congrats!
In the 2005 Pulitzer article I re-read this tantalizing tidbit:
"Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted."
Really?? Did they mean "useful to John Conyers"?
I called The Times editor Bill Keller with two questions:
Question 1. What ELSE haven't you told us at Bush's behest?
But the key is Question 2. WHICH "senior officials" successfully spiked your report?
Whether you call them "senior officials" or "Bush bullies," those who muscle news reporters are not "sources" whose identities deserve protection.
If you're afraid, Mr. Keller, just tell me their initials. AG? KR?
Maybe I'll get an answer. In a year.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Armed Madhouse (2007) and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2004).
For more information, go to http://www.gregpalast.com/
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