posted September 21, 2006 06:37 PM            

One would think the NY Times would wise up but with the leftists in charge there, it seems they're determined to lie their way out of the newspaper business.

"uneven" retail and national advertising" means people aren't reading the paper(s) and advertisers aren't spending their money with print ads in those papers.

New York Times forecasts lower quarterly earnings
Thu Sep 21, 2006 5:50pm ET
Business News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co. on Thursday forecast sharply lower third-quarter earnings because of a "challenging" print advertising market, sending shares down nearly 5 percent in after-hours trading.

The publisher of The New York Times newspaper and the Boston Globe forecast earnings of 8 cents to 10 cents per share, compared with 16 cents in the same quarter last year.

"The print advertising market has been very challenging during July and August and remains so in September," Chief Executive Janet Robinson said in a statement.

On Monday, Dow Jones & Co. (DJ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) cut its third-quarter earnings forecast because of disappointing revenue at The Wall Street Journal. Yahoo (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) warned on Tuesday that auto and financial advertising would be weaker than expected.

The forecast includes an estimated charge of 1 cent to 2 cents per share for staff reduction costs.

It also includes an estimated charge of 2 cents to 3 cents for the loss on the company's sale of its investment in the Discovery Times Channel, which it said it would sell for $100 million.

Leaving out those items, the earnings forecast range would be 11 cents to 15 cents a share. Analysts polled by Reuters Estimates were expecting earnings of 18 cents a share, excluding items.

It is not immediately clear whether those estimates exclude the same items.

The news comes after several other newspaper publishers said earnings would suffer because of weak print ad sales.

On Thursday, Dallas Morning News publisher Belo Corp. (BLC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said it was unlikely to meet its previous revenue forecast for its newspaper group because of "uneven" retail and national advertising.

Last week, Richmond Times-Dispatch publisher Media General Inc. (MEG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) cut its third-quarter revenue growth forecast for its publishing and broadcast divisions and said it expects national and circulation revenue to fall.

The Times in the past several months has said it would consolidate printing operations and cut jobs as it tries to control costs.

Last week, Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Vice Chairman Michael Golden said they would give up a total of $2 million of stock-based pay this year to create a bonus pool for staff in a morale-boosting move.

posted September 29, 2006 07:30 PM            

An essential American institution is in crisis but the story is not being covered by the mainstream media. That’s because the institution in crisis is the mainstream media which appears incapable of self-examination, much less self-criticism.

When I trained as a journalist some 30 years ago, there were high walls separating news (what happened), analysis (how experts interpret what happened) and opinion (what someone thinks should be done in response to what happened). Those walls no longer stand.

Today, major media outlets routinely use news and analysis to score ideological and partisan points. The most recent example is the front page New York Times story on a National Intelligence Estimate that no one at the Times had read. The reporters and editors were satisfied they knew what was in it based on what they were told by “several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.”

That document had been completed in April but the officials leaked what they claimed was its key revelation — that the war in Iraq has worsened the terrorist threat — six weeks before the midterm elections. The possibility that this was the motive for the leak was not shared with Times readers.

The Times said its sources “all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document.” A more honest explanation would have been: “All spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were committing a crime as well violating their professional oath by disclosing classified information.”

To the Times editors, such transgressions are sometimes admirable, sometimes despicable. The accusation that classified information had been revealed to reporters by members of the Bush administration led the paper to call for what became Patrick Fitzgerald’s multi-year, multimillion-dollar investigation.

Two days after the Times story appeared, the White House declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate, demonstrating that the Times description of the document was, to be generous, incomplete.

It is bad enough that journalists in the U.S. allow themselves to be manipulated while abetting the commission of crimes. There also is this: Terrorist groups abroad are utilizing collaborators to twist the news while intimidating independent journalists.

For example during the recent conflict in Lebanon, Reuters distributed doctored and staged photographs. Other news organizations reported exaggerated casualty figures — and took Hezbollah’s words that virtually all Lebanese casualties were civilian. Did you ever see a photo of a dead Hezbollah fighter? Or of a live Hezbollah fighter for that matter?

Few reporters dared pursue the story of how Hezbollah concealed weapons among civilians. As a result, few news consumers knew what U.K. Foreign Office Minister Kim Howell told a parliamentary committee after his return from Lebanon: that Hezbollah had extensively hidden caches of arms in schools and mosques, and rockets in apartment blocks.

“What I saw out there begs many questions about the way we try to define what constitutes a war crime,” Howell said. “Every time the Israelis responded [to a missile attack] and smashed a building down, every picture of a burnt child and every picture of a building that had housed people [where] there was now pancake on the ground was propaganda for Hezbollah.”

Perhaps the most chilling recent example of how terrorists manage the media was the kidnapping in Gaza of Fox News journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig. Both men were abused, threatened and forced — at the point of a gun — to convert to Islam.

The message sent to reporters in the Middle East was clear: One day you may find yourself wearing handcuffs and a hood while men with guns and butcher knives read your dispatches. What do you want them to find?

To what must have been the kidnappers’ delight, Centanni and Wiig, after their release, seemed to accept the notion that journalists in such places as Gaza are obligated to act as public relations representatives for their hosts. The media, Centanni said, should not be discouraged from "telling the story of the Palestinian people. ...Come and tell the story. It's a wonderful story.”

Can you imagine a reporter in Israel saying it was his job to tell the "wonderful story" of the Israeli people? And were a reporter covering the White House to say it was his job to tell the "wonderful story" of George W. Bush, he would be fired on the spot — deservedly so.

No one can blame journalists for trying to stay safe while doing risky jobs in dangerous neighborhoods. But is it really too much to expect some examination by the media of the altered reality in which they now operate? A little self-criticism when reporters egregiously fail to report a story without fear or favor might be useful, too.

—Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies , a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

posted November 02, 2006 02:48 PM            

As I predicted some time ago, these lying leftist organs of demoscat fantasy are picking up speed, circling the toilet bowl as they spiral into oblivion.

Big Metros Show Severe Declines in Latest Circ Report
By Jennifer Saba
Published: October 30, 2006 7:40 AM ET

NEW YORK The Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX report for the six-month period ending September 2006 released this morning confirmed yet again that major metros are struggling to show growth. The losses are steep while the gains are meager.

This is the fourth consecutive semi-annual report to register a severe drop in daily circulation and -- perhaps more troubling to the industry -- Sunday copies. While the estimated decline 2.8% for daily circulation for all reporting papers may seem negligible, consider that in years past that decrease averaged around 1%. Sunday, considered the industry's bread-and-butter, showed even steeper losses, with a decline of about 3.4%.

Big cities like L.A., Miami, and Boston are feeling the effects of the Internet and the trimming of other-paid circulation. In New York, however, a 5.1% surge for the New York Post allowed it to leapfrog past its rival, the Daily News -- and The Washington Post -- into fifth place in daily circ.

The Los Angeles Times reported that daily circulation fell 8% to 775,766. Sunday dropped 6% to 1,172,005.

The San Francisco Chronicle was down. Daily dropped 5.3% to 373,805 and Sunday fell 7.3% to 432,957.

The New York Times lost 3.5% daily to 1,086,798 and 3.5% on Sunday to 1,623,697. Its sister publication, The Boston Globe, reported decreases in daily circulation, down 6.7% to 386,415 and Sunday, down 9.9% to 587,292.

The Washington Post lost daily circulation, which was down 3.3% to 656,297 while Sunday declined 3.6% to 930,619.

Circulation losses at The Wall Street Journal were average, with daily down 1.9% to 2,043,235. The paper's Weekend Edition, however, saw its circulation fall 6.7% to 1,945,830.

Daily circulation at USA Today slipped 1.3% to 2,269,509.

The Chicago Tribune showed slight declines. Daily dropped 1.7% to 576,132 and Sunday decreased 1.3% to 937,907.

Losses at the Miami Herald were steep. Daily circulation fell 8.8% to 265,583 and Sunday fell 9.1% to 361,846.

While daily circulation stabilized compared to past reporting periods at The Sun in Baltimore, down 4.4% to 236,172, Sunday took a massive hit. Circulation on that day dropped 9% to 380,701.

The Hartford (Conn.) Courant’s daily circ was down 3.9% to 179,066 while Sunday dropped slightly, 1.5% to 264,539.

At The Philadelphia Inquirer, daily fell 7.5% to 330,622 while Sunday declined 4.5% to 682,214. Daily circulation at its sister pub, The Philadelphia Daily News, dropped 7% to 112,540.

The Star Tribune in Minneapolis reported declines. Daily was down 4.1% to 358,887 while Sunday dropped 6.3% to 596,333.

At the Orlando Sentinel, daily circulation decreased 2.5% to 214,283. Sunday fell 4.2% to 317,226.

Daily circulation at The Arizona Republic declined 2.5% to 397,294 and 2.6% on Sunday to 503,943.

The Plain Dealer in Cleveland showed daily circulation almost flat -- a small victory -- with a decline of 0.6% to 336,939. Sunday was down 2.3% to 446,487.

The New York Post got a leg up in the city’s tab wars. Daily circulation at the paper overtook the Daily News in showing gains of just over 5% -- perhaps the only major metro in the country to report such growth -- to 704,011 copies. The Daily News also increased its daily circulation, up 1% to 693,382.

That said, Sunday is still a problem for the New York Post. Circulation grew a fraction of percentage up 0.4% to 427,624. At the Daily News, Sunday circ was almost flat, down 0.1% to 780,196.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch made advances in daily circulation up 0.6% to 276,588. Sunday was down 2.4% to 418,262.

The Denver Post’s daily circulation dropped 3.1% to 255,935. The Rocky Mountain News showed similar declines with daily down 2.9% to 255,675. Combined Sunday circulation fell 4.2% to 694,053.

Newsday reported losses. Daily fell 4.9% to 410,579 while Sunday experienced similar declines, down 4.3% to 474,750.

posted November 04, 2006 12:42 AM            

I almost fear for RA Baehr’s sanity as he sifts through all that polling data. I do not place that much stock in them.

Three decades of political activism has taught me to pay attention to four things in the final weeks of a campaign.

1) Who has had the best ads – those selling themselves, not just trashing the opponent.

2) Who got well designed mailings into the voters’ hands. The fancy analysts often forget that the USPS is still the only 100% reliable way to reach every voter, especially in this age of 200 channels on cable TV, Netflix, interactive video games and Internet downloads.

3) Who seems to be working the best GOTV effort.

4) Intangibles, such as are non political types talking about a candidate or are they more interested in the local sports team? Is there an issue that has truly resonated with local voters? Am I seeing what the media is spinning on the issue or am I seeing something else all together?

The fact is that the media has been so blatantly one-sided and frivolous in tone this year that we know next to nothing about the issues that have impacted with the voters in most races. Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics was on target yesterday when he noted that most of the mainstream political analysis on the House races

“has looked an awful lot like a circular track of footnotes. People who study for a living know what I am talking about. One author makes a claim about some such thing, and, in a footnote, cites another author. Because you are interested in the claim, you go look up that author, who then cites a third author. The third cites a fourth, and the fourth cites…a prior edition of the first!”

The polls have been little better. It isn’t just that a critical number of people have opted entirely out of land line service and telephone etiquette has changed dramatically since caller id and voice mail became widely available. I think the entire polling industry is suffering from a gaping self inflicted wound. The news media has increasingly commissioned polls as a basis for their political stories. There have been far too many of polls with results more clearly reflective of the agenda of the body that commissioned the poll than any true reading of public opinion.

Then there is the way people like Zogby became media talking heads. By making themselves just one more part of the liberal media spin machine, the pollsters’ once presumed objectivity is in tatters. We have a great deal of hard evidence that many political conservatives have canceled their subscriptions to much of the dead tree media and have stopped listening to the network news because of its persistent liberal bias.

I don’t think it is wrong to assume that these same people, believing that pollsters are merely another part of the biased mainstream media, not independent agents, now hang up rather than participate. Opting out of participation is the simplest answer to why pollsters have reported a large drop in callers identifying themselves as Republican given that historic evidence shows that party identification is usually slow to change.

What shall we believe on this final weekend? We hear that Bush and the war in Iraq are wildly unpopular, yet pro-war Lieberman is way ahead. It is a bad year for Republicans, but Steele is surging in blue state Maryland. Polls keep saying the Republicans are wrong on almost all the issues, yet Webb, Casey and a host of House candidates are running as old fashioned social conservative Democrats and San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi, who has been featured in many a Republican ad and flyer of late, has so lowered her profile I almost expect her picture to pop up on a milk carton.

There seems to have been an increasing media tendency to hype every election as a huge watershed. Part of this has to do with TV ad revenue as well as beating the drum for the Democrats. Unprecedented amounts are being spent on media in many House and Senate races this off-presidential year. Unfortunately a great deal of that media is for blatantly misleading mud that tends to alienate voters in the long run. I also suspect that prior off-year elections have not generated anywhere near this year’s coverage by the national print media and the network news.

What is perplexing is that none of this media heat has generated light. Usually I have a pretty good feel for what has been going on with the voting public right before an election. This year I feel more and more in the dark as to what the American public is really thinking as I try to search between Macaca, Mark Foley’s IMs , and Michael J. Fox’s endorsement of an amendment he hadn’t even read for some smidgeon of media coverage that even remotely jibes with my own observations about the mood of the voters.

In addition, many voters have been left to their own devices to try to figure out where many candidates truly stand on the issues or which ads are true, which false and which are true but entirely misleading. Just as important in this global age, based on the issues being played out in our media, the rest of the world has been led to think we are all simply nuts. Blind as I feel today, I still have faith that most voters have good innate skills at spotting phony claims and determining the real issues at stake.

posted November 05, 2006 06:56 PM            

Newspaper circulation figures were released recently for the six-month period ending Sept. 30, once again showing significant losses for the big mainstream media dailies. Los Angeles Times daily circulation fell by 8 percent, its Sunday circulation by 6 percent; Philadelphia Inquirer daily was down 7.5 percent, Sunday by 4.5 percent; Washington Post daily was down 3.3 percent, Sunday by 3.6 percent, and so on.
On the heels of that announcement, a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs was issued documenting that a whopping 77 percent of midterm election coverage by the Big Three newscasts (ABC, CBS, NBC) was favorable to Democrats, while only 12 percent was favorable to Republicans.

The two stories are not unrelated.

The relentless, wholly unrestrained liberal bias of the Old Media over the past four decades has been undeniable to all but the media elites themselves, and those whose political views are so far off the left end that they truly believe the New York Times is playing it straight down the middle.

This consistently slanted reportage has resulted in a hemorrhaging of readers and viewers of "mainstream" news outlets over this same time span, and that in turn has led to the meteoric rise of the New Media (Fox News, Rush and talk radio, Internet websites and blogs, etc.).

As mainstream media elites Mark Halperin and John F. Harris readily (and commendably) acknowledge in their new book, "The Way to Win," conservatives have a point. The authors admit that the evidence of liberal bias is plentiful, and as Halperin said in a recent radio interview: "That has to change." Unfortunately, most of their colleagues not only still refuse to recognize the obvious, but they demean anyone who dares even point out examples of skewed coverage.

Halperin and Harris argue convincingly – as conservatives have for decades – that the Old Media's dismissive attitude of the heartfelt convictions of roughly half the country about its slanted coverage is both an insane business practice and a violation of the core mission of journalism. It's driving away what fair-minded readers and viewers they have left by the droves.

A great example is the Old Media's coverage of John Kerry's slander of our troops in California on Monday. No sooner had Kerry's camp emerged with a convoluted explanation of his remarks being a "botched joke" at the expense of the president (whose name was never mentioned in Kerry's offending remarks) than the Old Media elites picked up those talking points and ran with them.

Howard Kurtz echoed the sentiments of his fellow Old Media elites when he wrote in the Washington Post Wednesday: "There isn't anybody, including in the Bush administration, who believes that Kerry meant to insult the soldiers in Iraq with his clumsy joke."

Oh, really?

Well, tell that to the soldiers who are serving in Iraq who created that now-famous banner (displayed so prominently on Drudge) which read: "HALP US JON CARRY – WE R STUCK HEAR N IRAK." Or tell it to the untold thousands of veterans and their family members who have been calling into and e-mailing radio talk shows and other New Media venues to express their outrage. Or tell it to all those Democratic candidates who called on Kerry to apologize, cancelled campaign appearances with him or simply ran for the tall grass.

What the Old Media elites willfully omitted in their reflexive defense of Kerry was the fact that this is the same guy who slandered millions of Vietnam veterans when he spoke before a Senate committee in 1971, comparing our soldiers then to the barbaric hordes of Genghis Khan. He is the same guy who, just last December, accused our troops in Iraq of breaking into the private homes of Iraqi civilians in the dead of night and terrorizing women and children.

So there was a pattern here that could be traced back more than three decades, but it was a pattern that simply didn't fit into the Old Media's obvious strategy of buttressing a beleaguered Kerry and providing political cover for Democrats in advance of the crucial midterm elections this upcoming Tuesday.

More damnable even than all this, though, was Kerry's laughable explanation of his statement before those students, where he said: "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." Kerry's camp now says he actually meant to say this: "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush."

These are two vastly different statements, yet Kerry and his supporters are trying to tell us that he botched it by just one word – instead of saying "you get us stuck in Iraq" (referring to Bush), he misspoke and said "you get stuck in Iraq."

This is a patently absurd defense. As Michael Medved has noted of the two versions, they include only 11 matchings words, while 23 words from the purported original text never passed Kerry's lips. And, again, President Bush's name was never mentioned in the actual statement.

Yet when Press Secretary Tony Snow gave his briefing Wednesday, there was NBC's uber-partisan David Gregory and the rest of the Democratic Party shills in the White House press corps lambasting the president for disparaging poor John Kerry when it was so obvious to everyone that it was just a botched joke.

There were no references to Kerry's 1971 slander of the troops; no mention of his sliming of them last December; certainly no comparison between the two versions of the statement. No, just a slew of attacks against Bush ... as Old Media circulation figures and viewer numbers continue falling.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52766

posted February 26, 2007 01:49 PM            

The handwriting has been on the wall for the Treason Times and other far left media sources for years. They should have noticed what was being writ large on the wall when the Pew poll came out showing only 21% of those polled believed all or even "most" of what the Treason Times prints.

Another formerly great newspaper sacrificed on the alter of the "we hate America" crowd.

February 26, 2007
More bad news for NYT shareholders
Thomas Lifson

MarketWatch reports that yet another prestigious securities firm, Lehman Brothers, has downgraded the stock of the New York Times Company:

"We remain concerned about the deteriorating top line at all three of the company's newspaper divisions," the broker said. It told clients that the Boston Globe newspaper continues to struggle, with January advertising revenue down 10%. Meanwhile advertising revenue at the New York Times has been weak since 2001, Lehman noted. Overall, Lehman said it believes consensus forecasts for the company's earnings are too high.

posted February 26, 2007 02:20 PM            

quote:

---

The handwriting has been on the wall for the Treason Times and other far left media sources for years. They should have noticed what was being writ large on the wall when the Pew poll came out showing only 21% of those polled believed all or even "most" of what the Treason Times prints.

---

posted February 26, 2007 02:49 PM            

The poll said what it said and I represented what it said accurately. I even graciously gave you an opportunity to contact Pew to get their interpretation of how they intended the word most to be used and their interpretation of the 4 different categories of respondents. I'm still waiting for you to share that with me.

Only 21% of those polled believe all or even most of what the Treason Times prints.

"Most" is a word meaning more than half, the greater part of anything. Therefore acoustic, even among those 21% which were the strongest supporters of the Treason Times, a portion of those only believe a range of truthfulness on the part of the Treason Times ranging from just over half to something less than all.

Further, the Pew poll differentiated between those in the 21% category by using both all and most in the heading for that category. If it was intended that most was to be defined...for purposes of the poll...as all then there would have no need to interject most into the poll results.

posted February 26, 2007 02:51 PM            

Here's the chart that Jwhop can't seem to comprehend:
Link

Now, it may not be the most easily read chart, but it's not near impossible (except for Jwhop). The question used to create this chart clearly illustrates what the chart means:

Q.23 Now, I'm going to read a list. Please rate how much you think you can BELIEVE each organization I name on a scale of 4 to 1. On this four point scale, "4" means you can believe all or most of what the organization says. "1" means you believe almost nothing of what they say. How would you rate the believability of (READ ITEM. RANDOMIZE LIST) on this scale of 4 to 1? (INTERVIEWERS: PROBE TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN "NEVER HEARD OF" AND "CAN'T RATE")
Link

Now if you refer to the chart, column 3 is the highest populated, because (as I explained to Jwhop previously) most people don't want to take the extreme position. Based on this scale at least 62% (columns 4 & 3) of the people polled have a favorable opinion of the NYT's credibility.

So when Jwhop asserts that, "Only 21% of those polled believed all or even 'most' of what the Treason Times prints," just know that it's simply a matter of not being able to comprehend the poll.

posted February 26, 2007 02:59 PM            

quote:

---

The weekly news magazine U.S. News & World Report and the Wall Street Journal are viewed as highly credible by 24% of those who are able to rate them.

---

quote:

---

Time Magazine is viewed as highly believable by 22% of people familiar enough to rate it, and the New York Times gets a 21% rating.

---

As you see, Pew is indicating that column 4 as a poll response means people find the source to be, "highly credible," (in the first quote) and, "highly believable" (in the second quote).

posted February 28, 2007 11:00 AM            

It's clear category 4 are those who find the various news sources highly believable/highly credible. It's also clear the highest rating of any listed news source is 24% of those who responded listed in category 4 which are those who believe all or most. All meaning every word and most meaning more than half of what they read from those publications.

It goes downhill from there because categories 3, 2 and 1 clearly believe only half or less than half of what those sources report...all the way down to believe almost nothing they report.

Far from proving your fairy tale of Americans finding the media highly credible, it's clear that even in the best case, WSJ and US News, fully 76% of those polled do not find them highly believable or highly credible.

Further acoustic, you've entirely missed the main point and though it's been pointed out to you several times, you continue to do so.

The only thing the news media has to sell to the public is their news reporting. Three out of 4 said the news media is LESS THAN highly believable or highly credible...all the way down to category 1 who said they believe almost nothing.

Imagine an advertiser who going into an advertising campaign believed that 3 out of 4 people who saw their ad would believe they were lying.

Imagine acoustic, when you talk to your friends, 3 out of 4 would believe you are a liar and not to be believed.

That's the situation the NY Times and other print news media find themselves in and that's the reason they are losing readers, circulation and advertisers.

Thanks for proving my point.

posted February 28, 2007 12:33 PM            

Column 3 people don't believe less than half. It's a scale! SCALE! Do you not understand what polling on a scale is? On a scale of 1 to 4 where 4 means that you find the source highly credible and 1 means you don't find the source very believable, how do you rate the source? That's their question paraphrased. It doesn't in any way mean that people in column 3 believe less than half. That's utterly ridiculous, and stupid to boot! Sometimes you just have to call something what it is, Jwhop, and your being an idiot.

posted February 28, 2007 04:50 PM            

You never could get the definition of most down pat.

If you could reason your way out of a wet paper bag you'd understand there is no sliding scale indicated. There are percentages of those responding to the Pew poll who placed themselves in the 4 categories.

I've come to the conclusion you're too dense to ever get it, to decipher the meaning of most and to understand that anyone who doesn't believe even most of what the Treason Times or any other news source prints believes only half or less than half of what they distribute as news. Given category 1 and 4 are the bookends of the poll results, it follows those placing themselves in category 2 believe more than nothing and those in category 3 believe less than those in category 4...which was the 21% of respondents who believed all or most. Therefore acoustic logic and reason dictates anyone who is not in category 4 believes only 50% or less of what they read in the Treason Times. That means..acoustic that fully 79% of Pew poll respondents do not find the Treason Times credible or believable. It means acoustic, that all those category 1,2 and 3 people believe the Treason Times is lying at least half the time...descending in order to almost all the time.

It's not too late to send Pew an email and get their take on their own poll. Of course they already said only 21% of respondents found the Treason Times highly credible or highly believable. The flip side of that acoustic is that 79% of those responding DID NOT.

posted February 28, 2007 05:05 PM            

On the issue of credibility and believability, the Associated Press scored even worse than the Treason Times...only 18% place them in category 4...as believing all or even most of what they print.

AP Calls Convicted Cop-Killer a 'Freedom Fighter'
Posted by Warner Todd Huston on February 28, 2007 - 06:54.

The New York Post today has laid out the sordid tale of the AP's lionization of a convicted cop-killer, calling this criminal a "former freedom fighter."

The Post did a great Newsbusteresque job of detailing the AP's disgusting hero worship of this murderer, so I'll let them take it from here...

AP's Ode to a Cop-Killer

February 28, 2007 -- To those who remember the infamous 1981 Brinks heist in Nyack, Judith Clark is a self-indulgent '60s radical serving a well-deserved 75-year prison term for her role in the violent deaths of three heroic law-enforcement officers.

But to the Associated Press, which supplies news to the world, Judith Clark is a "former freedom fighter."

That's right. A "freedom fighter."

Now, maybe "convicted cop-killer" is too graphic for the AP, even though it's wholly accurate.

But "freedom fighter"?

Who's writing for the AP these days - Michael Moore?

Nevertheless, for several hours Monday night, that was precisely the unquestioned description of Clark that appeared in the lead sentence of a story that the AP sent out about her efforts to win a new trial.

Presently that description was altered to "a former black separatist"- with a note to editors saying the change was being made in the interest of "fairness."

Fairness? What about accuracy?

For one thing, though the leaders of the group belonged to the Black Liberation Army, Clark happens to be white.

The AP justified the change by noting that Clark had said the goal of the Brinks heist "was to finance a Republic of New Afrika consisting of former slave states."

(That's what they claimed, all right. But as Susan Braudy disclosed in her 2003 book about the case, "Family Circle," the real motive for the robbery was that BLA leader Doc Shakur needed money to pay his mortgage and buy cocaine.)

Still later, AP changed the story again. This time, Clark was referred to as "a former radical activist" - closer to the mark, but still rather a grand description for an accomplice to murder.

Clark was in the news in the first place because she's trying to get a new trial based on some hoaked-up technicalities. That's unlikely, but you never can tell.

So take a moment to think kindly of Sgt. Edward O'Grady and Officer Waverly "Chipper" Brown of the Nyack police and Brinks guard Peter Paige - dead before their time at the hands of Judith Clark and her accomplices.

"Freedom fighter," indeed.

It's no wonder that the purveyors of the so-called "news" in the USA are day by day losing their audience and their credibility.

posted February 28, 2007 05:25 PM            

The word 'most' isn't even close to being at issue here. You are erroneous in your thinking that it is.

In a scale of one to four with four being on the positive side and one being on the negative side, three and four are going to be positive/favorable, and one and two are going to be negative/unfavorable. Pew's scale is no different from all other scales out there.

If a four-star restaurant is great, then a three-star restaurant is considered good. Most often two-stars is considered average to a little below average. One-star is bad.

posted February 28, 2007 05:57 PM            

Of course the word most is important. It's an indefinite quantifying word meaning more than half..of anything but less than all. If Pew had not included most in category 4, there would have been no way possible to quantify how much of what the various press outlets report is believed by poll respondents.

Because Pew did use most, we are assured that anyone who didn't fall into category 4 believed only half or less than half of what the news outlets listed in the poll report.

Further acoustic, we see that disbelief of what they're reading in various publications playing out in the real world as the Treason Times and others listed in the Pew poll have had to lay off reporters and staff because of falling revenues and loss of advertising caused by readers deserting those news sources.

posted February 28, 2007 06:18 PM            

(a succession or progression of steps or degrees)

On a scale of 1 - 10, ten does not encompass the results that would normally be assigned to the numbers 5 - 10. Please don't tell me that you're less intelligent than Terri Schiavo, because this is essentially what you're saying to me.

Pollers don't assign half as a value on a scale having four numbers. They don't do it. Not ever.

I know I should have compassion for you for acting this stupid in public, but you bring it on yourself.

posted February 28, 2007 07:07 PM            

Terry Schiavo has nothing to do with this poll but your remarks put you in danger of being diagnosed like Terry...in a "permanent vegetative state".

Empty meaningless words and illogical drivel won't cut it acoustic and you're not going to get away with redefining the meaning of words.

Pew agrees with me, not you. Only 21% of respondents found the Treason Times highly credible or highly believable news sources. That's what Pew said and you posted their information, to the destruction of your own argument.

posted February 28, 2007 07:57 PM            

quote:

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Please rate how much you think you can BELIEVE each organization I name on a scale of 4 to 1. On this four point scale, "4" means you can believe all or most of what the organization says. "1" means you believe almost nothing of what they say. How would you rate the believability of (READ ITEM. RANDOMIZE LIST) on this scale of 4 to 1?

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THIS ['scale'] is EXACTLY what Pew specified to the people they were polling. They said it not once, not twice, but THREE times!

Want to put your foot any further into your mouth?

posted February 28, 2007 08:07 PM            

Now, the essential quality here is that Pew agreed with my interpretation of their poll results.

Only 21%...the most favorable group to the Treason Times found them highly credible or highly believable. Most, 79% did not find them to be either.

posted February 28, 2007 08:11 PM              

Some people will never SEE
they will remain blind
even when Truth is right
in front of them. ...

posted February 28, 2007 08:44 PM            

Nowhere in there does it say 'only' 21% found them highly credible or highly believable. Nor does it say anything remotely close to, "79% did not find them to be either."

What you've said is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts, and as I said previously I'm anxious to see just how proud you are. Your whole hypothesis is completely off-base. The survey was done on a scale. 4 is credible, 1 is not credible, 2 and 3 are grey areas in between. It's like I'm pounding a nail into your head, but there's nothing inside to sense it.

posted February 28, 2007 08:58 PM            

quote:

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Lotus, yes, it's true that those who do not look will not see. I suspect that you will both never look nor never see.

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