posted July 03, 2008 01:17 PM            

Business looks fine at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network as chaired by Limbaugh.

LIMBAUGH SIGNS THROUGH 2016; $400 MILLION DEAL SHATTERS BROADCAST RECORDS

Wed Jul 02 2008 09:02:18 ET
**Exclusive**

The American broadcast industry is rocked, realigned and blasted into a new orbit, yet again, by Rush Limbaugh, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

In what is being described as an unprecedented radio contract, Limbaugh will keep his syndicated show on-the-air and e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e through 2016 with CLEAR CHANNEL and PREMIERE RADIO.

Already host of the most lucrative hours since radio's inception, Limbaugh's total package is valued north of $400 million, according to media insiders.

The NEW YORK TIMES will claim this weekend that Limbaugh, marking 20 years this summer as a national host, has secured a 9-figure signing bonus for the new deal, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE.

MORE

In its controversial profile, the TIMES reports that Limbaugh is buying a new G550 jet and is making an estimated $38 million a year.

The cover photo of the TIMES Sunday magazine depicts Limbaugh 'dark and sinister' in a theme of THE GODFATHER.

While newspapers and traditional broadcast media are experiencing declining revenues, Limbaugh's golden microphone has turned diamond-laced:

Earnings now pace him ahead of the annual salaries for network news anchors: Katie Couric, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer — combined!

MORE

The deal represents a stunning triumph over the establishment by an outsider who connected with and captured the spirit of the nation's heartland.

posted July 03, 2008 01:31 PM            

Cause and effect would dictate that the WSJ and USA Today, which had very similar numbers to the NYT would show the exact same result as the NYT. The result hasn't been the same, though, has it? Therefore, your theory is wrong.

66% of respondents found WSJ credible
62% of respondents found NYT credible
60% of respondents found USA Today credible

posted July 03, 2008 01:57 PM            

Notice the wording Pew Poll puts on the gold standard of credibility found in one of their charts.

"Believe all or most". No other category is listed nor should it be. Newspapers which are not seen as "highly credible" are going down the dumper...sooner or later and the trend for all of them is down...including USA Today. There's a chance Murdock will take the necessary steps to turn the WSJ around. In case you don't know it, Republicans don't trust the WSJ either.

posted July 03, 2008 07:21 PM            

This is very easily illustrated by both the point I made last post (Column 4 being "Don't Believe All or Most"), and Column 3 being the favored answer by the respondents. If people wished to communicate that they didn't believe what these newspapers print, they had two better options for expressing it than choosing Column 3, and that's where your argument loses. If anyone wished to express their displeasure at the credibility of those papers they would have surely chosen Columns 2 and I.

posted July 03, 2008 07:38 PM            

Scales may be constructed in any manner deemed appropriate by whomever is doing the construction. Scales don't have to be constructed with a midpoint balance to suit your fussbudget senses.

If you have an argument with the way Pew constructed their scale..or the language they used to set the different categories apart..take that up with them.

posted July 03, 2008 08:24 PM            

I'll make only one concession to you acoustic. That scale combined with the wording Pew used was very poor. But don't tell me you know what was in respondents minds when they answered those questions.

posted July 07, 2008 11:25 AM            

Television is the most popular source of news in America but even those numbers are declining.

The fact is that more people are refusing to read or watch the news put out by people whom they believe are lying to them..or are politically biased against their political party or against their firmly held beliefs.

posted July 07, 2008 05:36 PM            

quote:

---

acoustic, only about 30% of Americans regularily get their news from Internet sources.

---

Has readership of newpapers dropped by more than 30%? Internet readership can only continue to grow, so I don't see it as an excuse to blame the internet.

posted July 08, 2008 02:04 PM            

But, the fact advertisers are leaving the print media format should translate into more Internet advertising for so called main stream media outlets...but it's not happening.

In fact acoustic, I can't imagine a more effective medium for advertising than the Internet, which permits the marrying of interactive color images with soundtracks; something denied to print media advertisers. Yet, advertisers are staying away from MSM sites in droves.

posted July 09, 2008 02:22 PM            

Virtually announcing to the world that the New York Times Company is in the process destroying shareholder value, investment bank Lehman Brothers is telling investors that its 12 month price target for a share of New York Times Company stock is $8 a share, down 46 percent from $15.06 at the time the report was published.

**Note, the stock price of the NY Times hit a high of $53 per share in June, 2002.**

Lehman sees ad revenue declining even faster than it had previously predicted, along with acceleration in the decline of earnings per share. It warns investors away from an asset play here, no doubt because the Sulzberger family is committed to keeping the company intact. So the only way the company's shares should be evaluated is on the basis of its rapidly deteriorating fundamentals.

posted July 09, 2008 04:19 PM            

As the mortgage market crisis unfolded in the summer of 2007, investors began to fret that Lehman Brothers would stumble, and its stock began a steady fall from a peak of $82 a share. The fears were based on the fact that the firm was a major player in the market for subprime and prime mortgages; it is also the smallest of the major Wall Street firms, raising the risk that large losses could be fatal.

Still, the storied investment bank has defied expectations more than once, as in 1998, when it seemed to teeter after a worldwide currency crisis, only to rebound strongly, and it rode a rollercoaster into the summer of 2008. While it had to announce a series of writeoffs and new offerings to seek capital to bolster its finances, it managed to avoid the fate of Bear Stearns, the other of Wall Street's small fry, which was bought by JP Morgan Chase at a bargain basement price under the threat of bankruptcy.

Lehman and Bear Stearns had a number of similarities. Both had relatively small balance sheets, they were heavily dependent on the mortgage market, and they relied heavily on the “repo” or repurchase market, most often used as a short-term financing tool.

Lehman has also fought a running battle with short seller. The company accused them of spreading rumors to drive down the stock's price; Lehman's critics have responded by questioning whether the firm had come clean about the true size of its losses.

On June 9, 2008, Lehman announced a second-quarter loss of $2.8 billion, far higher than analysts had expected. The company said it would seek to raise $6 billion in fresh capital from investors.
Link

___________________________

Interesting that on Lehman Brothers own website in the section titled Newsroom no such story exists. Also, in their section about how to prepare for an interview with them they suggest you learn about them through publications such as the NYT. (I found that while searching Lehman Brothers site for New York Times. The press release American Thinker references is nowhere to be found.)

If you search for that story on Google, the only hit is American Thinker, which is merely a blog. This blog -true to Republican form- doesn't source it's assertion. How can someone with a blog not know how to provide a link to the article they're writing about? It bloggles the mind.

posted July 09, 2008 06:43 PM            

To challenge a former stock broker in one of the areas of his expertise is close to suicidal.

New York Times (NYT) NewsBite - Analysts Lowers NYT's Estimate
Posted on Wednesday, July 09, 2008 3:23 PM

New York Times Co. (NYT) opened at 15.11. So far today, the stock has hit a low of 13.91 and a high of 15.11. NYT is now trading at 13.93, down 1.13 (-7.48%). The stock hit its 52 week high of 24.85 in July and set its 52 week low of 13.91 today. NYT has been slipping for most of the past year. Shares of New York Times have been plunging today to a new low after a Lehman Brothers Holdings analyst slashed his earnings estimates for the company. The broker also added that its dividend is at risk of being cut in coming years. Technical indicators for the stock are bearish and steady while S&P gives NYT a very negative 1 STAR (out of 5) strong sell rating.
http://www.marketintelligencecenter.com/articles/644091

MARKET TALK: Lehman Cuts NY Times Estimates, Price Target

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Edited by John Shipman
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

(call: 201 938 5171; e-mail:john.shipman@dowjones.com)

MARKET TALK can be found using N/DJMT


7:59 (Dow Jones) Lehman keeps New York Times (NYT) at underweight, cuts 2008, '09 EPS views and target to $8 from $11. Firm's '08 EPS view now 75c vs prior 85c; '09 at 65c vs 78c. "Due to increasing cyclical and secular pressures, now estimating 2008/09 newspaper ad revenue down 11.1% and down 7.5%, respectively, vs. prior down 9.3% and down 6.0%," Lehman says. And NYT's annual 92c dividend is at risk of being cut "in coming years," firm thinks. "Given deterioration in fundamentals, NYT better off in long-term paying down debt," Lehman adds. (JHS)
http://www.djnewsplus.com/ar ticle/DN-CO-20080709-005261.html?mod=J1&a=Market+Talk&h=MARKET+TALK%3A+Lehman+Cuts+NY+Times+Estimates%2C+Price+Target+

posted July 10, 2008 11:52 AM            

New York Times Drops as Lehman Cuts Profit Estimates (Update4)

By Gillian Wee

July 9 (Bloomberg) -- New York Times Co. dropped the most in almost 10 years after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. lowered its earnings estimates for the third-largest U.S. newspaper publisher as advertising revenue deteriorates.

The company's dividend is at risk of being cut in coming years, Lehman analyst Craig Huber also said today in a note to clients. The stock is expensive compared with Gannett Co., the largest U.S. newspaper publisher, and McClatchy Co., owner of the Miami Herald, Huber wrote.

Potential asset sales, including the Boston Globe, ``are not a reason to own'' New York Times, Huber said, citing ``by far the worst timing'' in more than 15 years for the company and industry. New York Times settled a proxy fight with Firebrand Partners and Harbinger Capital Partners in March after adding two of the investors' nominees to its board.

``They're in an industry that's in decline and the only thing that will save them is the ability to migrate their business over to the Internet,'' said Richard Dorfman, managing director of investment firm Richard Alan Inc. in New York. ``It's a mad dash to transition to be a profitable and large online provider. Nobody has unlocked the safe to find that formula.''

Morgan Stanley Investment Management tried to force the company to eliminate its dual-class stock structure that gives the Ochs-Sulzberger family control of the board. The investor pressured New York Times for more than a year to do away with super-voting shares before abandoning the effort last October.

Lehman's Huber reduced his estimate for 2008 earnings per share to 75 cents from 85 cents and for 2009 to 65 cents from 78 cents. He also cut his 12-month price target to $8 from $11.

Record Drop

New York Times fell $1.05, or 7 percent, to $14.01 at 4:03 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, the biggest decline since October 1998.

Ad revenue at the flagship New York Times likely will drop 9.1 percent this year, more than the 7.2 percent previously projected, Huber said. Ad sales next year probably will fall 7.5 percent, compared with his earlier estimate of 6 percent.

Huber cut his estimates following the newspaper industry's 14 percent drop in print advertising in the first quarter, the worst on record. Advertisers spent $8.43 billion on newspaper ads in the first three months of 2008, according to the Newspaper Association of America, the eighth straight drop. Real estate and recruitment ads each fell 35 percent.

New York Times' sales fell 6.6 percent in May amid declines in national, retail and classified ads, mirroring drops at other U.S. publishers as marketers shift their ad spending to the Internet and cable television. Under pressure from shareholders to boost the stock price, New York Times increased its quarterly dividend by 31 percent in June 2007.

`Internet Acquisitions'

The New York Times is better off in the long-term paying down debt instead of maintaining its yearly dividend, which costs the company $133 million annually, Huber said in his note. The company has about $1.05 billion of debt, wrote Huber, who declined to comment for this story.

``We continue to think the board and management would think long and hard about selling assets and repurchasing shares again until it gets a much better handle on where the fundamentals of the newspaper industry are going,'' Huber wrote. ``The prudent thing to do would be to pay down debt and continue to evaluate the landscape for Internet acquisitions.''

While selling the Boston Globe, 14 small-market daily newspapers, its new headquarters in New York and stake in New England Sports Ventures including the Boston Red Sox might raise $1.5 billion after tax, those sales would hurt the company's 2009 earnings before interest, tax and non-cash expenses by $142.2 million, or 42 percent of the $340 million Huber forecast, he said.

The Times announced 100 job cuts in February, amounting to 7.5 percent of its 1,332 newsroom employees. News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch has taken aim at the paper after buying Dow Jones & Co. in December, by expanding the Wall Street Journal's coverage beyond business to politics and sports.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Wolfson in San Francisco at lwolfson@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 9, 2008 16:11 EDT
Link

_____________________

posted July 10, 2008 02:09 PM            

First, you attempt to cast doubts the story about Lehman Bros downgrading NYT stock was even true.

Then, you attempt to suggest the story is on a Republican blog site...so, it's probably not true.

Then, you failed to note the story I posted from AT is not a reprint but an original article which refers to facts published by an investment banking firm..Lehman Bros and then conjecture as to why a link wasn't posted to the original story.

Your fallback position is the Lehman Bros has downgraded many news media stocks. But, that's been going on for years as their circulation and advertising numbers have plummeted....as I predicted they would. BTW, Lehman isn't the only firm which has downgraded this sector.

Whatever the proposed solution to the NY Times problem is, the underlying problem is that Americans no longer find the times a highly credible source of news. Switching to a digital format isn't going to solve the problem of broken trust with the American people.

Lastly acoustic, you were on the wrong side of this issue from the beginning and remain so today.

The impact of an interactive full color and sound commercial is enormous. If national brands advertisers believed the news media websites were delivering the audiences to support those kinds of commercials...the same kind they run at enormous expense on television..there would be a stampede to those websites because it could be done there for a song...by comparison and not limited to a 30 second spot.

posted July 10, 2008 02:49 PM            

The problem is the Times lied in favor of the most murderous communist dictatorships the earth has ever known and some of us have very long memories.

Pulitzer-Winning Lies
After 70 years a Pulitzer committee is reexamining Walter Duranty's Stalin whitewashes in the New York Times. How bad were they? See for yourself.
by Arnold Beichman
06/12/2003

AT LONG LAST a Pulitzer Prize committee is looking into the possibility that the Pulitzer awarded to Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent whose dispatches covered up Stalin's infamies, might be revoked.

In order to assist in their researches, I am downloading here some of the lies contained in those dispatches, lies which the New York Times has never repudiated with the same splash as it accorded Jayson Blair's comparatively trivial lies:

"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be."
--New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1

"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
--New York Times, August 23, 1933

"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please. Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin's program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding."
--New York Times, December 9, 1932, page 6

"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
--New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18

"There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."
--New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13

I would like to add another Duranty quote, not in his dispatches, which is reported in a memoir by Zara Witkin, a Los Angeles architect, who lived in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. ("An American Engineer in Stalin's Russia: The Memoirs of Zara Witkin, 1932-1934," University of California
Press ). The memoirist describes an evening during which the Moscow correspondents were discussing how to get out the story about the Stalin-made Russian famine. To get around the censorship, the UP's Eugene Lyons was telephoning the dire news of the famine to his New York office but the was ordered to stop because it was antagonizing the Kremlin. Ralph Barnes, the New York Herald Tribune reporter, turned to Duranty and asked him what he was going to write. Duranty replied:

Nothing. What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant. This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated.

And this was at a time when peasants in Ukraine were dying of starvation at the rate of 25,000 a day.

In his masterwork about Stalin's imposed famine on Ukraine, "Harvest of Sorrow," Robert Conquest has written:

As one of the best known correspondents in the world for one of the best known newspapers in the world, Mr. Duranty's denial that there was a famine was accepted as gospel. Thus Mr. Duranty gulled not only the readers of the New York Times but because of the newspaper's prestige, he influenced the thinking of countless thousands of other readers about the character of Josef Stalin and the Soviet regime. And he certainly influenced the newly-elected President Roosevelt to recognize the Soviet Union.

What is so awful about Duranty is that Times top brass suspected that Duranty was writing Stalinist propaganda, but did nothing. In her exposé "Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York Times's man in Moscow," S.J. Taylor makes it clear that Carr Van Anda, the managing editor, Frederick T. Birchall, an assistant managing editor, and Edwin L. James, the later managing editor, were troubled with Duranty's Moscow reporting but did nothing about it. Birchall recommended that Duranty be replaced but, says Taylor, "the recommendation fell by the wayside."

When Duranty of his own volition decided to become a special correspondent on a retainer basis for the New York Times, the newspaper published an editorial reassuring its readers that his reputation as "the most outstanding correspondent of an American newspaper during all the years of his faithful and brilliant work at Moscow will remain unimpaired in the slightest degree by the change now made." This about a man whom Malcolm Muggeridge, the Manchester Guardian correspondent and Duranty's contemporary, described as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in fifty years of journalism."

Duranty was one of a gaggle of Stalin's intellectual admirers. Muggeridge, whose centennial we celebrate this summer, wrote about them in these lapidary words:

Wise old [Bernard]Shaw, high-minded old [Henri]Barbusse, the venerable [Sidney and Beatrice] Webbs, [Andre] Gide the pure in heart and [Pablo] Picasso the impure, down to poor little teachers, crazed clergymen and millionaires, driveling dons and very special correspondents like Duranty, all resolved, come what might, to believe anything, however preposterous, to overlook nothing, however villainous, to approve anything, however obscurantist and brutally authoritarian, in order to be able to preserve intact the confident expectation that one of the most thorough-going, ruthless and bloody tyrannies ever to exist on earth could be relied on to champion human freedom, the brotherhood of man, and all the other good liberal causes to which they had dedicated their lives. ("Chronicles of Wasted Time," pages 275- 276.)

Let's all give a great encouraging cheer to the Pulitzer committee for undertaking a
task 70 years late. And perhaps the Times will now (have) a look back at the Herbert L. Matthews coverage of Cuba and the man he so admired, Fidel Castro.

posted July 10, 2008 04:29 PM            

But the content of media is very powerful indeed, especially when it is mythological. Herbert L. Matthews played a part in Castro's coming up by affording him ideological momentum. Castro may have found victory without Matthews, but Matthews definitely made it a lot easier for him. I can obviously understand the inherent forces of hope that the Cubans had in Castro's rebellion, that he might restore the government's legitimacy. But Matthews only goal was his own, arrogant self-interest. He abandoned his objectivity and dreamed up a story of the events taking place. It definitely got the best of him in the end, as he wound up becoming nothing more than a pawn.

posted July 11, 2008 03:44 AM            

Yes, I casted doubts about Lehman Bros downgrading NYT stock, and with good reason: the story was nowhere to be found on either Lehman Bros site or on my Google searches for the article.

I didn't attempt to suggest that the story was on a Republican blog site. I cited correctly that it IS from a Republican blog site. This particular blog site has been found not to source it's assertions either, so I'm confident it was a good call, even if the sourcing did come through in the end.

I believe it's perfectly reasonable to ask a partisan website to source it's information. It helps with credibility.

quote:

---

Whatever the proposed solution to the NY Times problem is, the underlying problem is that Americans no longer find the times a highly credible source of news. Switching to a digital format isn't going to solve the problem of broken trust with the American people.

---

That's simply a less supported opinion than the most commonly given opinion. It doesn't matter if you don't agree with popular opinion or not. The salient point is that any reasonable person can detect that the internet would be the logical reason behind the newspaper industry's decline.

quote:

---

Lastly acoustic, you were on the wrong side of this issue from the beginning and remain so today.

---

Obviously, and most assuredly not.

quote:

---

If national brands advertisers believed the news media websites were delivering the audiences to support those kinds of commercials...the same kind they run at enormous expense on television..there would be a stampede to those websites because it could be done there for a song...by comparison and not limited to a 30 second spot.

That's strike 4 acoustic.

---

On one point, that's a strike against your own team. Remember it's MY position that people abandon expense in favor of what's free. Therefore it's logical that tv would be a better ad medium than newspaper (aside from the fact that most papers are regional).

Secondly, pitting television audience against a particular newspaper's website is always going to tilt in favor of television. Those audiences can't be compared by a long shot, so that argument just seems silly altogether.

Thirdly, none of this has anything to do with NYT's credibility whatsoever. Remember, NYT shared similar numbers with the other papers on Pew's chart (including WSJ and USAToday, the nation's top two newspapers). The cause here is both decreased demand due to people migrating to the internet, and poor business management on NYT's part. No actual media or stock analyst has remotely suggested that it's a credibility issue behind the NYT's problems, nor would they.

_________________

posted July 11, 2008 11:29 AM            

quote:

---

After all, more and more citizens each year don't think they can trust the press at all.

---

quote:

---

According to the latest study from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, fewer than a quarter of the 3,204 adults surveyed believe all or most of what they see on NBC News (23 percent), ABC News (22 percent) or CBS News (22 percent), continuing a downward trend in credibility that stretches back to the mid-1980s. For the sake of comparison, the Pew study conducted in 1998 found NBC and ABC tied as the most trusted broadcast news organizations, with 30 percent of those surveyed saying that believed what was reported on both networks. CBS News had a 28 percent approval rate eight years ago.

---

quote:

---

At the same time, public discontent with the news media has increased dramatically. Americans find the mainstream media much less credible than they did in the mid-1980s. They are even more critical of the way the press collects and reports the news. More ominously, the public also questions the news media's core values and morality. A short-lived upswing in the media's image in the immediate aftermath after the terrorist attacks on Sept 11, 2001, served only to cast these negative attitudes into sharp relief.

---

******

Just some related information. Pew has not minced words regarding the media's complete downward spiral in credibility, particularly the press, over the years. And it's just getting worse for the MSM, rightfully so in most people's opinions. Not everyone is visually oriented or adept at reading charts and graphs, etc. Simply searching through Pew's site clarifies any possible ambiguities or misunderstandings. Most Americans just don't trust the media.

posted July 11, 2008 01:12 PM            

_____________

Your second quotes something similar to what Jwhop's been misreading. It's quoting results of a question asked on a scale, and only reporting the percentage of the most positive column while disregarding the second most positive column. That article also states (as Pew has): Predictably enough, partisan politics plays a significant role as far as perceived credibility is concerned.

__________________________

In your last quote, it's the same story:

Now this skepticism is taking on an increasingly partisan cast; Republicans give most news outlets far lower ratings for credibility than do Democrats.

Considering that there are more declared Democrats in the country, and have been for some time, the credibility critics are in the minority.

That study also backs what I've been saying all along, which is that people are migrating away from newspapers not as a result of any credibility issues, but rather due to the internet.

More impressive, by the end of the campaign, 41% of voters said they got at least some campaign news from the internet — up fourfold from 1996.

This study conducted in January 2008 confirms this point as well:
http://people-press.org/report/384/internets-broader-role-in-campaign-2008

A Pew study from 2007 states:

Yet for all of the public's gripes about the press, people also say they like various news sources – local TV news, network news, cable TV news and the daily newspapers they are most familiar with. Though the numbers have declined in recent years, Americans continue to have more positive than negative impressions of these news organizations, and rate them far higher than most political institutions, including Congress, the Supreme Court and the political parties. One factor behind this may be the public's broad and continuing support for the news media's role as political watchdog. Currently, 58% say that by criticizing political leaders, news organizations keep political leaders from doing things that should not be done, while just 27% say such scrutiny keeps political leaders from doing their jobs.

In addition, the public gives news organizations high marks for professionalism and caring about how good a job they do. Two-thirds (66%) view news organizations as highly professional – rather than not professional – up from 59% two years ago and a low of 49% in 2002.

And confirm my contention of a basically 60% favorability rating:

Ratings of large nationally influential newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post also have dropped in recent years. Just six-in-ten Americans who offer a view of major national newspapers give a favorable assessment. This is virtually unchanged from 2005, and down 14 points from 2001. Local news outlets – local TV and papers that respondents are most familiar with – retain the highest favorability ratings among those who can rate them.

Meanwhile, ratings of other political institutions have been falling at a comparable rate. The share giving a favorable rating to the Supreme Court stands at 66% today, down from 78% in 2001, while fewer than half (45%) give a favorable rating to Congress, down from 65% in 2001. As a result, news organizations continue to be seen more favorably by the American public than most governmental institutions, despite their declining ratings.

Across every major news source, Democrats offer more favorable assessments than do independents or Republicans. The partisan divide is smallest when it comes to local TV news, which 83% of Democrats rate favorably along with 76% of Republicans. The differences are greatest for major national newspapers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post. Fully 79% of Democrats rate these newspapers favorably compared with just 41% of Republicans, based on those able to rate them.
http://people-press.org/report/348/internet-news-audience-highly-critical-of-ne ws-organizations

posted July 11, 2008 03:32 PM            

However, you've raised another example of NY Times lying and it's no laughing matter.

Herbert L. Matthews is credited with "inventing Fidel Castro" and indeed he did. Virtually everything Matthews said about Castro was a lie...including his nonsense that Castro was an anti-communist.

Since at the time Matthews starting writing his fantasy, Castro only had about 8 grubby little revolutionaries in his band, it's doubtful he would ever have overthrown Batista without outside help.

Imagine that, one of the most prosperous countries in the world..at that time..overthrown by a communist revolutionary with the help of a NY Times writer.

And how did Castro repay the Cuban people? He destroyed their economy, murdered anyone opposing him, reduced them to absolute slavery, filled Cuban prisons with political prisoners which per capita exceeded the political prisoner population in the Soviet Union and Cuban workers now must exist on the equivalent of about 60 cents per day wages and whatever relatives in America send them.

Herbert L. Matthews is a name I haven't thought about for a long time but every time I do, I see red.

posted July 11, 2008 07:24 PM            

You must be in a more dense fog than usual acoustic.

Now, here you are arguing with Eleanore when she's right...and Carroll Doherty, Associate Director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Not too unexpected considering you also attempted to argue with Hitler's statement..."I'm a Socialist".

"After all, more and more citizens each year don't think they can trust the press at all."

Of course, this was borne out by the Pew Poll where only about 20% said the print news media were highly credible/believeable. And that's the issue here acoustic, press credibility/believeability which is in the toilet.

Notice also that "fewer than a quarter...that's less than 25%...believe all or most of what they see on network broadcast news...ABC, NBC and CBS news. Believe "all or most" is the gold standard by which Pew assesses press credibility/believeability.

Not a good tactic trying to change the subject acoustic. Transparent in fact. Professionalism, care about the job they do, seen as the watchdog...blah, blah, blah. The subject is press credibility/believeability....a declining commodity.

Now, as to your suggestion people are leaving the print news media for TV and Internet news...because it's "free". Perhaps you don't know this acoustic but TV broadcast news has always been free going back into the late 40's at the inception of broadcast television. Yet, there were those stupid Americans buying newspapers from the NY Times and other print news companies. It's only today these stupid Americans woke up to the fact they could get their news for free...if they buy cable service or Internet service.

But you don't read thoroughly acoustic. If you did, you would realize journalists and newspapers they work for have known since the late 1990's that they're losing readers because people simply don't believe them....exactly what I said.

The Public Isn’t Buying Press Credibility
‘The seeds of public distrust were sown long before the recent round of scandals.’

"What Journalists Think