Archive for the ‘Corrupt Journos’ Category
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
Chicago Schools Chief, Now an Obama Aide, Had V.I.P. List for Top Choices
When Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, was chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, his office kept a log of nearly 40 pages listing the local politicians and business people and others who sought help getting children into the city’s most selective public schools.
According to an article Tuesday in The Chicago Tribune, which first obtained and reported on the confidential log, those who sought such help included 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard M. Daley’s office, the State House speaker, the state attorney general, the former White House social secretary and a former United States senator.
A spokesman for the Department of Education said Tuesday that the log was a record of those who asked for help, and that neither Mr. Duncan nor the aide who maintained the list, David Pickens, ever pressured principals to accept a child. Rather, he said, the creation of the list was an effort to reduce pressure on principals.
“Arne Duncan asked David Pickens to respond to all of these requests, some of which came from him, some from lots of other people, as a way to try to manage a process that was putting a lot of pressure on principals,” said Peter Cunningham, who handled communications for Mr. Duncan in Chicago and is now assistant secretary of the Department of Education.
“This was an attempt to buffer principals from all the outside pressure, to get our arms around something that was burdensome to them. It was always up to the principal to make the decision. Arne never ever picked up the phone.”
Yep, I “believe” it too – do you?
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Corrupt Journos, Politico Follies | No Comments »
Monday, April 27th, 2009
IZZY: DIZZY FOR MOSCOW
Another one of the left’s cherished political myths bites the dust.
For decades, the late I.F. Stone has been a revered liberal journalistic icon: An anti-establishment, muckraking crusader whose self-published weekly newsletter was required reading in Washington. He was also, it now turns out, a paid agent of the Stalin-era KGB.
Claims that the Soviets had co-opted Stone have been debated by historians and heatedly denied by his admirers; the initial evidence was inconclusive. But now come John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, the two leading experts on Soviet espionage in America, who’ve written a new book based on 1,100 pages of notes taken by former KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev, who was given access to some of the spy agency’s historic files.
His transcription of the internal documents is definitive: From 1936 through 1938 — when, sad to say, he was also chief editorial writer for the then-liberal New York Post — Stone was an agent of Soviet intelligence.
Posted in Commies, Corrupt Journos, Treason is as Treason Does | No Comments »
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Bonuses To New York Times Execs Under Fire:
At a time when New York Times managers are forcing all employees to take a five percent pay cut, and demanding even larger sacrifices from the NYT-owned Boston Globe, top executives of the beleaguered newspaper received substantial bonus and fringe benefit payments over and above their salaries, according to a proxy statement released on March 11.
These bonuses and benefits to top Times company executives have provoked growing resentment among Times staffers, and frank anger from Globe reporters who have been warned by Times executives that their paper will be folded if they do not come up with $20 million in pay cuts and layoffs.
On Tuesday, the Times disclosed a $74 million first quarter loss, 221 times larger than the $335,000 loss in the first quarter of 2008.
Posted in Corrupt Journos, Greed is Good | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
WINE MAG HUMBLED BY HOAX
THE faces over at the Wine Spectator are redder than a bottle of fine Bordeaux this week, after the highly respected magazine gave a prestigious award to a restaurant that never existed.
Wine connoisseur and watchdog Robin Goldstein, curious as to how the mag selected the world’s best wine restaurants, submitted an application for an “Award of Excellence” for a phony eatery he called “Osteria L’Intrepido” with a Milan address.
He set up a fake Web site, created a menu of “somewhat bumbling nouvelle-Italian recipes,” and invented a high-priced wine list that included “some of the lowest-scoring Italian wines in Wine Spectator over the past few decades” – among them, a 1982 Brunello di Montalcino that “smells barnyardy and tastes decayed.” Still, the imaginary eatery was honored in this month’s issue.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Corrupt Journos | Comments Off
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
Big Phat Liar
Last week’s bombshell Los Angeles Times report claiming that the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur in the lobby of a Manhattan recording studio was carried out by associates of Sean “Diddy” Combs and that the rap impresario knew of the plot beforehand was based largely on fabricated FBI reports, The Smoking Gun has learned.
The Times appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs’s trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion “Suge” Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud.
Posted in Career Limiting Move, Concentrated Stupidity, Corrupt Journos | No Comments »
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
Cash Strapped Clinton Campaign — Stunt?
So it turns out the Clinton campaign may not be so cash-strapped after all — at least not at this very moment.
After offering on Wednesday to go without paychecks to help save precious campaign resources, senior staff members on Hillary Clinton’s campaign are in fact not going without pay during the month of February, ABC News has learned.
“It’s not happening,” said a source familiar with the situation.
Clinton’s campaign has been shouting from the rooftops all day about its online fundraising efforts since Super Tuesday.
Posted in Concentrated Stupidity, Corrupt Journos, Greed is Good, Idiot Authorities | Comments Off
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
Bylines of Brutality
A Denver newspaper columnist is arrested for stalking a story subject. In Cincinnati, a television reporter is arrested on charges of child molestation. A North Carolina newspaper reporter is arrested for harassing a local woman. A drunken Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member is arrested for wife beating. A Baltimore newspaper editor is arrested for threatening neighbors with a shotgun. In Florida, one TV reporter is arrested for DUI, while another is charged with carrying a gun into a high school. A Philadelphia news anchorwoman goes on a violent drunken rampage, assaulting a police officer. In England, a newspaper columnist is arrested for killing her elderly aunt.
Unrelated incidents, or mounting evidence of that America’s newsrooms have become a breeding ground for murderous, drunk, gun-wielding child molesters? Answers are elusive, but the ever-increasing toll of violent crimes committed by journalists has led some experts to warn that without programs for intensive mental health care, the nation faces a potential bloodbath at the hands of psychopathic media vets.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Corrupt Journos | Comments Off
Saturday, December 8th, 2007
‘Tell the truth’ seminars for TV and radio staff cost £1m
Training to remind staff about the importance of telling viewers the truth will cost the BBC more than £1 million in staff time and expenses.
About 17,000 BBC staff have to attend a two-hour course, in which employees are invited to discuss where the line should be drawn between artifice and deception in the wake of a series of scandals.
Vin Ray, the director of the BBC’s college of journalism, said that the direct cost of the course would be “a maximum of £500,000”, but the cost of taking each employee out for a half day more than doubled that figure.
Mark Thompson, the Director-General, introduced the scheme after the corporation admitted a series of faked broadcasts, including made-up winners to phone-ins for Children in Need and Comic Relief and a misleading edit of a promotional video for a documentary about the Queen.
Posted in Corrupt Journos, Idiot Authorities | Comments Off
Friday, December 7th, 2007
Radio Host Bernie Ward Indicted on Child Porn Charges
A San Francisco radio talk show host pleaded not guilty to child pornography charges after surrendering to authorities Thursday.
The specifics of the allegations against Bernie Ward, 56, remain under seal. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco did not immediately return a call.
…
Ward’s criminal attorney, Doron Weinberg, insists that his client was merely doing journalistic research when he accessed the child pornography.
“Bernie was in the process of writing a book about hypocrisy in America,” Weinberg told The AP. “As part of it, for a few days in December of 2004, he accessed child pornography.”
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Corrupt Journos, Sexual Deviants | Comments Off
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
Family blasts Iraqi newsman over claims they were killed
The angry family of an Iraqi journalist went on local television on Wednesday to blast him for claiming they had been massacred three days ago by Shiite militiamen in Baghdad.
“We are still alive. Thank God!” the sister of the journalist said, before bursting into tears.
The journalist, Dia al-Kawwaz, had said she was among the 11 family members slaughtered by militamen on Sunday in his home in Baghdad’s northern Al-Shaab neighbourhood.
Al-Hurrah television paraded the relatives of Kawwaz, clearly alive — and clearly angry.
“No one attacked us … militias or special forces. Nobody stormed our home. He even organised a condolence meeting to mourn our deaths. But we are alive. We are ashamed that he is our brother,” said the sister, wearing a green dress and headscarf.
State television also spoke to Kawwaz’s mother who said she was in Kut, south of Baghdad.
“I disown him. I consider that I do not have a son. He is a liar,” the agitated woman said on the channel which did not show her picture.
Posted in Bad Parents, Corrupt Journos | No Comments »
Thursday, August 16th, 2007
It’s Not Just Scott Beauchamp
Scott Beauchamp was the last straw. I realized that I need a scorecard to keep track of all the fallen journalists, journalistic mistakes and major and minor screw-ups in the media. I couldn’t find one already made, although Wikipedia came close, so I started my own. I apologize if there is a good list already out there, but I looked and could not find.
Offenses include lying and fabricating, doctoring photos, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, falling for hoaxes, and overt bias. Some are hilarious, such as an action figure doll being mistaken for a real soldier. Some are silly, such as reporting on a baseball game watched on TV. Some are more serious.
I leave it to you to judge whether the internet damaged “journalism’s ability to do its job professionally”, as Marvin Kalb accuses, or if the internet has in fact helped expose an already damaged “profession”.
As they say, read the whole thing…
Posted in Corrupt Journos | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 14th, 2007
NYT Hard At Work Editing WSJ’s Wikipedia Page
I see now why the NYT is so prone to comical errors. Those vaunted multiple layers of painstaking editorial oversight are apparently being employed to edit an online fake-encyclopedia in order to denigrate a competitor.
The staff of America’s Paper of Record (TM) are also busy dicking around on the internet all friggin’ day childishly vandalizing Wikipedia entries on George W. Bush and Tom Delay.
One edit claims Delay was a “Grand Dragon” of the Republican Party.
Nuance.
Posted in Corrupt Journos | No Comments »
Saturday, August 4th, 2007
Update: Dateline NBC ‘mole’ outed, booted at Defcon
Dateline NBC Producer Michelle Madigan was publicly outed at the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas Friday after show organizers were tipped off that she was trying to film show attendees with a hidden camera.
Free IT resource
Madigan ran from the show after organizers publicly threatened to escort her from the event at the beginning of a 4 p.m. conference session by noted hacker HD Moore. “She literally kicked the door open,” said “Priest,” a show official who declined to be identified. “She made the mistake of running. Had she taken it like an adult, she would have been treated with kid gloves, treated with respect.”
Instead she left as Defcon organizer “Dark Tangent” (Jeff Moss) taunted her from the stage.
“It came to our attention that a reporter might be here with a hidden pinhole camera,” Moss told the crowd. He said that he had two options: to let her corner some 13-year-old and get him to admit to hacking, or to escort her away.
Posted in Corrupt Journos, Hackers and Hacking, Suicidal Tendencies | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
Mirror reporters held over fake bomb attempt
Two Daily Mirror journalists were arrested yesterday after attempting to plant a fake bomb on a train in what the newspaper called a “legitimate and justified journalistic exercise”.
The reporters were arrested at Stonebridge Park depot in north-west London after railway staff noticed the men carrying fake equipment and approached them to ask what they were doing on the site before contacting the British Transport police to report the trespass.
A police spokesman said the men were arrested at the depot yesterday afternoon and taken to a police station nearby. The matter was still being investigated and no charges had yet been laid, police said.
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Corrupt Journos | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007
Mitterrand’s role revealed in Rwandan genocide warning
The former French president François Mitterrand supported the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide despite clear warnings that mass killings of the Tutsi population were being orchestrated, according to declassified French documents.
The publication of the documents in today’s Le Monde for the first time confirms long-held suspicions against France. The previously secret diplomatic telegrams and government memos also suggest the late French president was obsessed with the danger of “Anglo-Saxon” influence gripping Rwanda. In three months from April 1994, at least a million Rwandans – mainly Tutsis – were systematically slaughtered in killings engineered by the Hutu regime to exterminate its ethnic rivals and repel the Uganda-trained Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
The documents, obtained by lawyers for six Tutsi survivors who are bringing a case against France for “complicity with genocide” at the Paris Army Tribunal, suggest the late President Mitterrand’s support for the Hutus was informed by an obsession with maintaining a French foothold in the region. One of the lawyers, Antoine Compte, said France was aware of the potential danger of its support for the pre-genocide Rwandan government. “Massacres on an ethnic basis were going on and we have evidence that France knew this from at least January 1993. The French military executed the orders of French politicians. The motivation was an obsession with the idea of an Anglo-Saxon plot to oust France from the region.”
Posted in Concentrated Criminality, Corrupt Journos, Idiot Authorities | No Comments »
Sunday, June 17th, 2007
BBC report damns its ‘culture of bias’
THE BBC is institutionally biased, an official report will conclude this week. The year-long investigation, commissioned by the BBC, has found the corporation particularly partial in its treatment of single-issue politics such as climate change, poverty, race and religion.
It concludes that the bias has extended across drama, comedy and entertainment, with the corporation pandering to politically motivated celebrities and trendy causes.
Posted in Corrupt Journos, Idiot Activists, Idiot Celebrities, Politically Incorrect | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
Tormented first by hiccups, now by media:
The notes under the door. The incessant phone calls. The impassioned pleas, all begging for a piece of the story.
It wasn’t reporters in search of secret intelligence involving the war in Iraq.
The subject: St. Petersburg’s Jennifer Mee, a 15-year-old who started hiccuping four weeks ago today and has yet to stop.
The competition for her story became so frenzied over the weekend that NBC’s Today show changed Jennifer and her mother’s New York hotel after another network’s exhaustive attempts to get an interview.
…
Representatives from ABC’s Good Morning America called Jennifer’s home 57 times on Sunday and slipped notes under her hotel room door, her family said.
Posted in Corrupt Journos | No Comments »
Thursday, January 25th, 2007
More on Those “Dining Concierge” Services Everyone’s Getting All Huffy About
I’m told that a former Eat Out writer at Time Out was fired for working for the service on the side. She was calling up restaurants and scoring reservations by telling them she was from Time Out. Then, that reservation would subsequently be sold through the service to fat-cat diners, and the writer would pocket money.
Posted in Corrupt Journos | No Comments »
