“Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in [Washington] Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party’s presumptive nominee June 4. […] the disparity is so wide that it doesn’t look good.”

… when the Gray Lady is laid to rest.*

h/t

Just think* – this week in boardrooms across the industry, media executives are meeting with media experts to hash out yet another strategy, and yet more innovations to address their falling fortunes, every last one of them invested in the unshakable belief that the internet is burying them because it’s faster – as though the only difference between shit and sunshine is the speed at which they travel.

The Edwards mess is the most recent and visible, but hardly unique, example of the mainstream media’s hear no evil/see no evil approach to newsgathering. How many other stories has the MSM missed, denied or avoided? From Rathergate to Reverend Wright to the success of the surge, the pattern is the same: MSM stalls, shuffles its collective feet, and doggedly ignores information for as long as possible until they can no longer do so with a straight face. The fact that these stories without exception work to the detriment of Democrats is apparently a grand coincidence.
And the notion that they are upholding some “journalistic standard” is rendered absurd. Edwards’ story wasn’t important on Thursday, but it was on Friday because he confessed? No, the level of proof changed, but the story’s relevance did not. If it wasn’t worthy of investigation before the ABC interview then it was unworthy of mention afterwards. Their explanation for their editorial decision-making is no more credible than . . . well than Edwards himself.

Related – Howard Kurtz.
And Stephen Green agrees – “If you treat a Republican one way and a Democrat another and it isn’t liberal bias — then what is it? A Sulzberger family suicide pact?”

You be the judge.

Bumped.
Update – Edwards confesses, mainstream media credibility takes another beating at the hands of the National Enquirer.
I repeat – this isn’t an extinction. It’s suicide.

So there you have it. Despite the pictures, the child support and the birth certificate with a blank by the father’s name, the story does not meet the newspaper’s standards.

And they wonder why newspaper stocks are falling?
Related – some threats are more newsworthy than others…

“I can only speculate as to why the media would remove the threat against Bush in these accounts. Is it because it is harder to portray Obama as the victim when he isn’t the only one threatened, or just harder to sell the meme that the offender is probably a murderous racist when he threatens a white president as well?”

Jonathan Kay laments the grim future facing mainstream print media – “You’ll miss us when we’re gone”.

With media stocks plummeting, a noisy army of pundits is predicting the imminent extinction of print newspapers and magazines. […] Where, exactly, are these stories going to come from when The Gray Lady is laid to rest?

Jonathan, the title of this series is “Not Waiting For The Asteroid” –

The New York Times:

“In the culmination of a racially fraught Congressional campaign in Memphis, a black candidate is linking her liberal-leaning white primary opponent in Thursday’s contest, Representative Steve Cohen, to the Ku Klux Klan in a television advertisement. . . “

Read the whole thing — 662 words and “Democrat” is not one of them.

(More here).
If the New York Times truly hopes to survive, they might first of all stop with the suicide attempts.
Or not. Whatever.

The potential sale of the San Diego Union-Tribune and Newark Star-Ledger at the worst time in the history of newspapering can mean only one thing: The publishers don’t think the business will get any better.

Related – “Is the New York Times for sale?”

It’s official.
The fine line between “news department” and a “4 year old’s ass” has finally been erased.

The pseudonym CTV uses for the hatchet jobs no one will sign their name to;

Is the entire staff of CTV News unaware that Canadian troops have a universally known safety zone? And that all unidentified and non-CF personnel are to drive slowly or stop, giving ample space for the protection of themselves and those troops?
It isn’t a state secret when everyone in theatre has been made aware of it. You would think CTV would want to include that in their article.

Because Allah knows – no Islamist has ever used someone else’s kids as human shields to carry out an attack.
Related: The progressive Stageleft lashes out at Canadian troops with this stinging accusation – American!.

h/t

I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you!
(I recall seeing a similar chart at one time that compared the number of Canadian media sleeping with Liberal vs Conservative politiicians/operatives, but I can’t seem to locate it at the moment.)
h/t

… to suit the [Globe’s] agenda of undermining the mission in Afghanistan.

Drudge Report;

An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES — less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
The paper’s decision to refuse McCain’s direct rebuttal to Obama’s ‘My Plan for Iraq’ has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles.
‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’
MORE
In McCain’s submission to the TIMES, he writes of Obama: ‘I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it… if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.’
NYT’s Shipley advised McCain to try again: ‘I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.’
[Shipley served in the Clinton Administration from 1995 until 1997 as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Presidential Speechwriter.]
MORE
A top McCain source claims the paper simply does not agree with the senator’s Iraq policy, and wants him to change it, not “re-work the draft.”
McCain writes in the rejected essay: ‘Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. ‘I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,’ he said on January 10, 2007. ‘In fact, I think it will do the reverse.’
MORE
Shipley, who is on vacation this week, explained his decision not to run the editorial.
‘The Obama piece worked for me because it offered new information (it appeared before his speech); while Senator Obama discussed Senator McCain, he also went into detail about his own plans.’
Shipley continues: ‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq.’
Developing…

Drudge has a copy of the rejected McCain editorial.
Related: Rasmussen;

The belief that reporters are trying to help Barack Obama win the fall campaign has grown by five percentage points over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey found that 49% of voters believe most reporters will try to help Obama with their coverage, up from 44% a month ago.
Just 14% believe most reporters will try to help John McCain win, little changed from 13% a month ago. Just one voter in four (24%) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage’.

UpdateExclusive: NY Times Editor David Shipley’s Notes On McCain’s Rejected Editorial

The Onion skewers Time Magazine;

According to political analysts, the Time piece features the most lack-of-depth reporting on Obama ever published, and for the first time reveals a number of inconsequential truths about the candidate, including how he keeps in shape on the campaign trail, and which historical figures the presidential hopeful would choose to have dinner with.
“The sheer breadth of fluff in this story is something to be marveled at,” New York Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet said. “It’s all here. Favorite books, movies, meals, and seasons of the year ranked one through four. Sure, we asked Obama what his favorite ice cream was, but Time did us one better and asked, ‘What’s your favorite ice cream, really?'”
Time managing editor Rich Stengel said he was proud of the Obama puff piece, and that he hoped it would help to redefine the boundaries of journalistic drivel.

I don’t know about that – the field is pretty deep.
(h/t Michelle)

“Through June, [Newsweek’s] advertising pages were down 22.2 percent over the same period in 2007, according to Publishers Information Bureau figures. At Newsweek-rival Time, pages were down 21 percent; U.S. News and World Report—which recently announced it will become a biweekly in 2009—saw a 30 percent drop.”
More at Newsosaur – “In a historic rout, newspaper shares have lost nearly $4 billion in value in the first 10 trading days of July, an amount greater than the combined market capitalization of all but the three largest publicly held publishing companies.”

(Two Afghan women photographed moments before they were executed. The “after” photos, plus the AP video, at the link.)
This is why we despise you.

We would remind the AP that the act of the Taliban inviting a reporter to the murder means they wanted this news out there. The AP was clearly being used as a propaganda outlet for the Taliban.
Does this make him an accomplice or only a witness to the crime? When you know a crime is about to be committed, do you not have a moral and ethical obligation to try to prevent that crime? Even if you’re a journalist? Even if all you do is try to call the authorities, in this case someone in the Afghani government or NATO?
A quick Yahoo News photo search of Rahmatullah Naikzad seems to indicate that he’s very friendly with the Taliban. Many of the pictures show Taliban fighters posing for the AP photographer.

Just how is it possible that U.S. combat forces are protecting the site of the Babadag training facility in Tulcea, Iraq when equipped with non-lethal MILES gear that fires nothing but blanks?

“Hours after The New York Times Co. suffered the embarrassment of a third person scaling its Eighth Avenue headquarters in recent weeks, the company got pounded by Wall Street…“
“LA Times Publisher David Hiller resigns after 21 months at helm…”
“Lipinski has been in the top post at Tribune Co.’s flagship paper for seven years. Her departure comes a week after the 161-year-old newspaper told its staff it would eliminate about 80 newsroom jobs.”