Associated Press Against Free Speech

The Associated Press is bullying a blogger (Snapped Shot ) for criticizing their photoshopped photographs. They are hiding behind Fair Use clauses and copyright laws but the truth is this is using a corporate legal staff to force a small independent voice to shut up because he cannot afford the legal costs of protecting his free speech rights. Isn't this the opposite of what a free press should be doing?
Jules Crittenden is all over it: Legal Jihad

Hat Tip: Instapundit

Update: (also via Instapundit) Duke University officials follow up their stunning rejection of "innocent until proven guilty) with an effort to suppress free speech. American Thinker has the story.
When I was going to school in the late 60's the free press and the universities were places that revered Individual rights, freedom of speech, and concepts like innocent until proven guilty. And we liked it that way.

Media Stocks Poor Performance Is Deserved

The Gateway Pundit explains at least one reason for the poor performance of media and publishing stocks relative to the market over the last 5 years. They cannot be trusted to report truthfully or comprehensively and thus no one on any side of an issue knows if what the media reports is even remotely factual. Go to Gateway Pundit's Post and read it if you wish to be infuriated:

Its a Quagmire!... Media Reports 6 Bogus Stories in 6 Weeks!

In roughly six and a half weeks the mainstream media reported 6 bogus stories from Iraq and Afghanistan.
There certainly could be more.
They all reflected poorly on the US and US military.

Isn't it past time that the media be held accountable for their horrible record?

And... Is it really surprising that only 29% of Americans, Germans and Brits trust their media?

For those of you who don't read the article I want to point out for all these false stories no corrections have been issued by the media outlet that erroneously spread the story.

Thanks to Instapundit for linking to this article, you won't see anything about this on your conventional meedia source. charts of Publishing industry and Broadcast and Cable relative to SP500 courtesy of Fullermoney.

Alea: On the Famed Magazine Cover Indicator

Alea Blog posted the image above and links to this study of magazine covers as contrarian signals. Time to cover short dollar trades. Whoops too late!

Are Cover Stories Effective Contrarian Indicators?

TOM ARNOLD University of Richmond - E. Claiborne Robins School of Business JOHN H. EARL University of Richmond - E. Claiborne Robins School of Business DAVID S. NORTH University of Richmond - E. Claiborne Robins School of Business

Abstract: Headlines from featured stories in Business Week, Fortune, and Forbes were collected for a 20-year period to determine whether positive stories are associated with superior future performance and negative stories are associated with inferior future performance for the featured company. “Superior” and “inferior” were determined in comparison with an index or another company in the same industry and of the same size. Statistical testing implied that positive stories generally indicate the end of superior performance and negative news generally indicates the end of poor performance. ( hat tip: Abnormal Returns )

LoneK8 on commercials: good and bad

I will probably comment most on are the ones that fall just shy of the mark – they have smart or clever premises, but their execution is lacking. Unfortunately it is all too indicative of most people’s current attitudes towards their work, and it is a shame that whoever created the initial idea wasn’t committed enough to see it through to completion accurately.

The prime example of this is a commercial that ran several years back for the Nissan Sentra. This ad featured two crash test dummies fighting over getting into the car with the tagline “everybody wants to drive it.” Clever, it caught your attention, there was only one glaring problem. The dummies were fighting over the passenger side door. Maybe the crash test dummies were British, maybe it was a sly allusion to the fact that they just can’t afford the premiums on their insurance anymore after the number of wrecks they typically get into so they had to be passengers. What it said to me was “no one wants to drive it.” Whoops – probably not the message intended. But I bet it was awesome in England.

Tim Blair: THEY BELIEVE THE TELEVISION

Talking (empty) Head

Stephen Green on clueless Couric.

Wouldn't it be nice if instead of justbeing photogenic and verbal the news talking heads actually could think.

Atlas Mugged

(hat tip to Instapundit)

A great article by Edward B. Driscoll Jr. Atlas Mugged: How a Gang of Scrappy, Individual Bloggers Broke the Stranglehold of the Mainstream Media

Up until the Reagan years, Love says, “definitely fewer than one hundred people, and maybe as few as twenty people, actually decided what constituted national news in the United States.” These individuals were principally concentrated within a few square blocks of midtown Manhattan, the middle of which was home to the offices of the New York Times. The aptly nicknamed “Gray Lady” largely shaped the editorial agendas not just of newspapers but of television, as well. As veteran TV news correspondent Bernard Goldberg wrote in his 2003 book Arrogance, “If the New York Times went on strike tomorrow morning, they’d have to cancel the CBS, NBC, and ABC evening newscasts tomorrow night.”
Love calls this “the Parliament of Clocks”: creating the illusion of truth or accuracy by force of consensus. “Really, the only way that consumers can tell that they’re getting accurate information is to check another media source,” Love says. “And unfortunately, that creates an incentive for the media sources to all agree on the same story.”

More Evidence Of How The Fourth Estate Has Become The Left Estate

Big media, especially print, continues to lose influence because of a persistent drift to the left. Every study I have seen measuring political leanings of individual members of print and electronic media show 80 to 90% vote and or contribute to the political left. Thus despite what may be good intentions, reporting almost inevitably is tainted by groupthink and tilts coverage to the left. Hoystory gives us an example in

Media failures. (hat tip to Instapundit)

As long as you are there read his previous post which is also excellent and infuriating:

Never get between a senator and his pork

academics rival media for lead in liberal bias.

Thanks to the Instapundit for linking to Back Talk and his comments on bias in academia. The bias is not surprising but the lopsidedness is and eyeopener. Next time your alma mater calls asking for money remember these statistics. The image is from the Back Talk site mentioned above and I recommend you read the whole thing.

Anti American Propaganda and the Complicity of the American Left

The Beauchamp/TNR slander of American soldiers is merely one more instance of leftist gullibility when it comes to believing anything bad about America. ION MIHAI PACEPA a former communist intelligence officer writes the following in the Wall Street Journal Opinion page:

Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels.

He goes on to give an example of other propaganda efforts: (this one bought hook line and sinker by surrendercrat John Kerry)

During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren't facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.

Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin , Powerline, all are on the story.
Unfotunately, anti American groups can always find unethical ambitious political types or gullible celebrities with more money than sense who buy in to propaganda and use their access to media to spread fallacious information.

Mark Steyn points out another Spineless industry.

Mark Steyn tells the tale of another member of the media and publishing industry demonstrating a lock of backbone or principle. The book "Alms for Jihad" is being suppressed by threat of lawsuits from welathy Saudis. The book is about Saudi funding of terrorism and Islamic jihad through the cover of charity organizations. Read Steyn's take.
Thanks to the Instapundit for pointing this out.

the gutless and ethically challenged media confesses

The Instapundit gets an interesting and infuriating email from the media.

UPDATE: A journalist whose name you'd recognize emails:

Yon's story doesn't get attention because it is humiliating.

It is humiliating because it is obvious that we media – and our allies in the state department, the legal trade, the NGOs, the Democratic Party, the UN, etc., - can’t do squat about such determined use of force.

Our words, images, arguments and skills can’t stop the killing. Only the rough soldiers and their guns can solve the problem, and we won’t admit that fact because the admission would weaken our influence and our claim to social status.

So we pretend Yon’s massacre – and the North Korean killing fields, the Arab treatment of women, the Arab hatred of Israel, etc. - doesn’t exist, and instead focus our emotions and attention on the somewhat-bad domestic things that we can ‘fix’ with our DC-based allies. Things such as Abu Ghraib, wiretapping, etc. When we ‘fix’ them, then we get status, applause, power, new jobs, ego, etc.

Please don’t be surprised. We media are an interest group not much different from the automakers, the unions, and the farmers.

He might have included the communist party, klu klux klan, or the nazis, or any other grup of lying propagandists. i would much prefer to think media bias comes arises naturally from strong political views than from simple greed and lack of integrity.