New York Times Steps Closer To The Abyss

The NY Times announced they will be charging heavy users to view their web content.  Apparently once someone clicks on their 21st article, they will be presented with (3) pay-for-content digital packages.  How the Times will know when someone clicks on their 21st article is unclear.

Unless they will require all users to log in, it seems like a weak attempt to enforce their pay wall.    I can only hope I'm wrong and the Times will opt for hard-core enforcement and drive themselves into irrelevancy.

Here's a stat I'll revisit later:

The Times claims to have  "210,000 digital subscribers, and 400,000 copies circulate in print "


Here's what the Times has in store:

"...the pay wall's effect on the reach of the Murdoch papers has been direct and dire. Until the pay wall's creation last summer, the two Times papers (Times of London & Sunday Times) drew 20 million distinct online readers a month. Now, about 105,000 people visit their sites or digital products monthly, meaning the papers lost about 95 percent of their online audience . Only some 50,000 people actually have paid monthly digital subscriptions."

And for a world where digital papers are the (only) newspaper, that's a bad thing if you desire the power to sway public opinion.

And that's what the NY Times will have to chose between:  Being a powerful political agenda setter, or making money selling newspapers.  Ultimately, the real money is in swaying the public policy.  That's something the NY Times can't see because they've grown too comfortable with their unchallenged monopoly on that power.

The US goes after the (Wiki) Leaker. But what about the Flooders?

So the US is all upset about Julian Assange and Wikileaks. They have expressed their glee that he's been arrested in the UK for charges in Sweden. Eric Holder has launched a Justice Department probe. Some have even suggested that he be charged in the US with spying.

But here's an interesting experiment. Ask people you know what they know about the leaks. They'll probably tell you they heard (at least) the following:

• The USA pressured countries to take Guantanamo prisoners
• Saudi Arabia is the primary funding source for Al Qaeda
• Egypt would be 'ok' with the US bombing Iran
• Hillary Clinton ordered her staff to spy on representatives at the UN

Once they've told you about the leaks, ask them where they learned of them. Ask them "So you read this on the Wikileaks site?" I bet that 100% of them say no. They heard it from The New York Times (and the multitude of other papers who republished them after that).

Julian Assange didn't steal the secret cables. Bradley Manning did and will likely spend the rest of his life in a military prison. Assange just published them. Just like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The LA Times, etc. And since most people learned of the cable's contents from those news sites/papers, aren't they the more damaging source? Aren't those 'sites' the ones who are really revealing these 'secret' cables to the world?

So why hasn't the US government pounded its fists on the table demanding the editors of the NY Times be arrested?

It's all a little strange.

New York Times Get's Caught Lying...Again

The New York Times used be "all the news that's fit to print". Now it's mainly known for a continual stream of serious screw ups, ranging from bad fact checking to the publishing of outright lies.

Today comes word of the latest New York Times slander by way of yet ANOTHER fact-free article. In a blog piece published on the Times' website by the Virginia Heffernan,the NY Times published 'allegations' that Ron Paul is a Neo-Nazi. Where did these allegations come from? Apparently their only source was Bill White, the "Commander of the American National Socialist Workers' Party." The times is apparently so friendly with the American National Socialist Worker's Party, that there was no need to fact check this radical and sweeping allegation. No, instead they allowed it to be printed on their website verbatim.

The NY Times, after feeling the wrath of upset Paul supporters and realizing that the blog post bordered on slander/libel, published this "editor's note" (my emphasis added):

Editors' Note: The post below, which appeared on The Medium on Monday, contained several errors. Stormfront, which describes itself as a "white nationalist" Internet community, did not give money to Ron Paul's presidential campaign; according to Jesse Benton, a spokesman for Paul's campaign, it was Don Black, the founder of Stormfront, who donated $500 to Paul. The post also repeated a string of assertions by Bill White, the commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party, including the allegation that Paul meets regularly "with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review and others" at a restaurant in Arlington, Va. Paul never attended these dinners, according to Benton, who also says that Paul has never knowingly met Bill White. Norman Singleton, a congressional aide in Paul's office, says that he met Bill White at a dinner gathering of conservatives several years ago, after which Singleton expressed his indignation at the views espoused by White to the organizer of the dinner. The post should not have been published with these unverified assertions and without any response from Paul.

After 290 comments on the story, and this embarrassing story making the rounds on the Internet, the Times has closed the blog to comments. I'm sure it will be accidentally 'removed' from the website soon enough. So what will happen to Virginia Heffernan? My guess is absolutely nothing. I suspect the higher ups at the NY Times support her in her campaign to smear Ron Paul. She will just join the NYTIMES hall-of-fame-er Jayson Blair as the typical NY Times "reporter".

I guess that means Ron Paul is officially in the ridicule (read: smear) stage that Mahatma Gandhi so succinctly outlined: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win ."