By P.J. Gladnick | December 9, 2008 | 8:02 AM EST
Remember Baghdad Bob? He was the Iraqi press spokesmen who caused much amusement in the West because of his unrealistically upbeat pronouncements when Iraq was invaded by the United States and its allies in 2003. Among Baghdad Bob's funnier announcements was his declaration that no Americans were in Baghdad at the same moment when American troops were patrolling the streets of that city just a few hundred yards from where he was holding that press conference. Well, the newspaper industry has its own Baghdad Bob in the form of McClatchy CEO, Gary Pruitt, who in early 2007 gave his own unrealistically upbeat reports to his company's employees on the purchase of Knight-Ridder in 2006. That purchase quickly turned into an utter disaster as evidenced that the former Knight-Ridder flagship newspaper, the Miami Herald, is now being put up for sale by McClatchy. Below are a few excerpts from the 2007 video of Pruitt performing his Baghdad Bob routine including a bizarre invocation of that great "philosopher," Lenny Kravitz:

Hi. I'm Gary Pruitt, CEO of McClatchy. This has been a busy year for all of us and I haven't been able to meet  with as many of you as I'd like. I hope to start changing that. But for now I would want to spend a few minutes here talking to you about our company. Where we've been and where we're headed. Let's start with last year. Conventional wisdom is that 2006 was a catastrophe for the newspaper industry. That's just not the case. 

"In Umm Qasr, the fighting is fierce and we have inflicted many damages. The stupid enemy, the Americans and British, failed completely. They're not making any penetration."

By Ken Shepherd | October 21, 2008 | 3:29 PM EDT

Covering a "sober summit" held in Lake Worth, Florida that "focused on boosting jobs and capping the rising costs of healthcare," Miami Herald's Lesley Clark noted that Sen. Barack Obama was joined on stage by the Democratic governors of the swing states of Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, and Ohio:

''A crisis like this calls for the best ideas, the brightest minds, the most innovative solutions from every corner of this country,'' said Obama, who invited the Democratic governors of four key election states to share a stage with him, along with a small business owner from Miami, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker and the CEO of Internet giant Google.

Yet the 2008 Fiscal Policy Report Card by the libertarian Cato Institute found a C-average among those Democratic governors. By contrast McCain supporter Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) earned an "A." Michigan's Gov. Jennifer Granholm -- who portrayed Gov. Sarah Palin (R) in Sen. Joe Biden's debate prep -- and Colorado's Gov. Bill Ritter were assigned "D"s for their advocacy of tax hikes (emphasis mine):

By Tom Blumer | September 17, 2008 | 1:31 PM EDT

APlogoUpside DownEd Morrissey of Hot Air noted a revision to an existing Associated Press report carried in the Miami Herald yesterday. It concerned Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius's accusations that Republicans are engaging in racial "code word" campaigning.

By P.J. Gladnick | September 17, 2008 | 8:33 AM EDT

Perhaps it is time for the remaining Miami Herald employees to break out the Santeria rooster once again.

By Brian Fitzpatrick | August 28, 2008 | 12:19 PM EDT

Rarely do the media put their institutional political bias on public display, but this past weekend, America's news industry titans left no doubt that they're fully behind one of the nation's most radical cultural and political movements. 

ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the corporate owners of USA Today, the Miami Herald, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Sacramento Bee, The Dallas Morning News and many other newspapers, all spent thousands of dollars sponsoring the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention in Washington, D.C.  Many journalists from these Big Media mainstays attended or spoke at the convention. 

In the name of "diversity," all the organizations listed above ran recruiting booths, as did NPR.  Thus, the nation's major news providers demonstrated that they have bought into the central proposition of homosexual activists: that people engaging in homosexuality or bisexuality, along with transsexuals, are a historically oppressed minority group deserving the same preferential treatment and legal protections that society provides to ethnic minorities and women.

By P.J. Gladnick | August 20, 2008 | 11:55 AM EDT

Can anybody out there figure out whom "undecided" Miami Herald columnist Myriam Marquez will ultimately vote for in the November election? Gee. It is really tough to figure it out but perhaps we can investigate a few elusive clues starting with the title of her column, "McCain must move past old Bush mantra." Hmm... Not enough information there.

By P.J. Gladnick | August 10, 2008 | 10:27 AM EDT

The Miami Herald has reacted to charges that one of its opinion page contributors was a Cuban espionage agent with an article that is both low in substance and high in anger. The background to this story, about how the media is using "expert" analysis from professors identified by the U.S.

By Lynn Davidson | August 5, 2008 | 6:23 PM EDT

As if the media's coverage of Cuba isn't fawning enough, now they are using “expert” analysis from three professors that the US government has identified as spies.

Babalu Blog reported that, according to Army counterintelligence officer Chris Simmons, the US government believes at least three of the media's academic authorities on Cuba are actually spies working for the Cuban government. The suspected spies include a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, a Miami Herald board member and columnist and the director of Georgetown University's “Cuba Project.”

If these allegations are true, the danger isn't their potential to gather secrets. Instead, it's their ability to quietly shape opinion and influence public policy on Cuba through powerful academic groups, frequent media statements and slanted analyses as they maneuver within elite academic-think tank circles--and even brief government agencies and the military.

By P.J. Gladnick | June 16, 2008 | 10:29 AM EDT

Miami Herald employees, worried about retaining their jobs due to severe cutbacks in the newspaper industry, have now looked to a Santeria 'rooster' (photo) for help. The rooster is actually a life sized replica with a note attached that says:

Brought in by a Santeria priest (the real deal from Hialeah) to help save our jobs. Leave an offering.

By P.J. Gladnick | June 14, 2008 | 10:12 PM EDT

Miami Herald columnist, Andres Oppenheimer, is like a high school football player who just scored a touchdown. You can spot him in the end zone triumphantly spiking the football and performing his over the top victory dance. However there is something a bit too overenthusiastic about Oppenheimer's self-celebration as if he knows there is a huge caveat to his "victory."

By Warner Todd Huston | June 5, 2008 | 10:35 PM EDT

The Miami (FL) Herald let lose with another propagandistic broadside against the 2nd Amendment on Thursday featuring some more moaning and false statements about how horrible it is for America that the misnamed "assault weapons ban" has lapsed. There is much wringing of hands, waterworks, histrionics and over dramatics by the aptly named Fred Grimm here. In "What's a few dead cops to the gun lobby?" Grimm's final pronouncement is that the 2nd Amendment is a "mythical right" but in between there are many misstatements and out right lies.

Grimm starts out putting on some faux "shock" that a modern "semiautomatic assault rifle" he had the occasion to handle was so light. "The shock was in the weight of the thing. Less than six pounds," Grimm writes. And, what exactly does this mean? A butcher knife weighs less then a pound and can kill, too. What does weight have to do with anything?

By Jeff Poor | May 8, 2008 | 4:17 PM EDT

How many times will The New York Times publish a disreputable reporter's work before it learns its lesson?

Perhaps the third time will be the charm. Alexei Barrionuevo has under come under fire for plagiarism on two separate occasions, but the Times printed a story March 27 ("Salmon Virus Indicts Chile's Fishing Methods") by Barrionuevo anyway, prompting a response from the salmon industry.

Barrionuevo quotes Adolfo Flores in his article, identifying him as Port Director of Castro, Chiloe Island. But in a letter to the Times May 2, Eric McErlain, writing on behalf of Salmon of the Americas Inc (an industry group), pointed out major problems with the report.

"In actuality, Mr. Flores is simply a security guard who works for a third party contractor," McErlain wrote. "I've enclosed an English translation of a letter from Patricio Cuello, the general manager of the Port of Puerto Montt, which administers Castro, confirming this."