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Mr. President! Free Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean! Please join fellow GOPUSA activists in petitioning President Bush for a full pardon for Agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos.

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Newsweek's recent imbroglio is just the latest in the ongoing media meltdown. Just about the same time that Newsweek admitted that "ToiletGate" was false, Dan Rather and Mary Mapes were given the prestigious "Peabody Award" for breaking the story of Abu Ghraib - an endless headliner which went on for months and smeared the United States and our military troops. On Tuesday, while reporting the Newsweek retraction, the Today Show nevertheless felt the need to repeat rumors first publicized by Al-Jazeera - that U.S. troops had gang raped a woman prisoner in Abu Ghraib, and repeatedly desecrated Korans. NBC's Middle Eastern correspondent Richard Engel repeated Al-Jazeera's rumors which said that U.S. Marines raiding a mosque in Ramadi had found a Koran and painted a cross on it. After the Newsweek retraction broke, "reputable" journalists nationwide speculated that the story was actually true, and that Newsweek had only caved because of unbearable pressure from the White House.

Once again, we see the media hard at work deploying their well-worn agenda. Their zeal to find misdeeds of the United States and the U.S. military is boundless. They seem not to care that they are harming our national security and our image in the world. They have immeasurably damaged the positive democratic progress made in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today's media seems imbued both with the "gotcha" spirit of Watergate and a blithe disregard for the impact of their irresponsible actions. Newsweek editor Mark Whittaker and journalist Michael Isikoff surely had to realize that reporting such an item would be like pouring gasoline on the smoldering fire which is the Middle East. Apparently, the Koran is considered by Muslims to be literally the Word of God, not dissimilar to how Catholics view the Host. Desecrating the Koran is thus that much more disrespectful and blasphemous to Muslim sensibilities. Upon hearing the news, Muslim fanatics immediately fanned the flames and sparked riots in Afghanistan, Gaza and Yemen. Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt soon followed. Cars and shops were vandalized, and U.N. and foreign aid offices were looted and burned. When it was over, sixteen of their fellow Muslims lay dead. Their blood is on Newsweek's hands.

As the story roiled over the Internet, it became apparent that Isikoff was relying on one anonymous source, thus vacating the standard operating procedure of finding three independent corroborations to verify prior to printing a story. In a further irony, Michael Isikoff was the reporter who initially filed the reliably sourced Monica Lewinsky story, only to have it spiked by his editors. Journalistic bias, no sirree. A plethora of embarrassing gaffes by media over the recent months should have taught them a lesson. But the experiences of Dan Rather, Eason Jordan and Jayson Blair - just to name a few - have apparently not. Neither has their unending death spiral.

Over the last two months, it has been widely reported that the MSM is losing traction, fast. Circulation is down more than 6 percent at three of the nation's top newspapers - the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle. Among the country's twenty largest papers, twelve others posted declines of at least 1.5 percent and only four showed meager increases. The New York Times circulation stayed about the same nationally, but lost ground in its home territory. In a related item, the Wall Street Journal reported that newspapers, facing this irrevocable loss in circulation, were now attempting to sell to advertisers on fuzzy qualities like "viewer readership qualities" as opposed to hard circulation numbers. This comes in addition to revelations that some newspapers had falsely inflated their circulation numbers in recent years. The alphabet networks have likewise been losing viewers to their nightly news programs. Even the morning shows are faltering. In the meantime, Fox continues to gain ground by simply providing both sides of the story. If they weren't so arrogant and self-righteously smug, MSM media executives would smell the coffee and tend to their bottom line.

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