Talk:Pittsburgh Tribune-Review/Archive 2

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I deleted, again, the libelous contention that the paper printed a story about the sexual orientation of a candidate's wife. There is absolutely no proof, including the newspaper's own library of stories, that this ever happened. It not only libels the woman, but also the paper's publisher.

This site has been warned several times about the nature of the lie being printed. When it continues to be published it becomes an actionable libel ("intentional lies"), and I believe both the candidate's wife AND the publisher of the newspaper have a good case against the editors and operators of this site.

Legal threats, especially from anonymous users, are poor form. Are you an employee of the newspaper or its publisher? -Willmcw 20:27, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Here's how the newspaper's competition covered the controversy. The author is a former reporter of a rural Greensburg paper owned by Scaife. That probably should have been disclosed when he wrote the piece. www.post-gazette.com/pg/04067/281739.stm

See Wikipedia:No legal threats. Continuing to violate the policies of this site may result in being blocked. Gamaliel 21:10, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Too many unsigned comments here - can folks get usernames already? Anyway, here's the column that was referenced in the link provded by an anon user: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/search/s_169770.html -Willmcw 20:17, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It goes to an article by Tom Randall that ran in 2003.

Randall is not, nor has he ever been, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He appeared only as an op-ed commentator, much as many prominent Democratic and Republican pundits are featured in the opinion section every Sunday. This is common not only to the two large Pittsburgh dailies, but every major newspaper in the country.

Randall is a policy analyst for the Capital Research organization in Washington, D.C. His work can be found at www.capitalresearch.org/search/orgdisplay.asp?org=TIF100

I will continue to explain why printing "intentional lies" is tantamount to libel, in this case against both the politician's wife AND the publisher of the newspaper. I cannot be a plaintiff in this case, so do not consider this a legal threat. Rather, I am trying to explain why, professionally, I easily can say that printing the erroneous and unedited lie that the newspaper accused the wife of a political candidate of being a lesbian is libel.

Someone might continue to edit my words, but the facts don't change. Let's hope either the politician's wife or the owner of the newspaper never see that printed. unsigned comments from 147.72.93.199

"A few days after the Massachusetts Senator and his wife celebrated their second Christmas together, the Tribune-Review ran a column suggesting that Mr. Kerry had been enjoying a "very private" relationship with another woman. There was no byline on the story and no evidence to support the salacious insinuation. There was nothing to it, in fact, except pure malice." - New York Observer, August 2, 2004
Thank you for your legal advice, but this is not a forum for debating legal issues, and as such, further discussion of legal issues will be off-topic and may be removed. Gamaliel 23:47, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
To keep from just going back and forth, I've re-written the sentence to, I hope, more closely match the citations without losing the basic thrust. -Willmcw 00:59, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Contents

Unreferenced material posted by anon editors

In early 2005, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review posted a circulation of more than 221,000 subscribers across the region. It moved to consolidate all news editing, ad sales, regional reporting and investigative journalism in its Pittsburgh headquarters.
Editors reported that they would not only keep other newspapers in the chain as distinct journalistic outlets, but would increase local reporting to expand suburban marketshare over the Post-Gazette.
Since its founding more than a decade ago following a press strike at the two previously dominant dailies, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporters have won a number of national, state and local awards while expanding its circulation and regional influence.

Here are some claims that are not supported by evidence or details. Can someone find supporting references? Which awards has the paper won? How do we judge its "expanding influence?" Where did the editors make these statements, and which editors are we talking about? Who, what, where, when..... -Willmcw 23:53, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)


References: www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/business/s_295006.html

news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ep/20050121/en_bpiep/tribunereviewpaperstoconsolidatejobsinpittsburghoffice

A simple google search would have brought up the numerous awards. Here are some listed by the newspaper itself, pre-2002:

www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/news/s_105337.html

www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/4111151/detail.html

Thanks for providing these. Go ahead and match the references to the assertions and then we can post them back. I've already done that for the awards. (BTW, there's a help page that'll show you how to add URLs to pages: Wikipedia:How to edit a page, also see these: Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages, Wikipedia:Talk page, and Wikipedia:Cite sources). Cheers, -Willmcw 02:24, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Columnist

Willmcw, you seem to have some kind of animus against this newspaper. Why would you cite the daily's decision to drop a columnist? Was that to make the paper seem racist? If you didn't know, the paper is in an exclusive Sunday distribution deal with the city's lone African-American weekly. The newspaper has won numerous awards for it's stories about racial justice, including landmark work by Mark Houser on discrimination against African-American jurors.

The Sunday opinion page is one of the largest in America. It has more liberal commentators than its competitor, which has a left-leaning section. Why not fault the paper for adding Mallard Fillmore, too?

As a Pittsburgh reader who was surprised to see so many oddities appearing about the paper and Scaife, I felt I should edit these entries for fairness.

Please place your comments at the at the end of the page, indent them appropriately, and sign them. -Willmcw 22:53, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No, I do not have an animus. If you recall, I posted two awards that the paper receveid and then you deleted them, saying you'd replace them with newer ones. Please do not delete referenced material from the article. If you have a reference showing that the paper has more liberal commentators than its competitor then you can add that information too. Running a column by Samuel Francis is not quite the same things as running Mallard Fillmore. The news is not that they dropped him, but that they ran him. However, if you want to include a list of all the comic strips and commentators, then that's all the better. Cheers, -Willmcw 00:48, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dropping a columnist from an outside news outlet (he's not a Tribune-Review staffer) is not unusual. I counted the Sunday rolls and found 27 columnists -- about evenly divided between Conservative/Libertarian and left-leaning opinion makers and op-ed contributors, including Ramsey Clark. It seems you want to twist reality to make it something else, which is fine. I don't work for the newspaper. I'm just an informed reader. And I'll continue to delete the reference because it's snide and doesn't represent either the newspaper or the community it serves.

Thanks for adding your comment to the end of the page. It's also expected that you indent (using the colon ":") and sign (using four tildes "~") your remarks.
I don't know if you read any of the other comments posted here, but I you do you'll have seen that I previously written that the dropping of Francis is not the news -it's the fact that his columns were run to begin with. I've modified the paragraph to take the firing out of the lead, perhaps that will address your concerns. As mentioned before, if you want to write a paragraph, with verifiable information, about how the paper is actually liberal, then go for it. Also, I added some more information about the Poynter discussion that you posted. Quotes are better in context. I deleted the Jon Stewart quote because he doesn't work for the Trib-Review and so the only point just seems to be to besmirch Heinz, it doesn't tell us anything about the paper. -Willmcw 20:16, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You call it "news," but even a simple scan of Lexis-Nexis and the Internet shows that it wasn't a big deal. In fact, you seem to rely for most of your "news" on a discredited account of the paper penned by Arianna Huffington, a woman who sought high office in California as a progressive and a critic noted for her unverified attacks on conservatives. If Huffington's opinion of the newspaper is newsworthy, then you don't seem to know much about journalism.

You are the same person, by the way, you kept insisting that the newspaper called Heinz Kerry a "lesbian." This is libel under Pennsylvania law, but that didn't stop you. In fact, when called about it, you kept printing it!

Of course, your libel was OK because you "signed" a "name" to it. Quite frankly, at this point you don't seem to have much credibility.

Come to think of it, you haven't told "us anything about the paper" except half truths and outright intentional lies that would be actionable in this jurisdiction (good thing I work for the competition, and not the Tribune-Review. I had no duty to turn you in).

You speak of "context," but you don't really seem to understand the term of art, or to apply it with any distinction. This is a hatchet job on the newspaper, the man who owns it and the community who reads it.

unsigned comments by 147.72.93.199
I'm not sure how to respond to this rant. If you look back on recent history, you'll see I helped move us towards finding what the actual allegations were, rather than simply deleting them. Please don't make vague threats. Is there anything libellous in the current draft? If there is, point it out. The Trib-Review is lucky to have someone like you working for the competition. Cheers, -Willmcw 21:52, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Oh, and by the way...We may call unregistered users "anonymous", but that is actually a misnomer. IP numbers are anything but anonymous. Suffice it to say that it is likely that user:147.72.93.172/user:147.72.93.199 is probably not being accurate when he volunteers the information that he works for a competitor rather than for the Tribune Review. The real identity of individual editors here is nobody's business unless they start volunteering lies about it [in order to defend POV edits]. Please, our purpose here is to write a comprehensive article about a newspaper. Let's focus on that. Cheers, -Willmcw 02:30, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

And practicing libel is a Wikipedia tactic? Fine. Maybe the internet community should begin to address the inherent problems of Wikipedia, and how uninformed "encyclopedia" pieces that violate libel law are "comprehensive."

Saying that a major American newspaper called a candidates wife is libel. It libels her, and it libels the paper. It's a baseless smear that was bandied about on this site for weeks. Rather than be ashamed of such behavior, you argue that, well, it libels no one now, so everything was OK. No, it's not OK.

I've forwarded this site to several journalism organizations so they can write about libel and lies in the age of cyberspace. Let the students tackle this as a learning experience. unsigned comments by 147.72.93.172

Yes, I'm sure journalism schools quickly integrate information into their curriculum sent to them by random people on the internet. A source for the information you have complained about has been provided. You have done nothing to dispute this source beyond making vague legal threats and generally acting in an uncivil manner. If you wish to be a genuine contributor, please act in a constructive manner instead of merely posting diatribes. Gamaliel 00:39, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Just on a lark, I went over to the Teresa Heinz entry in Wikipedia. Again, the libel that the Tribune-Review called her a "lesbian." Complete lie. Again, it exposes everything that's wrong with this medium. It's a shame that anyone would come here to find consensus on "truth" when lies like that can be published. Shameful. unsigned comments by 147.72.93.172

Samuel Francis

Please stop deleting the Sam Francis reference. It is referenced, verifiable, and relevent. -Willmcw 20:48, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Again, you erred terribly. I went to the Tribune-Review's internet archives. Francis has not appeared there since late 2003, and he only arrived on occasion. He was part of a package of authors the newspaper gets, mostly for the Sunday opinion section, that comes from Creators Syndicate. See www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=sfr.

Some of the other authors carried by Creators, and reprinted by the Tribune-Review (and most other major newspapers), include Alexander Cockburn and Molly Ivins on the left, and Bill O'Reilly and John STosell on the right, and the cartoon Andy Capp in the pub.

All continue to appear in the Tribune-Review, except Francis.

The ONLY reference I could find that it was controversial to use a list of writers from Creators was from an article by Max Blumenthal that was part of an "Alternet" attempt to distract from the DNC fallout. Since you truly believe that Alternet made a shrewd judgement, you might be interested to know that the Tribune-Review quit using Francis completely in late 2003, nearly a year before the election and nine months before the Democratic primary.

The same "source" you reference called the Tribune-Review editor "the political wife-beater" for conservatives. Some source.

Blumenthal began the lie that the "Tribune-Review was the only newspaper in America which publishes columns" by Francis. Unfortunately, that wasn't true. The newspaper had not carried the columnist in months, and when it did it used him only for specific discussions about Republican politics.

You smear by being selective, and, moreover, not factual. Five minutes of cursory research could have turned this up.

Again, welcome to the failure of Wikipedia as a meaningful medium. unsigned comments by 147.72.93.172

Do you have a source for the fact that the Trib-Review stopped publishing Francis in 2003? Or the characterization that they "used him only for specific discussions about Republican politics"? Their archive does not have any mention of him at all that I can find so I cannot verify your assertions. Regarding sources, I have referenced the original article as it appeared on Vdare.com, and a reaction from the American Renaissance discussion page. We can add the refence from Blumenthal. While you may assert that Blumenthal is a liar, the rest of the other editors need proof. Also, I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the election. Or with the list of Creators Syndicate writers. So far, you have not offered any citations that disprove what has been asserted in the original Francis paragraph. Naturally, if you can find other information then it should be added. Thanks for your cooperation. Cheers, -Willmcw 21:53, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
PS - here is another writer, Eric Alterman, asserting in August 2004 that the Trib-Review, was the only paper carrying Francis. [1]
PPS I'm posting the disputed paragraph so we can work on it here, rather than reverting the main page.
The Tribune-Review was the only major paper to carry Sam Francis' columns, whom the Anti-Defamation League has long called a "white supremacist" and who was fired by the Washington Times in 1995 for his outspoken views on race. In 2004 the paper stopped carrying Sam Francis' columns following a piece in which he attacked implied miscegenation in a television ad. [2][3]
As I understand it, "Anon" asserts that the paper stopped publishing Francis prior to 2004 for reasons which obviously would not connect to the 2004 TV ad. We need a reference to show the date of the last Francis article to run. Three sources, Blumenthal, Huffington, and Alterman, all assert that the Trib-Review was still running the columns in mid-2004. -Willmcw 23:03, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I love how you "cite" three "sources" who all say the same story. All you have to do is go to the Tribune-Review online archives. You can clearly see disgruntled letters to the editor, running in late 2003 and early 2004, calling for the return of Sam Francis as a Creators contributor. It seems fairly obvious to anyone, but not you, that the paper therefore dropped the sometimes column as early as 2003, long before the Kerry issue arose.

Ironically, you don't note that Blumenthal, Huffington and Alterman all share the source material (work by Conanson and Blumenthal) that doesn't appear to be correct.

So you single out the Tribune-Review for refusing to run one author in the Creator's syndicate (archives show they run the rest), and that 22 newspapers continue to publish Francis. You don't mention them, because you haven't done your homework. Just as you continued to spread the libel that the newspaper called Heinz Kerry a "lesbian." You don't seem to understand that "sources" might have motivations (in this case, hack political screeds against a daily newspaper) beyond recording the simple truth.

Again, you have failed to simply put fact to page. Typical, as Heinz Kerry would say. Typical. unsigned comments from 147.72.93.172

By the way, Willm, your errors have simply been lack of research and poor sourcing. Galamiel (or whatever his/her name is) have been intentional and verge on tortiary libel. Attempts to mark them as "intentional lies" (a very real concept) have been unsuccessful. I have sought outside help on this when outright libel was presented. It's too bad that this medium is at the mercy of people like that.

I'd be happy to see the article changed to reflect verifiable information. Can you give us the reference for the 22 papers that also carry Francis? I checked the Pittsburgh Live archive and didn't find a single mention of Francis, but I was looking for him as a writer. I'll check again on his name as a topic. If you could help us in this project by providing sources and explaining your edits, then we can make this a better article. Attacking your fellow editors does not create a good editing atmosphere. Cheers, -Willmcw 21:01, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Dear "Anon", I did my homework and found a letter to the editor dated August 26, 2004 agreeing with Francis' column of August 10. [4]. -Willmcw 21:31, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

He didn't get the column from the Tribune-Review. The column appears online. Every citation I found shows letters to the editor in late 2003 and early 2004 asking why the Trib dropped him. The paper copies of the newspaper show no column on August 10 featuring Sam Francis.

Since it was a column that appeared very rarely in the newspaper anyway, it's been difficult to find exactly when it was dropped. But it seems to have been discontinued in late 2003 or early 2004, with little fanfare, long before it became an issue for pundits after the DNC.

I'm not sure I understand - are you saying that the paper dropped Francis from its print edition, but kept running it in their online edition? If so, we can indicate that. I interpret those earlier letters as indications of not running particular columns. Unless the paper ran an announcement that they were dropping him, a newspaper reader might easily assume a columnist had been dropped if he did not appear regularly. Also, you had said his columns were only run "for specific discussions about Republican politics". Can you provide some context for that information? Are you thinking of a particular column? Thanks -Willmcw 20:53, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Creators carries the Francis column free of charge on its website. That seems to be what the reader was mentioning.

By the way, the "editors" again blew an easily fact-checked "fact." You said Carl Prine was convicted of trespassing. You forgot (intentionally?) that he was found completely innocent on appeal. In Pennsylvania, District Magistrates can't really "convict" anyone. They're not even lawyers. All charges of a summary nature can be heard in a real court of law (Common Pleas in Allegheny County). There, his charges were brushed aside.

www.pittsburghlive.com/pages/pdf/ptr030404.pdf

Yeah, that would have been hard to check.

No, the article never said they were convicted. It said they were fined, which is what they source article said. Now maybe those fines were dismissed. That's great. I've added the sentence back, but dropped the "fine." Thanks for finding that additional resource. Cheers, -Willmcw 22:13, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the Francis article, I do not believe that the Trib-Review would print an LTE about a column that they do not carry. You offered LTE's as proof that Francis was stopped in 2003, now you ought to accept an LTE as proof that the column was carried in 2004. There is no indication in the letter itself that the writier is referring to an online article she read on a non-Trib-Review website. So there are several sources that talk about Francis' column being carried in 2004, and no sources that show he was dropped previously. -Willmcw 22:19, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I believe that until we can say exactly when it was dropped, we should stay away from it, especially since there is no record of its existence after 2003 except a lone letter to the editor. Another letter in July of 2004, for example, uses the Francis name without the editor's reference at all to any of the writer's columns.

www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/s_82740.html

In fact, the only outside references to the entire issue seem to come from the same source, Max Blumenthal, albeit one reprinted on the Internet many times.

http://carapace.weblogs.us/archives/016213.html

It seems Blumenthal got it wrong.

The last Francis article I can find in the Trib never appeared online and was published on March 2, 2004. The only one I can find before that appeared on June 25, 2003, and there's an online record of that: www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/s_141477.html

So, while he "appeared" in the Tribune-Review, he seems to have surfaced once a year, and was never printed again after March 2, 2004. -unsigned by 147.72.93.199 00:28, Feb 17, 2005


STUFF ABOUT PRINE

After editing the business about Heinz Kerry, the more I dug up about Prine, the more I realized how unfair the accusation from the Philadelphia Weekly (the only source making the claim) was about his involvement in it.

I've cut it from the main board, but we can discuss whether it should be included or not. It seems like a dead end, and the vast majority of the evidence seems to point to the fact that Prine is a pretty damned good newsman, and a liberal:

The Tribune-Review's environmental and investigative reporter Prine also had written a piece mentioning that Heinz [5] and nearly 2,000 other landowners were receiving farmland property tax reductions, but never suggested she did so knowingly. Instead, the stories blamed lax enforcement by county officials and botched work by hired contractors for numerous mistakes in thousands of property assessments that hurt the environment, not helped it[6].

Prine, considered a liberal journalist within the Pittsburgh news community by many colleagues [7], was praised by Kerry's campaign for work that aided their attacks on President George W. Bush [8] and his stories continue to be employed by the Democratic leadership [9] and left-wing outlets, including The Nation, which has lauded his probes into coal mine safety [10] and chemical plant security [11].

Prine's investigations featured prominently in Robert F. Kennedy's damning assault on the GOP's environmental record, "Crimes Against Nature : How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy [12]."

Kennedy advised the Kerry campaign on environmental policies.

Although attacked following the Heinz Kerry spat by one alternative press outlet as "unprofessional" [13], Prine was singled out by the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review "as a model of dogged reporting for the rest of the press" only days before the election. [14].

It later surfaced that the author of the piece calling Prine "unprofessional," Steve Volk, had himself been turned down for a job by the Tribune-Review. He also had worked for the Democratic leadership in Pittsburgh, facts he didn't disclose to his readers.

"Little known fact: Volk, a former lackey in the Mayor Murphy administration, was once seen in the Trib offices dressed for a job interview. Later, he would devote countless inches of his media column and appear on a local cable talk show to bash the Trib. I was even the target of one of his rants when he got upset that I had been tipped off about a court hearing and the Post-Gazette reporter hadn't," wrote Pittsburgh media personality Dave Copeland. [15]

Others in the alternative press had long pointed to Volk's paper as a "slanderous" tabloid that had mistreated employees [16] and stooped to libeling both the living and the dead[17], sometimes using bogus letters [18][19], doctored photographs [20] [21] and shoddy reporting [22] to defame celebrities, business owners and other public figures, including journalists at the local Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. [23].

At one point, former Philadelphia mayor and Heinz Kerry ally Rendell called for the firing of Volk's editor for cheap attacks and poor news judgement [24]. Rendell was flatteringly portrayed as a champion of the environment and Pennsylvania taxpayers by Prine [25]. -unsigned by 147.72.93.172 19:39, Feb 18, 2005

To Tribune fan:

We do not know your name. Please provide a name at the end of your comments. If you continue to wish to be anonymous, for whatever reason, then you are welcome to use an anonymous name. It is becoming very difficult for the other editors of this article to communicate with you, and especially hard for others to identify your words.

Despite your repeated references to "Wikipedia norms," you are not showing an interest in following those norms yourself. They are well documented at such pages as Help:Editing and specifically Wikipedia:Talk page. We still ask that anonymous contributors, who, for whatever reason, decide not to create a personalized account, still follow such norms so that interactions with them can be structured and cohesive.

The voicing of legal threats against Wikipedia, or of any of its members in their capacities and actions as editors and contributors, is not conducive to the open collaborative spirit of the project. The consensus is that such threats of legal action are not allowed. Your repeated accusations of "tortiary libel" etc. do appear to be legal threats, certainly at least legal accusations. Wikipedia:No legal threats, as a policy which has become accepted convention, stipulates that if an individual makes legal threats against the project or its members, that such individuals shall not contribute to the project until any legal action is resolved or the threat of legal action has disappeared. In the interests of the project, administrators can take measures to prevent you from contributing in such a situation.

You appear to have content dispute issues over this article that so far do not appear to have clear evidence or references to support them. Furthermore, you seem to insist on the falsity of content based on the lack of evidence to support them. Certainly, lack of evidence does not imply lack of truth (an example of the fallacy of negative proof), and we hope you recognize that.

Please provide excerpts and links to reliable sources which can reinforce your positions. This and only this can provide Wikipedia with what it needs to make decisions about its content.

Regards, Keith D. Tyler ΒΆ [AMA] 01:04, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)