TV News LIES

After a five-month investigation inside Syria and the wider Middle East, GlobalPost and the family of missing American journalist James Foley now believe the Syrian government is holding him in a detention center near Damascus.

“With a very high degree of confidence, we now believe that Jim was most likely abducted by a pro-regime militia group and subsequently turned over to Syrian government forces,” GlobalPost CEO and President Philip Balboni said during a speech marking World Press Freedom Day.

The hacked-up bodies of a newspaper photographer and another young man have been found in the northern Mexico city of Saltillo, the newspaper Vanguardia reported Thursday. Photographer Daniel Martinez Bazaldua had recently been hired to cover social events for Vanguardia, the paper said in a story in its online edition. He was 22.

Saltillo is located in northern Coahuila state, an area where the Zetas drug cartel is active. Another Coahuila newspaper recently announced it would no longer publish stories about drug gangs, after receiving threats apparently signed by a Zetas leader.

The Fox News response to the recent Plan B ruling provides a graphic example of how the channel uses what it calls "fair and balanced" reporting to create false perceptions. A press release issued by the conservative Family Research Council uses misdirection to attain the same goal. Anyone who wants to understand why the United States is so divided need look no farther than these two pieces of political communication disguised as reporting.

In 2011, the FDA said that Plan B and other brands of levonorgestrel emergency contraception like Next Choice should be available over the counter to all who seek it. But in an unprecedented move, then-Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, countermanded their recommendation, requiring that females younger than 17 obtain a prescription.

A Somali journalist working for the government broadcaster was shot dead outside his home in the capital Mogadishu on Sunday, the fourth reporter to be murdered in the country this year, the union of journalists said.

Mohamed Ibrahim Rageh, who worked for Somali National Television and Radio Mogadishu, was killed by unknown assailants as he returned home after work, according to Abdirahim Isse Addow, director of Radio Mogadishu, who was quoted by the National Union of Somali Journalists.

The conservative Koch brothers are considering getting into the newspaper business to help publicize their pro-business views, sources told The New York Times.

Charles and David Koch have emerged on the short list of potential buyers of the Tribune Co., which owns eight major newspapers and emerged from bankruptcy in December.

Although there is a public perception that the energy billionaires pull the strings among congressional Republicans and the Tea Party movement, sources said the Kochs don't see acquiring the newspapers as a political power play.

In the annals of Fox News, October 2012 will likely stand out as a shining moment. Buoyed by a wave of Republican optimism about Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, the network seemed tantalizingly close to realizing one of its key ideological goals: ousting President Obama from the White House.

Renewed enthusiasm among conservatives was, in turn, triggering record-high ratings for much of the network's programming and helping it to beat not just rival news competitors MSNBC and CNN during prime time, but every other TV channel on the cable dial. What's more, the prospect of an ascendant GOP come January meant Fox News might soon return to the era of access and prestige it enjoyed in Washington during the presidency of George W. Bush.