TV News LIES

USA Today laid off at least 60 staffers on Wednesday in an effort to cut back on costs, with the majority of layoffs taking place in the editorial department, sources at the newspaper confirmed.

The layoffs, first reported by Poynter, come in the wake of Gannett's recent announcement that it will spin off its print division, which includes USA Today and 81 daily local and regional newspapers.

Kent Conrad’s phone hasn’t been ringing very much over the past few weeks, as Iraq, and the debate over America's future in the country, has once again dominated the news.

The architects of the Iraq war are back in TV studios and on op-ed pages, as are journalists and pundits who promoted the Bush administration’s ultimately bogus case for invading. But Conrad, a former senator who was one of only 23 to vote against authorizing the war in October 2002, hasn’t heard from CNN, MSNBC or any other TV outlet. "Not once," he said, when asked if anyone in the press had reached out regarding the current crisis in Iraq.

The Seattle Times sports editor announced Thursday that he will ban use of the word 'Redskins' in the paper and online, making the Times the latest publication to stop using the controversial name of Washington's NFL team.

"The most controversial name in sports won’t appear again in The Seattle Times’ print edition or on the seattletimes.com home pages as long as I am sports editor," the Times' Don Shelton wrote. "It’s time to ban the use of 'Redskins,' the absurd, offensive and outdated name of the NFL team in Washington, D.C. ... Past time, actually."

The Washington Post has just published an op-ed entitled "One way to end violence against women? Stop taking lovers and get married" (the paper later changed the headline). To that, I say: Washington Post: Stop Posting Bullshit And Set Yourself On Fire.

Less than 48 hours after posting an atrocious column by George Will, wherein the venerable conservative thought leader who has made a career out of being smugly wrong about everything called being a rape victim a "coveted status" and then dismissed the college sexual assault crisis as just another made up thing in Obama's America (TM), the Washington Post has outdone itself with a column by conservative think tank denizens W. Bradford Wilcox, (the director of the National Marriage Project) and Robin Fretwell Wilson (who endlessly beat the BUT RELIGIOUS LIBERTY!!! drum after New York legalized gay marriage in 2011) that claims — seriously, as far as I can gather — that the best way for women to avoid violence is to stop slutting around with "baby daddies" and get married. It's truly breathtaking in its idiocy. I'm sorry for subjecting all of you to this, but, here we go.

"Fox & Friends" decided to get its revenge on Scientific American editor Michael Moyer after Moyer tweeted that the show's producers had barred him from discussing climate change.

Moyer said he had been explicitly told to "pick something else" when he said he thought climate change was an important "future trend" to talk about. His decision to air this behind-the-scenes chat, as well as his subsequent tweets mocking the politics and some of the staffers on the show, led Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade and guest co-host Anna Kooiman to spend nearly 5 minutes of their Thursday show getting back at Moyer.

Why hasn’t Shepard Smith come out yet? The affable Fox News anchor has a longtime boyfriend, ranks among Fox’s most senior talent, and lives in New York City. It could be, of course, that he’s just a very private person, or—as the Times argued in October—that public attitudes have changed and nobody cares if a famous figure is gay.

Or it could be that, when Smith tried to come out last year, Fox silenced and punished him.

In the summer of 2013, according to multiple sources with knowledge of their exchange, Shepard Smith approached Fox News president Roger Ailes about publicly coming out. The newly attached anchor was eager, at the time, to finally acknowledge his sexuality. “It’s time,” he told Ailes and other colleagues. “It’s time.”