I couldn't sleep last night and as i can't get The Times web site to work on my antique computer i'm dying to know how they headlined the article.

I see Fodor's felt it was offensive to pull it and why this term surfaced in The Times is a mystery - Fodor's action doesn't upset me - just makes me realize how offensive the headline really could be.

I read several papers a day and newscasts from Fox Noise to lefter MSNBC and and a political junkie but i had never heard of this term anywhere - and in today's NYTimes coverage no mention of it.

Keith Obermann, MSNBC's rabid anti Fox Noise guy hosts the show OddBall each night and his leadin to his show last night contained the xxxx xxxxxxx tag and he said after he said it, "as we all know" - that was the only time i've heard it now - and he says "we all know" - well i'm fairly tuned into to politics, etc. and i never knew or heard it - though it is a perfect tag for Rove.

So i wonder if the print version of The Times had it? would seem strange as this is a Murdoch publication but would be a refreshing view of their ballyhooed independence if true.

thanks

and this post will automatically disapper in two hours

I can't be faffed going downstairs to check the headline. But it was something suitably bowdlerised and neo-con like "Bush loses his brain".

The op-ed cartoon, BTW, showed Bush slumped over his White House desk, with his head open to reveal...nothing.

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with The Times independence, or with the widespread anti-Murdoch bigotry in the US.

Murdoch is a businessman: probably the most commercially successful media owner in history. He runs his media uniquely to make money. In Britain and Australia, that means his quality publications specialise in covering, dispassionately, diverse opinions - because The Times and The Australian would get no readers (or advertisers) if they were the monomaniac rabble rousers the bigots' propaganda constantly fantasise about.

In February 2003, for example, the Murdoch papers in Britain gave full, and frequently sympathetic, coverage to the movement against the Iraq War. The WSJ - which so many of the "Keep Foreigners Out Of Media Ownership" ranters like to pretend has been objective under its US management - was far, far more biased in its support of the US position and in its distortion of news about European hostility to the war. I saw no major US paper in Feb 2003 with articles as sympathetic to the anti-war movement as The Times: no mainstream US TV station cover opposition to the war as well as Sky TV.

So Murdoch is not BAD NEWS and the ballyhooed independence of the WSJ news staff will remain uninfluenced - all their wimpering, etc. is unwarranted.

i agree with your assessment of Murdoch's sole goal - power and money but think influence comes as well, at least with Fox Noise in the U.S. which was instrumental in leading the charge for war in Iraq and incredibly continues to do so.

I would have been shocked if Times had run that heading and am shocked they headed their web edition yesterday with it.

how this term surfaced in but a few sources smacks of some conspiracy?

Who ever said the WSJ is any more "objective" than some other papers is delusional IMO.

no one said that

but WSF news staff has always prided itself on independence from rather rabid right-wing editorial page. And by most media observors was surprisingly liberal or whatever you call it.

It's the fear that this independence will be curtailed and the newsroom become a Fox Noise type puppet of right-wing interests.

The print version of the Grauniad has a cartoon with a large turd on an American flag with a flower with a chubby bespectacled face growing from it.
The heading is "farewell ol' Turd Blossom".
I can't find it in the on-line version.

Grauniad - what publication and where is this? Interesting.

Now THERE'S a monomaniac rabble-rouser for you.

Once a sturdy guardian of free trade, the finest provincial values and tight proofreading, the Manchester Guardian was responsible for the phrase "comment is free: facts are sacred". It dropped the "Manchester" prefix, moved to an almost-fashionable part of almost-Islington, became world famous for its abysmal misprints (or illiterate subeditors) and is now the newspaper of choice among diversity counsellors, ayurvedic therapists and the like.

But it HAS got a pretty layout.

It's the paper i always buy when in UK - i brought it back for breakfast table at B&B and the old bat who ran the place said disdainingly: "That's too serious reading for me, you've got to be too intelligent to read that" - clutching her "Daily Mile"

"...ranters like to pretend has been objective under its US management - was far, far more biased in its support of the US position and in its distortion of news about European hostility to the war."

Pal, please pay attention, OK?

The Guardian is also responsible for the gastro-pub revolution. It started in the Eagle in Farringdon Rd which is the Guardian's house pub.

The Guardian also has, by miles, the worlds best newspaper website.

It is also the journal of choice for the sandal wearing beardie types who pretend to enjoy world music.

so was the NYTimes, a well known pinko rag, in its lack of journalistic questioning of the war - cheerleading and not leading.

are you talking about the Editorial page of WSJ or newsroom? Or both in unison.

But judging on one issue and not the broad spectrum is, of course, daft.