10. The following was sent to the Asheville Citizen Times on October 8, 2008. It questioned the newspaper's bias handling of a Republican candidate running for an open seat in Congress, Dr. Carl Mumpower.

As a councilman, Mumpower had put himself at risk sitting in his car at night, proving to the city it had a serious drug problem.

The Asheville Citizen Times, however, seemed more interested in protecting the secular progressives in the city government than admiring a man for his commitment to improve life in Asheville while potentially putting his own life at risk.

On the other hand, the Asheville Citizen Times had gushed over the current Democrat running for re-election in the House of Representatives, Heath Schuler.

The publisher, who we refer to now as Daddy Hammer, had written an opinion piece opining that Heath, while involved in a conflict of interest at the TVA, probably had done nothing wrong. While Heath should have written that for himself and submitted it to the newspaper as others are required to do, Daddy Hammer took care of it for him.

No reply was received to our submission on the treatment of an American citizen running for office in Asheville, NC. We no longer waste our time to ask, "Did you get the e-mail?"

You decide the agenda of what we see as a Socialist newspaper, one owned by the publishing giant, Gannett Inc, via our rejected submitted letter on the right.

You can read another submission below for item 13, which was also rejected concerning a Fairness Doctrine. Then you decide if there is a double standard at the Asheville Citizen Times.

Sometimes “NoPower” Is Just What We Need In Washington!

The Asheville Citizen Times allowed its political cartoonist to refer to a local Congressional candidate, Dr. Carl Mumpower, as “NoPower,” the cartoonist also morphing him into Jesse Helms. 

The newspaper later ran a piece concerned for the welfare of illegals after Mumpower exposed a corporation that had hired them.  Illegals steal food off the kitchen tables of locals who can’t find work.  I know because my son watched illegals brought into his place of employment.  Seeing the handwriting on the wall, he left the area.

But “NoPower” is in good company with the AC-T hiding the accomplishments of America’s heroes.  For instance, last year the AC-T’s opinion editor demanded cable providers carry the Al Jazeera Network, writing in her headline “ . . . and let’s not Quash it.”

I reminded the editor it was Arab television that had shown the burned and distorted body of U.S. Air Force pilot, Troy Gilbert.  I sent her a photo of his burned hand and ID card captured on Arab television, but there was no reply.

Readers then complained the AC-T had not run a story on the Metal of Honor winner, Michael Murphy, giving his life for his comrades while under attack by the Taliban in the Afghan mountains.  The newspaper finally ran only a throwaway sentence, one that caused a reader to say the newspaper had in effect smacked Murphy across the face.

Then a few months ago it ran an AP story about a young terrorist, Omar Khadr crying for his mommy.  Omar had killed an American soldier in Iraq in 2002.  

The AC-T omitted the name of the soldier in the AP release, Christopher Speer.  I was shocked because Speer not only had saved wounded Iraqi children, walking into a minefield the week before his death, but had lived right here in North Carolina!  I complained to the publisher with no reply.

So it is no surprise the AC-T calls Mumpower, “NoPower,” while it supports Heath Schuler rated one of the top 50-wealthest members of Congress with 7.8 million dollars in personal wealth.  Wow!

I personally heard Schuler openly defend Nancy Pelosi to a WNC caller while live on the radio.  Schuler said “Nancy” was all stressed out over protesters in front of her San Francisco home.  He became upset with the caller saying he was, “divisive,” a word right out of the Democrat talking points.

It was Pelosi who had recently tried to bury billions (that’s with a B) of dollars for the radical organization, ACORN, into a bailout that was supposed to be dedicated only to saving American retirement funds.

It was ACORN, along with Janet Reno of the Clinton Administration in 1990s, that harassed banks into giving out these loans to risky applicants.  ACORN called the banks racist while Reno accused them of red lining.  ACORN members were reported to walk into bank meetings and stand there saying nothing, daring the executives to kick them out.

Ten years later we ALL have now paid the price for these bad loans estimated to represent 6% of the nation’s mortgages, reducing the value of retirements by at least 25% when the markets tanked a few weeks ago.  So whom are you going to send to Washington to represent your district for the next four years? 

You need to know Opensecrets.org reported in June 2008 that Schuler took PAC contributions to the tune of $1,269,879, using zero of his own money, although he’s among the top 50 riches in Congress.

“NoPower,” as the AC-T called Dr. Mumpower, was reported to have accepted ZERO PAC dollars while kicking in $21,300 of his own money.  So which congressional candidate might best represent your values in Washington D.C., Nancy Pelosi’s Heath Schuler or the AC-T’s “NoPower?” 

Power is not in money.  Power is in the vote.  So again whom will you send to Congress?  One of its wealthiest?  Or “NoPower,” a man who could be the next “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

November 4th could be an exciting day when “NoPower,” a word meant to demean, would instead send a strong message to Congress from the people of Western North Carolina, saying, “We’re not going to take it anymore!” 

Sources:

- OpenSecrets.org - http://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary.php?id=NC11&cycle=2008

“ . . . let’s not quash it.”  In AC-T archive.

African American teen STD epidemic - http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-2217-the-silent-epidemic.html

Lt. Michael P. Murphy - http://articles.cnn.com/2008-05-26/us/medal.honor_1_highest-military-honor-audie-murphy-medal-of-honor-recipients?_s=PM:US

Speer documentation - http://www.freedomisknowledge.com/news/act2.htm#speerAP

Roll Call on Schuler’s wealth http://www.rollcall.com/features/Guide-to-Congress_2008/guide/28506-1.html?type=printer_friendly/

9. On Wednesday, July 16, 2008, the Asheville Citizen Times (AC-T) ran an Associated Press (AP) article on page A2 titled, Guantanamo video offers glimpse of interrogations.

Source: AP

The AP story reported that Omar Khadr, a sixteen-year old captured in Afghanistan in 2002, had been recently video taped sobbing for his "mommy."

AP obviously felt it had discovered military abuse, seeming to use this teenage terrorist as some kind of poster child with willing assistance from Khadr's own American lawyers and the AC-T's news editors.

Omar's lawyers had focused on alleged torture, releasing the tape to the media of their client's complaints, the AP article in the AC-T reporting as a side item, "Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier during a 2002 firefight that left another soldier blinded in one eye."

We left a message with the AC-T publisher's secretary to advise him of the new information we had discovered, saying his AP story had left out the name of the U.S. soldier killed and that he was one of our own living in North Carolina.

The soldier's bro's had also reported the week before Speer's death that he had been a hero, saving the lives of several wounded Iraqi children while walking into a minefield.

The AC-T publisher, as usual, did not respond that his Gannett-owned newspaper would be glad to advise its WNC readers of who Khadr had killed.

Therefore, the AP article printed by the AC-T continues to stand as the man murdered simply being a soldier.

American Military Hero's Death Ignored By Local Newspaper While Terrorist Who Killed Him is Highlighted

A published Associated Press article recently whined about a Canadian teenage terrorist, Omar Khadr, who was being held in Guantanamo Bay, now being used by opportunist lawyers running a media blitz. It had been picked up by the Asheville Citizens Times (AC-T) (July 16, 2008) along with probably other newspapers across America that had decided to run this story as the AC-T had printed it.*

Source:

US Army Special Forces Groups (Airborne)

The AP story as published by the AC-T left out facts to remind us what this teenager has done, writing that in 2002 Khadr had simply killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier. 

The soldier had a name. He was medic Sergeant Christopher Speer, who never came home again to his family; wife Tabitha, or his two small children, Taryn and Tanner.  

Omar Khadr was alleged to have also at the same time wounded another medic, blinding him in one eye. Yet this medic, who was still standing, went on to save Khadr's own life, who is now used six years later by the AP for a continued agenda against the military at Guantanamo, an outfit Rush Limbaugh has identified as part of the drive-by media.

Source

Military Times

An honor page created for Sergeant Speer had more information the AP had totally left out, thereby missing from newspapers that had simply chosen to cut-and-paste without fact checking:

"Six days before he received the wounds that killed him, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher J. Speer walked into a minefield to rescue two wounded Afghan children."

Speer was reported to had lived in Village Chapel, Pinehurst, North Carolina, originally listed as from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was able to easily Google this and called the AC-T's publisher to advise him of the AP story they had chosen to run, and that the Asheville Citizen Times should be on the forefront to set the record straight for at least one of our own. 

But my phone call was never returned, not unusual for my experience with this publisher.  In this corrosive media environment, it's sad that so many in the media care to not remember those who have given their lives for this nation and the details of their heroism. such as Sergeant Speer had honorably accomplished in life while serving in the military overseas.

We hope someone will read this and contact their local American Veteran's Association or the Speer family to report the lack of interest of the AC-T, even when advised, in honoring a soldier living in North Carolina who had given his life for his country.

The details of Speer's heroism has been also stepped on by the AP story as run by the AC-T, which seems to advance a continued agenda against our military for simply attempting to obtain information to save American lives in time of war.

You should know it was also the AC-T that ran a huge story in the fall of 2007 on the cover of its Sunday Forum Section, demanding that all U.S. cable providers should carry the Al Jazeera Network for their viewers to watch, the headline reading, " . . . and let's not quash it."

We had written a guest letter (see next story below) for the managing opinion editor, reminding her it was the Arab television networks that had run a video on the charred body of Air Force pilot Troy Gilbert, with his found ID on the screen with his body 10 months before the AC-T's article had run. The letter was never acknowledged, originally sent to the publisher so it would be noticed. It wasn't.

American citizens need to ask a simple question and then demand an answer from the mainstream media and newspapers like the AC-T: "What happened to our basic right to know?"

* Note: Welt Online did acknowledge Sergeant Christopher Speer as the one alleged to have been killed in the grenade attack by Omar Khadr while he was fighting with Al Qaeda. Wet Online is a German news organization.

In addition we also found other versions of AP that had at least mentioned Speer's name, the AC-T for whatever reason choosing to leave that information out when we had checked two AP stories side-by-side. The AC-T story, as printed on July 16, is available for a price via a search of the newspaper's archive. We have the original printed version that lacks Speer's name and his heroism in saving wounded Iraqi children.

This is at the heart of complaints by too many American citizens that the national media, and proven here also the local media, refuses to run stories available about the individual successes of those that serve us in the military. Too often they seem to follow CNN's news guidelines as reported by a military family last year after losing a loved one, "If it bleeds, it leads!"

Update Below For ACT's Socialist Editors:

8. In the late summer of 2008, we sent a guest opinion letter to the Asheville Citizen Times (AC-T), asking them to consider the submission concerning what had happened to free speech in Canada. The Canadian supreme court had ruled in the 1990s that hate speech accusations could overrule a Canadian's citizen's freedom of speech.

The purpose of the submission was to compare what had happened in Canada to the Democrats wanting to shut down free speech on America's public airways through an oxymoron bill named the "Fairness Doctrine."

The Fairness Doctrine had been designed for the early days of the electronic media to prevent single ownership of stations controlling what was said on the airways.

The editor eluded that the article really didn't tickle the fancy.

The concern for the loss of freedom of speech in America is on the right side for you to read. Decide for yourself.

Want the U.S. Government to Define Speech?  Look North to Canada.  Then Think Again, eh?
 
It's amazing after this July 4th Holiday, Nancy Pelosi's with many Democrats will continue to work to limit free speech on radio broadcasts through an attempt to reenactment the Fairness Doctrine.   This shows a disturbing and open willingness of our elected offices to create regulation against us that would suppress free speech in an open media, blocking opinion from voluntary listeners.

The Fairness Doctrine does not extend itself to newspapers, where the mainstream media is already reported about 80% liberal and behind many agendas of the Democrat Party along with support of organization such as the ACLU.

While San Francisco's Pelosi tries to revive the Fairness Doctrine, you need to remember it was formulated when broadcast technology was growing with stations springing up across America.  Congress had been concerned a few wealthy individuals could force opinions on mass markets through multiple media ownership, suppressing other views. 

Now decades later in an age of millions of Web sites, professional Internet communities, text messaging, and subscriber cable and satellite services transmitting hundreds of channels filled with tons of content, it seems any Fairness Doctrine would belong today in the former Museum of Early Radio and Television in New York City, and not on a Bill presented on the floor of our United States Congress.

I believe Matt Mittan of local am radio's "Take a Stand" show had run into something similar with our own Democrat-run North Carolina legislature a few years ago, some in the body wanting radio hosts like Mittan to have to register as lobbyists. 

Matt was the only radio host in the area at the time to report on Jim Black and his strange handling of the creation of the North Carolina Lotto.  With this new suggested law, it looked as if the state's legislature wanted to muzzle hosts like Matt when they talked about those honorable elected officials in Raleigh.

So let's take a look at exactly what happens in real life when free speech starts to be suppressed within a democracy like ours that might, as Glenn Beck would say, "Shoot fire out of your eyeballs."
 
On the Easterly Blog you can read Mark Hemingway's frightening piece titled, "The Trail of Mark Steyn." He notes the response of Canadian Human Rights investigator, Dean Steacy, to the question, "What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?"
 
Steacy's reply? "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." *
 
Which leads us to the role of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), and how they handle hate speech explained by Hemingway:
 
"Earlier this year, former CHRC employee Richard Warman went trolling for an open Wi-Fi connection in Ottawa so that he could post racist comments under assumed names on an allegedly racist Web site and then lodge a complaint with the CHRC charging the site owner with, well, being racist. Warman had appeared before the CHRC 12 times before, and wouldn't you know it, the CHRC ruled in his favor 12 times."
 
You can listen to this exact same complaint from Mark Steyn in his interview on YouTube with Mike Duffy on CTV News in Canada on May 2, 2008. **
 
In the interview, Steyn also complains about the acceptable trolling by the CHRC's former employee, Richard Warman, *** to hook Canadian citizens to write hate speech.  Steyn said in the interview, "It was as if there weren't enough Canadians writing hate speech.   So the government needed to go find them."

Hemingway reported that the Canadian Charter of Rights, (similar to America's Bill of Rights), was very clear about the free speech rights of Canadians.  But when the Canadian Supreme Court split 4-3 on a decision from a 1990 complaint and ruled that Section 13.1 (see details in URL below) **** of the Canadian Human Rights Act on hate speech did not violate the Canadian Charter of Rights, that all changed. 

Because of that ruling, it remains constitutional today for the CHRC to override the rights of its citizens in free speech.  Amazing for hosers, eh?

So if you think you can't lose your free speech in America, you better think again.  With our own court's recent 5-4 ruling on gun control, Americans now understand the dangers of these close votes that can have a direct impact on their Constitutional rights. 

Hemingway complained the Canadian court's 4-3 decision has caused a "labyrinthine series of kangaroo courts in Canada" along with "provincial human-rights commissions and corresponding tribunals, each with its own differing laws."

"The general interpretation by the human-rights commissions is that they now have free rein to regulate the media," observed Hemingway.  "The slippery slope has been a toboggan ride to hell ever since."

 Sources:
 
* Back-up for Dean Steacey's comment at "It can't happen here?"  http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2008/04/it_cant_happen_3.html
 
** Mark Steyn's interview on YouTube, the attack on him for hate speech and the government's involvement in trolling for hate speech at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z--_v44bqcE&feature=related
 
*** Web site on Richard Warman:  http://www.richardwarman.com/
 
**** For Section 13.1 language in Hemingway's article.  See the Easterly Blog at: "The Trial of Mark Steyn," at:  http://easterly.wordpress.com/hk-matters/canada-hrc-the-trial-of-mark-steyn/

7. On February 18, 2008, we sent a letter to the new publisher of the Asheville Citizen Times (AC-T), asking him to consider our submission for a guest column of 700 words. The letter had been a work in progress for over five months, building an argument as the AC-T continued its strange reporting on the war in the Middle East.

It was my decision to finally bring to light to the readers what their paper of record had been quietly doing with its biased reporting of the war. Recently, it had even openly supported that the Al-Jazeera Arab Network needed be carried by all cable providers in the United States so American viewers could watch the Arab programming, the newspaper editor even putting in the headline " . . . and let's not quash it."

This was being suggested at the very same time the newspaper was suppressing stories of American heroes from its own readers. We thought that was a double standard and too much like what Limbaugh had referred to as the Drive-by media.

As of this writing, February 21, I have yet to receive any reply from either the publisher or an editor representing the newspaper. Please note that a picture had also been embedded in the letter I had sent, which is now included with the copy I am providing for you to read today.

It is a captured video frame of Troy Gilbert's ID via a promotional Arab video that was professionally edited of the crash of his jet, the ID edited over his body after it had been pulled from the rubble. I cropped the picture as much as possible for the least possible image while still allowing the sense of what the Arab producers were trying to achieve.

The captured video frame was intended to only be included with the draft copy and not to run with the final guest column in the paper. I wrote to the publisher that the picture was there to prove a video of Troy Gilbert's burned and torn body had indeed been created and in a full nine months before the managing editor decided to demand that all Americans have access to videos coming from the Arab world.

It proved to me without a shadow of a doubt that the editor knew that fact when she recommended Arab television to be provided by all cable providers in America, understanding that images of the dead bodies of our young men and women, who had served in the military overseas, could be included to wind up on America television screens across the nation in the form of burned and distorted corpses. I almost felt that was the objective of the newspaper's article. What else could the objective be, I had asked myself?

I feel the newspaper's handling of the issues I had brought up in this guest piece was disturbing and suffocated the people's right to know, the whole purpose of a fourth estate created by our forefathers.

The AC-T is owned by Gannett, Inc., publisher of USA Today. I had complained to its CEO three years ago about the strange way the AC-T was reporting some stories, Gannett passing out awards at the time to their paper. I never did receive a reply or that my letter had ever been received. I only discovered later that it had been returned to the AC-T publisher, his forwarding me a copy of his answer to the corporate bosses. That was the last thing I had expected from the professionals at Gannett.

Click here now to read the letter I had sent to the publisher.

6. On September 16, 2007, on the cover of the Asheville Citizens Times Sunday Forum Section, the communications editor proclaimed in a headline, "An American hallmark is free flow of information; let's fight attempts to quash it."

The editor was referring to the Al-Jazeera cable network, her being disappointed that only two cable channels in the United States carried the network, one that Bin Laden has used constantly to transmit his propaganda. It is also the Muslim network of the world, spewing out negative stories against the United States and its attempt to give the Iraqi and Afghan people their freedom.

Our son, who had served in the Marines in Afghanistan, had told how amazed he was at the fight the Afghan Freedom Fighters had in them for freedom, having make friends with some of them.

It was the Al-Jazeera Network that has shown our dead soldiers on video by insurgents that was allowed on the cable network to be shown to its millions of viewers. For instance, recent video footage was shown of the body of the pilot, Troy Gilbert, who was supporting Marines against insurgent gun placements. Gilbert was flying too low, but he had to do that if he was to miss hitting civilians. But at that altitude the insurgence could hit him with ground fire, which they did making his wife a widow.

Al-Jazeera showed his distorted body as filmed by insurgence, his face so swollen his mouth looked like a rabbit's mouth, his teeth sticking out. They also showed all the ID's found on the body, Gilbert's wife knowing he was a hero but also knowing his body had been violated by these men who were freedom's enemy.

The Asheville Citizen Times also passed on the story of the Metal of Honor winner, Michael Murphy, his Navy Seal team being discovered by local shepherds as they hid in the mountains. Unlike the insurgents, the Taliban, or the soldiers of Nazi Germany, these Seals let the shepherds go understanding they might give away their positions. They did, and it was Murphy who went out into the open to radio for help as he was hit by two rounds and died.

The only American left alive hid under some rocks, and was able to tell of Murphy's heroism when the U.S. soldiers came to claim their dead.

Two readers had asked the newspaper where was Murphy's story, the second one saying the paper had slapped Murphy in the face by only attributing one quote to the story to appease some angry readers. The managing editors and their publisher obviously have no shame in promotion of their secular progressive view of the world while using a free press. The Asheville Citizens Times is owned by Gannett publishing of USA Today.

5. An vile AC-T' editorial cartoon on March 18, 2007, had referred to Asheville's Council of Independent Business Owners (CIBO) as Nazis. We thought what a disconnect this far-left Gannett pub had to local business owners, the ones who take the personal financial risks to help the growth of the city.

After Imus's vile words to the Rutgers' girls's basketball team and the hate that caused the 32 deaths on the campus of Virginia Tech in early 2007, I wrote a letter to the publisher asking why this hate was ever allowed on the pages of Asheville's major newspaper and while under his watch? I wrote that something was very wrong with the editorial culture of the AC-T when this kind of nasty rhetoric was allowed on its pages.

While the newspaper bragged that in its humility it had allowed a printed rebuttal by the CIBO on March 25, 2007, for referring to their organization as being similar to the killers of the Jews in WWII, I felt the Asheville Citizen Times showed how much it is out of touch with the kind people who make up the population of Western North Carolina.

My letter to the editor, as shown on the right, was probably never published since it doesn't appear in the archives, which is par for the course. A copy of our letter was also forwarded to the CEO of Gannett publishing, Mr. Craig A Dubow. But he never responded to why one of his newspapers was allowed to spew this hate speech. It is nothing less than what we would expect from the Gannett [Rose Bud] Empire.

4. We sometimes think the Asheville Citizen Times editorial department is run by a bunch of college journalists, ones who too many times seem to treat the people's newspaper as their own tool to promote personal agendas. We don't understand why they keep tossing aside their job to honor their reader's right to know. Where did that American concept go?

The editorial culture of the Asheville Citizen Times seems to be its own worst enemy. If you don't believe that, simply read the above story and ask now the hell could a Nazi cartoon, attacking local businesses, ever make it onto the newspaper's pages unless given a free pass by its editors. It's as if some on the newspaper run around patting each other on the back like school children who have just placed a tack on the teacher's chair.

Look at the summary on the right, which is just a snap shot of this strange newspaper owned by Gannett Rose Bud)Publishing , and then you decide. If you got here from the previous page, or reviewed the items below, you will see the same agenda being generated again and again.

We therefore believe it's no accident that the freakiest city in America, as identified by Rolling Stone Magazine, is supported by what seems to be the freakiest newspaper in North Carolina. But we need to remind the publisher and the board of directors of the Asheville Citizen Times that in the end the fish always stinks from the head.

After my inquiring three times about the status of my previous submission for a guest column, I was advised that my writing about the recent beheading of a schoolmaster in Afghanistan by Taliban, angry he was using his new found democracy from the U.S. to educate teenage girls, would not be running as more important content had been selected over the several months it was morphing into old news while sitting on an editor's desk.  Ah shucks!

I had wondered if the AC-T was talking about the kind of content it had selected for its April 1st 2006 issue, where a citizen living in the area with a B.S. degree (no pun intended) from the University of Wisconsin (no surprise) reported that the farts from cows and humans that eat meat were polluting the earth’s environment.

Isn’t it enough Rolling Stones Magazine had named Asheville the Freakiest City in America?  Locals just hate it!  Yet in this same April issue, the AC-T boldly placed above the fold a story that at least six willing men had traveled from abroad and across the nation to come to the secular-progressive area to be castrated in “Master Rick’s” dungeon.

I bet the developers promoting those expensive condos at “The Cliffs,” using full-color double-truck ads in the AC-T, just loved their prospects reading this story on the newspaper’s front page.  The article went on to report; “ -- the [voluntary] surgical removal of the testicles -- is a form of sex change for some people.”   The AC-T could have used the more condensed and better-written Associated Press version and parked it on page three.  Don’t you just love living in these progressive mountains?

Then, oh my God (pardon my loss for secular words), again in the same issue an editorial complained of the lack of ethics reform in the U.S. Congress, listing Republicans who had taken funds.  Yet the name of a leading Democrat in Washington, who had received funds indirectly from the now famous Abramoffs but had said he wasn’t going to give back the money, was left out of the story.  Ah, shucks.

The editor didn’t even mention that under the leadership of the Democrat Governor of North Carolina, there had been no ethics legislation to make North Carolina lawmakers accountable, as reported by Matt Mittan host of the 570 A.M. program, “Take a Stand.”  Matt had attributed the recent abuses of Speaker Jim Black to the lack of ethics legislation in state government, the AC-T in another editorial not even giving Mittan credit for his being the only one in the media to push the issue to the front of the news, Mittan so aggressive that fifteen state newspapers could no longer ignore the story, including the AC-T, which had come to the party late.

Need readers be reminded that the AC-T wouldn’t print the picture of a captured Saddam Hussein . . . that the newspaper had buried near its comics a 2004 press release from the prestigious Center for Disease Control (CDC), warning that STDs could come in contact with 50% of today’s teenage population . . . that this newspaper used an entire front page to report that Hollywood director Steven Spielberg might be (could be, should be) buying a condo in Asheville . . . that in December 2005 the AC-T had run a large article titled. “The Beat still resonates,” reporting on a local reading of Allen Ginsberg’s “The Howl.”  The article warned, “You wouldn’t want your children to come across it.” 

Would anyone believe that while the AC-T glorified Ginsberg, it had somehow forgotten to advise its readers that Ginsberg was an active supporter of the North American Love Boy Association  (NAMBLA), Camille Paglia of Salon.com writing about Ginsberg on her Web site:

“Seen from this pagan perspective, Ginsberg's celebration of boy-love was pure and sinless, demonstrating the limitations of Judeo-Christian paradigms of sexuality.”

The Asheville Citizen Times even lacked simple class when reporting a recent marriage of the popular Hollywood actress, Andie McDowell, who lives in the area. An editor wrote in a lead-in McDowell would be marrying a used-car salesman.  Wouldn’t you think an award-winning newspaper owned by the Gannett Publishing Empire, might instead report, “Andie McDowell to marry successful Asheville businessman?”

But what can one expect from reported articles published on April Fools Day?  You can’t make this stuff up.

3. The newspaper allowed a story on Harry Belafonte and an Afghan school master, who had been beheaded in front of his family, to sit and grow old, an editor saying they had been too busy with other articles.

Click here to read a submission that was rejected by the AC-T, relating to the kind of articles they were printing at the time. It also appears in #9. above to the right.

The AC-T, owned by Gannett Publishing, is like most of the mainstream media, not one to promote any good news coming out of the Middle East and the success of our troops in providing schools, business enterprises, and hospitals for the Iraqi people. USA Today is the flagship newspaper for Gannett Publishing.

We were told the mentioned article was well written, but that now since the story sat on their desk for two months, it was not longer pertinent to today's news. So we called the publisher, asking what kind of newspaper would purposely suppress the story of an Afghan schoolmaster giving his life so Afghan girls would receive an education?

Word must have trickled down, the editor who had suppressed the story now saying they would publish it but only if I could find a current news story relating to Harry Belafonte. Since Harry cannot keep his mouth shut, the new directive was easy to follow.

The story was finally printed, which was almost identical to an earlier one posted on our Web site. No notification was provided of the story's printing, and a two-year old attribution was used without first allowing it to be checked for accuracy. Also a new photo of the author was provided to the newspaper (required) but ignored.

Therefore the Web site printed in the attribution was old and would have come up as an error if typed in on the Web by a reader of the article. When the AC-T was requested the incorrect Web site be fixed or deleted when the article was sitting in the newspaper's archive, it quickly disappeared from the online archive and we assume sent to virtual heaven, (deleted), as if it had never run in the first place. But several months later in a search it suddenly popped up again.

The letter referred to the American Society of Newspaper Editors' (ASNE) diverse mission statement on the Web on hiring as one example of the dangerous bias put out by this national newspaper editor's association, the statement on the hiring of reporters leaving out the word religion! The AC-T said it couldn't print the concern, their saying the ASNE had nothing to do with what stories newspapers printed. We know the Constitution specifically protects against discrimination on the basis of religion, the letter asking them the word being left out was not important?

The AC-T wouldn't print the letter to the editor, concluding the ASNE had nothing to do with decisions made by newspaper editors. We wrote back to an editor at the AC-T, commenting their saying this about the ASNE was like someone saying the IEEE has nothing to do with setting television standards.

The ACLU about two years ago in a Kansas City case had filed a brief where an adult gay had been having sex with a 14-year old male child, the child a patient who needed psychological help in the establishment the gay worked. According to the press release, the adult gay had been told to stop on two occasions and was now going to jail for continuing this sexual act with the disturbed underage child.

The ACLU said in its brief that the man would have been free to walk the streets if children had the right to give permission to have sex with anyone they wanted. This has been the number one mission of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) for little boys for decades. NAMBLA members, it is thought, would even like to have the right-to-consent reduced for ten-year olds.

The Attorney General of the State of Kansas was so angry with the ACLU, that it was reported he said the ACLU would probably give every child in America a card they could carry with an 1-800 number printed on it that would allow them to call in case parents tried to stop them from dating whomever they wanted.

The AC-T, predictably, would not print the letter, even proof of the text was provided via news links on the Web to prove the story was true. The AC-T then tersely wrote back, "Does the attorney general of Kansas represent the ACLU?"

What?

The story was obviously not printed, not the first to be dumped into the trash at the AC-T.