NEWPORT, N.H. (AP) – Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman has won the endorsement of The Boston Globe, marking the second time Massachusetts’ largest newspaper has snubbed its former governor, Mitt Romney, ahead of the New Hampshire primary.

Huntsman announced the endorsement Thursday night at a town hall meeting. He calls it proof that in New Hampshire, in his words, “there’s something happening.”

The former Utah governor is counting on a strong finish in Tuesday’s primary to stay in the GOP race.

The Boston Globe has subscribers in southern New Hampshire. It endorsed Sen. John McCain over Romney in 2007. (more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Don Irvine and Michael Watson:

In an article published on July 24^th on New York Magazine’s website, writer Seth Mnookin says that The New York Times is no longer on the verge of extinction, thanks to recent efforts of longtime publisher and Chairman Arthur Ochs “Pinch” Sulzberger, Jr., claiming that the “digital subscription plan—the famous ‘paywall’—was working better than anyone had dared to hope.”

Mnookin focused on the latest quarterly earnings report from the paper to back up his assertion that the worst is over for the Times, despite what critics thought would sink the paper. Unfortunately for Sulzberger, the markets are not nearly as convinced as New York Magazine is of the success of the Times’ new business model. Although the Times’ parent company, The New York Times Company, has seen the value of its stock rise slightly in the past few days as its losses were lower than Wall Street projected, the company’s stock has still lost 13% of its value over the past six months. For comparison, the S&P 500 index has gained 4% over that interval.

According to the website, News&Tech, The New York Times Co. said it lost more than $119 million in the second quarter of 2011, largely because of a write-down of $161 million, reflecting the declining value of its Regional Media Group, which runs its regional papers. It said that excluding the write-down, the Times posted a profit of $82.9 million on revenues of $576 million.

Mnookin also mentioned the early repayment of a $250 million loan that the Times received from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu in 2009 as another sign of improving health. But as Times CFO Jim Folio noted on a recent earnings conference call, this was largely due to the fact that the company raised an additional $225 million last year through the sale of bonds, combined with the net proceeds of $117 million from the recent sale of a portion of their ownership in the Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston Red Sox. The repayment of the loan will cost the company $279 million in total and will reduce the cash on hand to approximately $240 million, or about $160 million less than they had at the end of last year.

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Before Americans took control of Abu Ghraib after invading Iraq, Saddam Hussein had used the prison to torture and murder political detainees. Reports say as many as 4,000 murders were committed there. There are numerous accounts of prisoners being found with missing limbs, limbs that were perhaps fed to one of the Ba’athist regime’s industrial-strength wood-chippers. But no one knew the name Abu Ghraib until 2004 when images surfaced of American troops sexually humiliating detainees at the prison.

Then, a media frenzy.

Round the clock coverage; thirty straight days of front page ink in the New York Times; The Economist, the Boston Globe, the Times, and others called for then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation. As Peter Schweizer pointed out Monday, Harry Smith claimed on CBS that what happened at Abu Ghraib was a logical consequence of Bush’s policies. The images became the calling card of the national and international anti-war movement. The abuse was referenced in hit T.V. shows Family Guy and Arrested Development, among others. World-renowned artist Fernando Botero even toured the world with an exhibit of dozens upon dozens of his signature “volumetric” paintings (that means depicting morbidly obese people and animals) embellishing the cruelty that took place at the hands of American servicemen and women.

This week, Der Spiegel released photos of a similar incident. The Week sums it up well:

German news magazine Der Spiegel has published photographs of grinning American soldiers posing next to the corpse of an Afghan civilian. (See the graphic photos here.) The soldiers, Spec. Jeremy N. Morlock of Alaska and Pfc. Andrew H. Holmes of Idaho, are among five members of a rogue 5th Stryker Brigade “kill team” facing murder charges in the deaths of three Afghan civilians last year. Military commanders say they are bracing for an explosion of anti-U.S. anger akin to that which followed the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq. Is this as bad?

This is worse than Abu Ghraib: NATO leaders know these images “could be more damning than the photos from Abu Ghraib,” says Nitasha Tiku at New York. The photos from Iraq showed U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners, and that was bad enough. But these soldiers have been accused of “deliberately” murdering Afghan civilians. And these images might just be the tip of the iceberg — apparently, the Stryker “kill team” recorded their actions in 4,000 photos and videos.

So the Times itself, the paper who lead with the Abu Ghraib story without interruption for a full month, publishes a report that says these images are worse than Abu Ghraib. Yet, two days later, “Obama Ghraib” has already been bumped to page A20. But hey, who’s to say that article is more important than “Film Shows Babe Ruth, at Leisure and Up Close.” (more…)

Next we’ll hear that James O’Keefe attended a dinner party honoring Apartheid South Africa’s former president, P. W. Botha. If so, and the accusation verified, O’Keefe’s “insensitivity” to human (and civil) rights would barely register against that of Max Blumenthal’s boss at The Daily Beast, Tina Brown.

I’ll report. Y’all decide:

“N**ger!” taunted my jailers between tortures,” reported the world’s longest suffering black political prisoner about his suffering. “We pulled you down from the trees and cut off your tail!”  laughed my torturers. For months I was naked in a 6 x 4 foot cell. That’s four feet high, so you couldn’t stand. But I felt a great freedom inside myself. I refused to commit spiritual suicide.

I do not refer to Nelson Mandela. No, the prisoner was a black Cuban named Eusebio Peñalver, whose incarceration and torture at the hands of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s Stalinist regime stretched to 29 years, surpassing Nelson Mandela’s record in time behind bars and probably doubling the horrors suffered by Mandela during this period.

“The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities and booze, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent,” wrote Ernesto “Che” Guevara in his diaries.  When during a 1959 press conference a Cuban black asked Guevara, “what his Revolution would do for blacks?” Che sneered: “we’ll do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the Cuban revolution. By which I mean: nothing!” (more…)

In a stunning repudiation of Obama’s entire program, Scott Brown made the 1969 Amazing Mets look like a foregone conclusion.

It wasn’t Scott Brown taking on the machine. It was America. Despite the media’s mad machinations, in coaxing the Kennedy faithful to come out for a Coakley victory, and assuming the sale, the people weren’t fooled. The Boston Globe went so far as to publish a map that showed pre-poll-closing results depicting Coakley winning. Of course, they were trapped, and apologized. (more…)

Is this the Boston Globe’s “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment?  (See Big Journalism’s header, above, for the memorable Chicago Tribune goof.)

The Hub’s ultra-liberal broadsheet today “inadvertently” posted an interactive election-results dummy on its website, boston.com — which, amazingly, forecast a Coakley victory.

Queried by the Boston Phoenix, the city’s alternative newspaper, a spokesman for the Globe replied:

AP was testing an election data feed to its Massachusetts clients. During corresponding tests at our end, the feed of AP’s hypothetical test data was inadvertently posted for a few minutes on a single subsection page within our site. As soon as the error was discovered, it was removed. We regret the mishap.

Take a look at the “mishap” for yourself from these screen shots. (more…)

Second of a series.  Find parts one here and three here.

The “Pedophile Priest” Case, 1995-2002: Coakley cut secret deal in 1995 that allowed Father Geoghan to molest again.

Martha Coakley is running for the U.S. Senate in part on her track record of keeping children safe from predators.  The actual facts, however, are somewhat at odds with her campaign biography.

One of the most notorious cases of homosexual child abuse in the “pedophile priests” scandal that rocked the American Catholic Church in general and the Archdiocese of Boston in particular over the past twenty years involved Father John Geoghan, who came to symbolize the cancer in the church.

Here’s a brief introduction to the late, defrocked Father Geoghan by Denise Noe in Crime Magazine.  Be sure to read the whole story, then come back. (more…)

Part one of a series.  Find parts two here and three here.

In researching the ever-intensifying Massachusetts Senate race between Democrat Martha Coakley and her Republican challenger Scott Brown, it only takes a few keystrokes to unearth her ongoing history of questionable judgment and puzzling prosecutorial decisions.  Even though the election has been effectively nationalized, with some polls showing the underdog Brown within two points or so of the colorless Coakley, she remains largely unknown outside New England.

So as a public service to the voters of the Bay State, during the run-up to the special election on Jan. 19, Big Journalism will be offering some of the Martha’s Greatest Hits, so that they can fully make up their minds whether she would make a suitable successor to the late Edward Moore Kennedy – who, as you recall, began his illustrious career by being expelled from Harvard for cheating, went on to drown Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, and then turned to a life of drinking and debauchery, including the infamous “waitress sandwich” with soon-to-be-retired Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, before attempting to inflict “universal health care” on the country shortly before his death last year.

You can read all about Ted here in this classic profile of the last and worst of the Kennedy brothers by the late Michael Kelly.  Be sure to read the whole thing, just to get a flavor of the kind of candidate Massachusetts voters seem to like.

Homework done?  Good.  Because Martha Coakley, the current Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and thus its top law enforcement officer, is shaping up as a worthy heir to the Lion of the Senate. (more…)