Pew Research: Internet News Now Displacing Not Just Papers But TV, Too

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The transformation of the nation’s news landscape has already taken a heavy toll on print news sources, particularly print newspapers. But there are now signs that television news – which so far has held onto its audience through the rise of the internet – also is increasingly vulnerable, as it may be losing its hold on the next generation of news consumers.

Online and digital news consumption, meanwhile, continues to increase, with many more people now getting news on cell phones, tablets or other mobile platforms. And perhaps the most dramatic change in the news environment has been the rise of social networking sites. The percentage of Americans saying they saw news or news headlines on a social networking site yesterday has doubled – from 9% to 19% – since 2010. Among adults younger than age 30, as many saw news on a social networking site the previous day (33%) as saw any television news (34%), with just 13% having read a newspaper either in print or digital form.

These are among the principal findings of the Pew Research Center’s biennial news consumption survey, which has tracked patterns in news use for nearly two decades. The latest survey was conducted May 9-June 3, 2012, among 3,003 adults. For more on the growth of mobile technology, see the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism report: “The Explosion in Mobile Audiences and a Close Look at what it Means for News,” released Oct. 1, 2012.

The proportion of Americans who read news on a printed page – in newspapers and magazines – continues to decline, even as online readership has offset some of these losses. Just 23% say they read a print newspaper yesterday, down only slightly since 2010 (26%), but off by about half since 2000 (47%).

The decline of print on paper spans beyond just newspapers. The proportion reading a magazine in print yesterday has declined over the same period (26% in 2000, 18% today). And as email, text messaging and social networking become dominant forms of communication, the percentage saying they wrote or received a personal letter the previous day also has fallen, from 20% in 2006 to 12% currently. There has been no decrease in recent years in the percentage reading a book on a typical day, but a growing share is now reading through an electronic or audio device.

Read more from this story HERE.

Explosive: US Gov’t Used Planes, Rooftop Aerosols to Disperse Radioactive Particles to Test Their Effect on Population (+video)

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By Emily Anne Epstein. The United States Military conducted top secret experiments on the citizens of St. Louis, Missouri, for years, exposing them to radioactive compounds, a researcher has claimed.

While it was known that the government sprayed ‘harmless’ zinc cadmium silfide particles over the general population in St Louis, Professor Lisa Martino-Taylor, a sociologist at St. Louis Community College, claims that a radioactive additive was also mixed with the compound.

She has accrued detailed descriptions as well as photographs of the spraying which exposed the unwitting public, predominantly in low-income and minority communities, to radioactive particles.

‘The study was secretive for reason. They didn’t have volunteers stepping up and saying yeah, I’ll breathe zinc cadmium sulfide with radioactive particles,’ said Professor Martino-Taylor to KSDK.

Through her research, she found photographs of how the particles were distributed from 1953-1954 and 1963-1965. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s the explosive video report from St. Louis’ KSDK:

As College Student, Eric Holder Participated in `Armed’ Takeover of Columbia ROTC Office

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As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned.

Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and if so, with what sort of weapon.

Holder was then among the leaders of the Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which demanded that the former ROTC office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge.” The change, the group insisted, was to be made “in honor of a man who recognized the importance of territory as a basis for nationhood.”

Black radicals from the same group also occupied the office of Dean of Freshman Henry Coleman until their demands were met. Holder has publicly acknowledged being a part of that action.

The details of the student-led occupation, including the claim that the raiders were “armed,” come from a deleted Web page of the Black Students’ Organization (BSO) at Columbia, a successor group to the SAAS. Contemporary newspaper accounts in The Columbia Daily Spectator, a student newspaper, did not mention weapons.

Read more from this story HERE.

Veteran’s outrage after apartment complex BANS him from flying American flag

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The management of an apartment complex in Indiana has found itself in hot water this week after banning residents from flying American flags.

Chris Smith enlisted in the U.S. Army after the September 11 attacks and served four years.

His unit at the Applegate Apartment complex has become a repository of military insignia and other patriotic symbols, including the star-spangled banner.

‘It represents freedom…it represent the blood that has been shed so that we can live free,’ the emotional Smith explained to Fox News.

But after three years of living at the Columbus housing complex, the veteran received a letter from management informing him that he can no longer display an American flag outside his unit. In response, the veteran took to the Internet and created a Facebook group called Let It Fly in hopes of overturning the ban.

Read more from this story HERE.

Million Swing State Voters Getting DVD Claiming Obama’s Real Father Was Davis, Mother Bondage Star of Adult Photos (+video)

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More than a million voters in swing states are being sent an anti-Obama documentary that claims the President’s mother once posed for pornographic photos wearing bondage gear.

The shocking – and totally unfounded – claims made in the DVD represent a new low in the election dirty tricks war today provoking fury among Democrats and likely to trigger outrage in the White House.

‘Dreams From My Real Father’, made by a right-wing film-maker who is a long-time critic of Obama, includes images of a woman it claims is the President’s mother Ann Dunham clad in leather gloves, boots and a corset posing seductively on a couch.

The film also alleges that Mr Obama’s real father is left wing poet poet and Communist party activist Frank Marshall Davis, and that Ms Dunham’s marriage was a ‘sham’ to cover this up. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s a trailer from the controversial movie:

Convicted TSA Agent Blows the Whistle: TSA Stealing from Airline Passengers (+video)

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A former TSA agent who spent three years in prison for stealing from passengers’ luggage says the practice is “commonplace.”

Pythias Brown admits to stealing more than $800,000 worth of cash, clothing and electronics over a four-year period at Newark Liberty International Airport. He was finally caught trying to sell a stolen CNN camera on eBay.

“It became so easy, I got complacent,” Brown told ABC News.

Though Brown says he might have been one of the biggest thieves at the Transportation Security Administration, he believes the agency has a culture of entitlement — and of looking the other way.

“It was so easy. One day I walked out of there with the video game, the Nintendo Wii. I walked right out of the checkpoint with the Nintendo Wii in my hand,” he said. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s an interview with the agent:

Trouble for Romney: Obamaphones Skyrocketing in Swing State-Ohio

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A program that provides subsidized phone service to low-income individuals has nearly doubled in size in Ohio in the past year — now covering more than a million people. At the same time, federal officials say they’re reining in waste, fraud and abuse in the program.

The Federal Communications Commission announced recently that reforms have saved $43 million since January and are expected to save $200 million by year’s end. In Ohio, savings are expected to be $2.9 million a year.

The savings were realized in part because the government gave out fewer cellphones to ineligible people and took steps to avoid issuing duplicate phones.

But the size of the program in the state — and profits to the increasing number of cellphone companies involved — has exploded in recent months, according to a Dayton Daily News analysis of program data.

The program in Ohio cost $26.9 million in the first quarter of 2012, the most recent data available, versus $15.6 million in the same timeframe in 2011. Compared to the first quarter of 2011, the number of people in the program nearly doubled to more than a million. Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s a video of one the Obama-phone recipients singing Obama’s praises and going off on Romney.

“Obama Boyz” Gang Member Charged With 10 Felony Counts After St. Louis Shootings

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A St. Louis teen who authorities say is a member of a gang called the “Obama Boyz” has been charged with two shootings on Saturday.

Anthony Jamal Lee, 18, fired at a group of people from the window of a Grand Prix at 2:17 p.m., according to charges.

A 13-year-old boy was struck in the side of his body and had to be hospitalized; a 17-year-old boy was grazed by bullets on his face and arm.

Lee, according to authorities, then fired from his car at two passengers in another Grand Prix, grazing one of them in the back.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cops to Answer in Court for US ‘Stoning’ of Christians

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Hundreds of angry Muslims threw chunks of concrete and eggs at a team of Christians, spraying them with urine and cursing at them – all while police stood by and then threatened the victims with “disorderly conduct.”

Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Somalia? No. Dearborn, Michigan.

So now a team of attorneys from the American Freedom Law Center is going to court on behalf of the victims of the violent Muslim mob at the Arab International Festival last June, an attack that was captured on video.

The federal civil rights complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan names as defendants officials from the Wayne County sheriff’s office who “sided with the Muslim mob intent on suppressing the Christians’ speech.”

The complaint explains authorities not only failed to protect the Christians, they ordered them to leave the Arab Festival under threat of arrest for “disorderly conduct.”

Read more from this story HERE.

US Military Personnel Who Contact Julian Assange, WikiLeaks are Subject to Death Penalty

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The US military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States – the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency.

Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with “communicating with the enemy”, a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death.

The documents, some originally classified “Secret/NoForn” – not releasable to non-US nationals – record a probe by the air force’s Office of Special Investigations into a cyber systems analyst based in Britain who allegedly expressed support for WikiLeaks and attended pro-Assange demonstrations in London.

The counter-intelligence investigation focused on whether the analyst, who had a top-secret security clearance and access to the US military’s Secret Internet Protocol Router network, had disclosed classified or sensitive information to WikiLeaks supporters, described as an “anti-US and/or anti-military group”.

The suspected offence was “communicating with the enemy, 104-D”, an article in the US Uniform Code of Military Justice that prohibits military personnel from “communicating, corresponding or holding intercourse with the enemy”.

Read more from this story HERE.