It’s here.

I will post it Saturday afternoon at BizzyBlog under the title “Positive GDP Report Won’t Stop Media or Pols from Crying ‘Recession.’”

Note: For background on Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s previous appearances (Moyers, NAACP, and National Press Club), go here.

There’s been no shortage of follow-up commentary on the Barack Obama-Jeremiah Wright situation, but I can assure you that the matters discussed here have not been addressed by anyone else.

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Many of the comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Senior Pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) at his Washington National Press Club appearance — comments Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama denounced Tuesday as “divisive and destructive” at his press conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina — have been visible and recurring themes in TUCC’s weekly church bulletins for at least several years.

Most controversially, a review of over 125 digital editions of the bulletins I have come to possess, representing about 60% of those I would expect have been issued in the past four years, shows that on at least two occasions Wright himself, and at least one writer whose work Wright reprinted in the “Pastor’s Page” section of the bulletin, have done what Obama expressed outrage over on Tuesday: “equate(d) the United States’ wartime efforts with terrorism.”

Though it is not known whether Obama has read, or remembers reading, bulletin content containing such material in the 20 years he has been attending TUCC, there are circumstantial reasons to believe that he would have come across it during that time.

The “wartime efforts” Obama referred to Tuesday extend back, in Wright’s view, over 60 years.

In the August 7, 2005 bulletin, TUCC’s pastor went back to World War II (bolds are mine; the related TUCC bulletin page is here), actually extending the the scope of the related well-known video clip on the same topic further:

Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Hiroshima

Just as most African Americans did not know that this weekend marked the 60th anniversary of the most heinous act of terrorism since chattel slavery – the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – most African Americans also did not know why the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition was having a march in Atlanta to gain support for the Reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.

The primary reason most African Americans (and most Americans in general) did not know about Hiroshima is because of the suppression of all the film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. The U.S. Government did not want the American public to see the horror we created as we killed 300,000 civilians in an act of terrorism.

Wright’s related sermon video strongly criticizes the atomic bombings, but does not specifically call them out as acts of terrorism.

Referring to a more recent war, in the third page of an essay in the January 2, 2005 bulletin entitled “A New Year” (pictured here [Page 8] and here [Pages 9 and 10]), Wright wrote the following (bold is mine):

We have the challenge of explaining to our children why the sodomy and rape at Abu Graib (sic) committed by American troops and sanctioned by higher ups all the way up (higher) to the Pentagon and beyond is not defined as terrorism while what other people do to us is defined as terrorism. The challenges ahead of us are great.

Finally, another writer’s work, reprinted by Wright, sought to minimize the significance of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. compared to what this writer saw in many cases as equal or greater crimes.

The September 17, 2006 bulletin, issued shortly after the previous week’s commemorations of the fifth anniversary of the attacks, contains “September 11 — A Moment of Silence for All the Others,” a poem written in 2002 by Emmanuel Ortiz. Wikipedia describes Ortiz as “a Chicano/Puerto Rican/Irish-American activist and spoken-word poet.”

The poem recites Ortiz’s reactions on the first anniversary of the attacks.

Here are some excerpts from that poem (pictured in its entirety as it appeared in TUCC’s bulletin here and here):

A MOMENT OF SILENCE BEFORE I START THIS POEM

Before I start this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honour of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th. I would also like to ask you To offer up a moment of silence For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared,
tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, For the victims in both Afghanistan and the US

And if I could just add one more thing…

A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of US-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation. Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year US embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,

Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country. Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin And the survivors went on as if alive …..

….. If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence,
put a brick through
the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses,
the jailhouses, the Penthouses and
the Playboys.

….. You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all… Don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we, Tonight we will keep right on singing… For our dead.

Barack Obama’s denunciation of Wright’s National Press Club comments might lead many that the Illinois Senator is not aware of any of the three terror-equating items just noted.

But, as noted in a previous report at Pajamas Media on TUCC and its bulletins, there is reason to believe that Obama may have been aware of the terror-equating positions of Wright long before his Tuesday denunciation of it:

• TUCC’s bulletins are distributed to attendees each week before services begin.
• Each bulletin contains one or more “Sermon Notes” page.
• “Sermon Notes” pages are usually no more than one or two turns of the page away from Wright’s “Pastor’s Pages” and other opinion-based content.
• Obama was seen taking notes during a Wright sermon by Ryan Lizza, then of the New Republic, who wrote a March 2007 profile of Obama. Whether Obama was taking notes in the page(s) provided in the bulletin or on separate paper is not known.

In the three instances just cited, the terror-equating content and the Sermon Notes appear on the following nearby bulletin pages:

• August 7, 2005 — Wright calls dropping of atomic bombs in World War II “terrorism” - Page 7; Sermon Notes - Page 5.

January 2, 2005 — Wright’s “A New Year” essay - Pages 8-10 (Abu Ghraib mentioned on Page 10); Sermon Notes - Page 5.

September 17, 2006 — Ortiz’s Poem - Pages 9-12; Sermon Notes - Page 6.

Moreover, there is the question of whether TUCC’s bulletin content has generally supported or mirrored sermons delivered at its services.

At many churches, it is not unusual for the cleric who gives the homily or sermon to work to ensure that the Saturday or Sunday bulletin content reflects or supplements what he or she will say from the pulpit. Based on my review of TUCC’s bulletin content thus far, if Wright made such an effort, the likelihood that Obama has heard objectionable sermons increases significantly, even if the Illinois Senator rarely looked at the potentially controversial sections of TUCC’s bulletins.

Even if Wright’s sermons were typically divorced from bulletin content, the fact (confirmed with a bulletin-involved person at TUCC) that the bulletins are distributed before services begin, and the high frequency at which potentially controversial content can be found in those bulletins, increase the likelihood that Obama became aware of items which he, based on the various statements he has made during the past few weeks, should have “vehemently condemn(ed).”

THE person involved with the publication of TUCC’s weekly bulletin whome I spoke with almost two weeks ago indicated that the church is no longer posting new editions of the bulletins at its web site, and that this practice will continue indefinitely. When asked, no reason was provided as to why recent bulletins have not been posted online. TUCC’s “Online Bulletin” page, as it appeared at press tim, contains no link to a published bulletin.

Old Media business reporters have a definitionally-incorrect habit of labeling single industries or economic sectors as being “in recession,” when the term, as defined here, can only describe national economies or the world economy. Two examples of this are New York Times reporter David Leonhardt’s description of manufacturing as being in recession in February 2007 (laughably incorrect, in any event), and the Times’s employment of the term “housing recession” 25 times since October 2006, as seen in this Times search (with the phrase in quotes).

But if I wanted to be consistent with this routine form of journalistic malpractice, I would characterize the newspaper business — at least in terms of the top 25 in the industry’s food chain — not as being in recession, but instead as going through a deep, dark, painful, protracted depression.

A look at circulation changes in the past three years shows just how bad it’s been for most of them:

(Sources: March 31, 2008 - Editor & Publisher [opens in new window; backup BizzyBlog post containing the same data for when E&P post goes away is here]; March 31, 2005 - Burrelle’s [opens in new window].)

Circulation at the top 25 papers in the US is down 7.4% in the past three years. But if you exclude USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post, which have collectively increased their daily circulation by a bit less than 1%, you see that the other 21 have declined 12.2% during that time — a decay rate of over 4.4% per year.

Though I didn’t work up a table for Sunday circulations, Editor & Publisher reported earlier this week that Sunday circ was down 4.5% in the past year, including a whopping 9.26%, or over 150,000 copies, at the New York Times.

The situation is probably even worse than the numbers indicate. That’s because late last year, the industry’s Audit Board of Circulations made changes that enabled the papers to include items that had previously been excluded from circ figures. Among the changes:

…. newspapers will be considered paid by ABC regardless of the price for which the copy was sold.

….. there will no longer have to be payment for third-party copies or Newspapers in Education for the circulation to count.

….. Hotel and employee copies, currently under other-paid, will be reclassified under a new paid-circulation category.

Since the Audit Board’s announcement of the changes said that “The specifics will take approximately three years to work out,” it’s not clear how much circ inflation is included in the just-released figures.

Though its print circulation has declined slightly, it needs to be remembered that the Wall Street Journal has more than made up for that small decline with hundreds of thousands of paid, online-only subscribers.

It should not be lost on the industry that the papers with the best reputations for playing the news straight, fair, and balanced are the ones that are holding their own. But if history is any guide, that obvious lesson will continue to be ignored.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

These are being held for future reference they will shortly disappear from Editor & Publisher’s publicly available web site info.

Current year weekday figures support this post (”Newspaper Industry Circ: Down Doobie-Doo Down, Down — with Four Exceptions”).

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DAILY

Total Paid Daily Circulation, Average Monday-Friday

Newspaper Name — As of 03/31/08 — As of 03/31/07 — % Change

USA TODAY: 2,284,219 — 2,278,022 — 0.27%
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: 2,069,463 — 2,062,312 — 0.35%
THE NEW YORK TIMES: 1,077,256 — 1,120,420 - (-3.85%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES: 773,884 — 815,723 — (-5.13%)
DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK: 703,137 — 718,173 — (-2.09%)

NEW YORK POST: 702,488 — 724,748 — (-3.07%)
THE WASHINGTON POST: 673,180 — 698,116 — (-3.57%)
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: 541,663 — 566,827 — (-4.44%)
HOUSTON CHRONICLE: 494,131 — 503,114 — (-1.79%)
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC: 413,332 — 433,731 — (-4.70%)

NEWSDAY: 379,613 — 398,231 — (-4.68%)
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: 370,345 — 386,564 — (-4.20%)
THE DALLAS MORNING MORNING NEWS: 368,313 — 411,920 — (-10.59%)
BOSTON GLOBE: 350,605 — 382,503 — (-8.34%)
STAR-LEDGER, NEWARK, N.J.: 345,130 — 372,629 — (-7.38%)

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: 334,150 — 352,193 — (-5.12%)
CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER: 330,280 — 344,705 — (-4.18%)
THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: 326,907 — 357,399 — (-8.53%)
STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS: 321,984 — 345,252 — (-6.74%)
ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES: 316,007 — 322,771 — (-2.10%)

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: 312,274 — N/A — N/A
DETROIT FREE PRESS: 308,944 — 330,242 — (-6.45%)
THE OREGONIAN: 304,399 — 319,624 — (-4.76%)
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE: 288,669 — 296,331 — (-2.59%)
THE SACRAMENTO BEE: 268,755 — 279,032 — (-3.68%)

SUNDAY

Average Sunday Circulation at Top 25 U.S. Daily Newspapers

Newspaper Name — As of 03/31/08 — As of 03/31/07 — % Change

THE NEW YORK TIMES: 1,476,400 — 1,627,062 — (-9.26%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES: 1,101,981 — 1,173,095 — (-6.06%)
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: 898,703 — 940,621 — (-4.46%)
THE WASHINGTON POST: 890,163 — 930,989 — (-4.39%)
DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK: — 704,157 — 775,544 — (-9.20%)

HOUSTON CHRONICLE: 632,797 — 677,425 — (-6.59%)
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: 630,665 — 672,953 — (-6.28%)
DETROIT FREE PRESS: 606,374 — 639,531 — (-5.18%)
DENVER POST/ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS: 600,026 — 704,169 — (-14.79%)
STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS: 534,063 — 574,385 — (-7.02%)

BOSTON GLOBE: 525,959 — 562,273 — (-6.46%)
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS: 520,215 — 563,079 — (-7.61%)
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC: 515,523 — 541,757 — (-4.84%)
NEWARK STAR-LEDGER: 500,382 — 570,523 — (-12.29%)
THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: 497,149 — 523,687 — (-5.07%)

NEWSDAY: 441,728 — 464,169 — (-4.83%)
ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES: 432,779 — 430,893 — 0.44%
CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER: 428,090 — 442,482 — (-3.25%)
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: 424,603 — 438,006 — (-3.06%)
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH: 414,564 — 407,754 — 1.67%

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, TIMES: 409,231 — 423,634 — (-3.40%)
NEW YORK POST: 401,315 — 439,202 — (-8.63%)
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL: 384,539 — 400,317 — (-3.94%)
THE SUN, BALTIMORE: 372,970 — 377,561 — (-1.22%)
THE OREGONIAN: 361,988 — 375,914 — (-3.70%)

From Iowa:

Updated April 19. 2008 3:47PM

No sibling rivalry here.

Two sisters on the transplant waiting list each received a kidney last weekend from the same deceased donor.

It took hours before the families of Karen Parizek, 52, of Lone Tree, and Elaine Behrens, 59, of Wilton, realized both were awaiting transplants at University Hospitals in Iowa City.

And for a while, the transplant team and sisters thought just one kidney was available.

“I was OK with that,” said Behrens, who thought the kidney would go to her younger sister.

Parizek, too, would have been fine had the kidney gone to her sister, who had been awaiting a transplant since 2006. Parizek was added to the waiting list six weeks ago.

Behrens, a second-grade teacher in Durant, started dialysis two years ago after high blood pressure led to kidney failure. Friends and relatives tested as living donors weren’t compatible matches.

She received a call about a potential kidney at 2 a.m. April 12 from her transplant coordinator. Just a half-hour later, Parizek received a call, too, from another coordinator.

Not wanting to awaken each other if the surgery didn’t materialize, the sisters traveled to Iowa City.

It was only after Behrens’ husband called the women’s middle sister, Phyllis Rife of West Liberty, that the realization was made about 10 a.m. last Saturday.

Rife told Behrens’ husband that Parizek was awaiting surgery at University Hospitals.

“He said, ‘You’re confused. We’re up here at University Hospitals,’” Behrens said.

Unaware the two were sisters, a nurse who knew two patients were potentially awaiting the same organ tried to stop Behrens’ husband from going into Parizek’s room, per hospital policy.

Even the women’s doctor, nephrologist Andy Bertolatus, didn’t initially realize the two were sisters.

“I tried to figure out how two people could look so much alike,” he said. “With different last names, I don’t think anyone in our program knew they were sisters.”

Bertolatus said organs donated in a region generally stay in the same area, but because they were such a close match, the kidneys — from a young person who died in Oklahoma — came to Iowa.

The organs were transplanted Sunday. The close match should result in a better long-term outcome, the doctor said.

Spokesman Paul Sodders of the Iowa Donor Network called the transplants “amazing.”

The United Network for Organ Sharing does not keep national statistics on sibling transplants.

“It’s got to be extremely, extremely rare,” Sodders said. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.