Did BushInc target KnightRidder for payback on their DSM/Iraq reporting?

I need those of you familiar with the stock market to check into some of the fishy circumstances around Knight Ridder's recent decline in stock.

There have also been recent resignations of top administrators, including publishers Tony and Peter Ridder.

Knight Ridder was the news organization that consistently reported that the intel books were being cooked by the WH.

They also reported the Downing Street Memos.

I believe the DSM story may have been the final straw for BushInc.

What strings did they pull? Advertisers? Targeting of KR reporters in Iraq?

Something is going on. I think BushInc brought a hammer down on the news organization that has been causing it the most trouble.

Cheney put a Knight-Ridder reporter off Airforce 2 for some story written he did'nt like.

even bigger trouble media-wise than we were before.

I hope Media Matters can look into this.

Here's a link:

http://www.knightridderwatch.org/News/News%202005/Salihee.htm

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Afer Michael Powell "took back" the Media ownership changes this winter Tribune (In which KnightRidder invests heavily) appealed to the SCOTUS to have the lower court ruling overthrown. Prior to the POwell "take back" KnightRidder papers such as the Fort Worth Star Telegram had been shamelessly pandering to Bush in the 2004 election with such pieces as an editorial endorsing the old Bush, not the Bush running in 2004 (?????) and a complete media blackout of all the election fraud Ohio news.

http://www.knightridder.com/about/investments.html

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2005_01_31_indexarch.php

Tribune Co. and the parent companies of CBS, Fox and NBC have filed an appeal with the Supreme Court asking the court to restore the government's new media ownership rules which had been thrown out by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit . At issue is are FCC rules easing ownership restrictions, in effect allowing one company to own multiple television stations in a single market. Supporters of the new rules were dealt a severe setback last week as the Justice Department decided to forego its own appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court would have been more likely to hear the appeal if the government had been involved. Read the Third Circuit opinion and related documents. Read more about the FCC's goals in media ownership . AP has more.

POwell announced that the DOJ would not try to appeal the lower court ruling the same day that Congress OK'd Bush's second term, essentially telling Viacom (which needed those media ownership changes cause it was in violation of the law) ABC FOX Tribune and the rest "Ha ha ha we were only stringing you along, promising you these changes so you would help * get a second term."

KnightRidder almost immediately changed the way that it began to cover the WH.

And certainly their national desk in DC was way ahead on many important stories reWH like Iraq ibtel and DSM.

It was after the DSM story last May that I noticed the stock going down. I think that BushInc used their corporate cronies to trigger that falling stock.