[escepticos] La secta Moon compra UPI

[Luis Alfonso Gámez <vader@...>]

La peligrosa secta Moon se ha hecho con la agencia de noticias United Press
International. Y En fin...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The owner of the Washington Times  newspaper, a
company linked to the Unification Church, has  acquired the United Press
International wire service, which  broke the news of President John
Kennedy's assassination but has  since fallen on hard times, the agency said
on Monday.
UPI said in an article on Monday that News World  Communications,
established by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, head of  the Unification Church,
"plans to maintain UPI as an  independent news-gathering operation while
upgrading its  capacity with new technologies and distribution practices."

Since it was established by Moon in 1982, The Washington  Times has provided
a consistently conservative editorial voice  in the nation's capital. Moon
also lists on his Internet site  newspapers in Seoul, Tokyo, Montevideo,
Athens, Los Angeles and  New York.

Terms of the sale, which includes such assets of UPI as its  corporate name
and trademark, were not disclosed.

A later article by UPI quoted its Chief Executive Officer  Arnaud de
Borchgrave as telling staff members that the agency's  editorial
independence would continue.

UPI said staff members had asked him if the agency was  making money, to
which he replied: "Not yet, but we'll get  there." He said UPI had 157
employees in the United States,  Britain, Latin America and Asia.

De Borchgrave, who served as editor in chief of The  Washington Times from
1985 to 1991, said that while some top  officials of News World were members
of the Unification Church,  there was no formal affiliation between the
church and the  company.

AT PEAK IN LATE 1950S

UPI reached its peak in the late 1950s, when it had some  5,000 newspaper
and broadcast clients. Over the next several  decades, its client base
shrank. UPI recently sold its  once-powerful broadcast division to its
longtime rival, the  Associated Press.

In recent years UPI has been most famous for its chief White  House
reporter, Helen Thomas, the dean of presidential  journalists, who has
covered every president since Kennedy.

"Unipressers" in their heyday had some of the best-known  bylines in
American journalism. The wire service's alumni  included Walter Cronkite,
Howard K. Smith, David Brinkley, Eric  Sevareid and Harrison Salisbury.

UPI scored numerous coups in journalism, perhaps most  notably its beat over
AP on the assassination of Kennedy on Nov.  22, 1963.

Veteran UPI White House correspondent Merriman Smith seized  the only phone
in the press car in the presidential motorcade  and refused to relinquish it
to his AP counterpart, Jack Bell.

The world's first word of the assassination came from Smith,  and he went on
to win a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.

But there were gaffes as well, such as an April 28, 1986,  report that 2,000
people had been killed in the Chernobyl  nuclear accident and a "scoop" on
the signing of the armistice  ending the First World War that moved four
days before the Nov.  11, 1918, event.

AGENCY WAS FOUNDED IN 1907

United Press was launched on June 21, 1907, by newspaper  magnate Edward
Wyllis Scripps in part because he wanted a news  agency to supply stories to
his afternoon dailies, which the  morning-paper-oriented AP would not serve.

Thus began a long competitive rivalry with the larger,  richer AP that often
was one of the most intense in American  journalism.

In May 1958, United Press merged with the third major U.S.  wire service,
William Randolph Hearst's International News  Service. Now known as United
Press International and armed with  many of INS' well-known correspondents
around the world, the  agency set out to challenge the AP.

But it started losing money within four years and never  stopped. Battered
by the rise of television news and the  shrinking number of afternoon
newspapers -- the backbone of its  news report -- UPI shrank in size and
income.

There were still some days of glory. UPI won six more  Pulitzer Prizes in
reporting and photography besides Smith's and  called Jimmy Carter's
election as president in 1976 before any  other news organization.

After trying for years to unload UPI to a major news  organization, UPI's
owner, the Scripps Howard newspaper chain  paid two inexperienced Nashville,
Tennessee, entrepreneurs, Doug  Ruhe and Bill Geisler, $5 million to take it
in 1982.

The two presided over a news agency that hemorrhaged money,  lost clients
and sold off assets -- including its overseas news  pictures operation to
Reuters -- and eventually had to file for  Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Over the next decade, UPI changed hands three times. First  it was sold to
Mexican publisher Mario Vazquez-Rana, then to  California venture capitalist
Earl Brian.

A group of Saudi Arabian businessmen have owned UPI since it  was bought out
of bankruptcy for $3.95 million in 1992.