Palestine’s Right to Exist I was drawn to the headline of the article “The ‘Right to Exist’ as an Arab Israeli” in your March 2009 issue. But a much larger issue is Palestine’s right to exist. Look on any map and try to find a country of Palestine. It doesn’t exist in any contemporary atlas or land map I have found. Not only is it being physically cut up and destroyed, it is already conceptually destroyed. The Israel lobby has successfully managed the media to believe that Israel, a nuclear-armed nation with lots of power and resources, is somehow threatened [...]
Search Results for: David Croteau
Apr
20
2009
Index: A
—————— Aarons, Leroy Beyond balance: thorough coverage of gay controversies is still the exception (Ott), 1-2/02;27 Abbas, Mahmoud Nixed signals [when Hamas hinted at peace, U.S. media didn't take the message] (Ackerman), 9-10/06;10 ABC. see also Nightline ABC does "something useful" [programs on poor children], 11-12/91;19 ABC erased protesters [at the Oscars], 6/99up;3 ABC News goes for the gold, 9/92;16 ABC's 1984 cover-up for the gipper, 3-4/90;15 ABC's antiwar "reality check": world news tonight minimizes support for withdrawal (Hart and Naureckas), 10/05up;4 ABC's military analyst calls for "excessive force": CSIS's cordesman advocates brutality against Palestinians (Ackerman), 1-2/01;23 ABC's one-color TV, [...]
Feb
01
2006
Consider the Source
The Nightline study and media research
I first became acquainted with FAIR in 1987, when a friend handed me a special issue of Extra! (10-11/87) that described the distortions in U.S. news coverage of Nicaragua, highlighting the success of the Reagan administration at manipulating the news media. At the time, I was a grad student in sociology at Boston College, and was working on a study of media strategies of the Central America solidarity movement and exploring broader questions about how news media reported U.S. foreign policy. With Cold War assumptions shaping both the political debate on Capitol Hill and mainstream news coverage of U.S. involvement [...]
Mar
01
2000
Mainstream News Coverage Of Economics
Elite Bias Rules
By Jeff Cohen
A good place to begin a discussion of media bias on economics is with the price of wine. In 1997, this is how the New York Times wine columnist discussed the issue: "The $100-a-bottle wine, once an example of vulgar excess, is now an everyday occurrence." What's now an everyday occurrence is celebratory and ignorant elitism in national media. Indeed, it is the overriding bias in economics coverage -- whether the news outlet leans left or right on social issues like gays, guns or abortion. This elite worldview leads to a conservative, pro-corporate slant on issues from trade to wages [...]
Jun
01
1999
The Cost of Survival
Political Discourse and the "New PBS"
Introduction Public television has survived. The high profile assault from conservative critics, which was front-page news in the early 1990s, now seems like ancient history. As we enter the digital television age, we no longer hear Congressional threats to "zero out" public television, plans to "privatize" public broadcasting have receded from the opinion pages, and the often shrill claims of a so-called "liberal bias" on public television are much less conspicuous. Indeed, PBS's 1998 Annual Report(1) talks of a "new PBS" that has been in development since 1995, precisely the time when the conservative effort to scale back, even eliminate, [...]
Jul
05
1998
Maybe the Public—Not the Press—Has a Leftist Bias
By Jeff Cohen
For years, conservatives have painted a picture of the Washington press corps as a group of liberal crusaders bent on bashing corporations, bloating government and socializing health care. This caricature is utterly deflated by a new survey of journalists. It turns out that on a wide range of economic issues, Washington journalists are more conservative-- not more "liberal"--than the general public. Take the charge that journalists are anti-business. The recent survey asked them a simple question: Do "a few large companies" have "too much power"? Washington journalists were somewhat divided on the issue, with 57 percent answering yes and 43 [...]
Jul
01
1998
From the Top
What Are the Politics of Network Bosses?
While David Croteau's study demonstrates that Washington journalists are to the right of the general public on many economic issues, it needs to be stressed that the personal views of news reporters do not translate directly into the slant of news coverage. Reporters have editors or producers who play a key role in how the news is presented; these editors and producers in turn are overseen by higher-up news executives, part of a hierarchy that eventually culminates in the chief executive officer of the corporation that owns the news outlet. But those who specialize in scrutinizing the private opinions and [...]
Jun
18
1998
Elite Preoccupations Leave Other Concerns In Shadows
Two recent events — the launch of a magazine about news media and the release of a survey about journalists' opinions — illustrate the wide gap between the preoccupations of elite media professionals and the economic outlooks of most Americans. After lots of advance publicity, the premiere issue of Brill's Content is hot off the press. The magazine calls itself "the Independent Voice of the Information Age" and pledges to scrutinize news coverage without fear or favor. But so far, the match-up seems to be along the lines of "Establishment vs. Establishment." Exactly who owns this "independent voice"? In fact, [...]
