Search Results for: Janine Jackson

Mar
01
2013

Industry as Victim in Workers' Deaths

Deflecting blame for Bangladesh factory fires

Child workers, Bangladesh (Photo: Global Labour Rights)

What should be done to prevent incidents like the January 26 fire at the Smart Fashion Export factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in which at least seven garment workers (three of them teenage girls) were killed, their escape impeded by a blocked exit and the absence of the most rudimentary fire safety equipment? The answer for many would be: whatever is necessary. But to hear elite media tell it, it’s complicated—so much so that it’s not even clear who the victims were: the women crushed to death escaping flames, or the system that exploits and endangers them. Or else why would [...]

Feb
01
2013

FAIR REPORT: 13th Annual Fear & Favor Review

Revealing the hidden influence behind the news

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It’s a fair indication of the current state of play in U.S. media that, in 2012, TV newscasts were acknowledged to be “increasingly seeded with corporate advertising masquerading as news” (Washington Post, 1/3/12)—and the regulatory response was to call, not for an end to the practice of deceiving audiences, but for broadcasters to make note of such arrangements in an online file. While we work on creating the sort of unfettered news media that democracy requires, calling out compromised reporting as we do each year in Fear & Favor is just another way to note where and why the current [...]

Nov
01
2012

'Inspiration' or Invisible

Media offer limited roles for people with disabilities

2012 Paralympics Torch Relay--Photo Credit: James Mitchell/Wikimedia Commons

U.S. media had a soft spot for the 2012 Paralympic Games, featuring some 4,000 athletes with disabilities from around the world. Not that they thought people wanted to see much of them―NBC only aired a few hours’ worth, and no live coverage (AP, 8/23/12)―but the events “proved once again that whatever your obstacles, you really can accomplish almost anything with hard work and dedication” (Sacramento Bee, 9/14/12). Seeing people with, as NPR’s Melissa Block (8/28/12) put it, “all sorts of impairments” competing in events from archery to swimming was “inspiring a lot of people” (NBC, 9/4/12); these were “performances that [...]

Sep
27
2012

CounterSpin, hosted by Janine Jackson, Steve Rendall and Peter Hart

PANEL-CALLOUT-COUNTERSPIN

FAIR’S weekly radio show highlighting biased and inaccurate news; censored stories; sexism, racism and homophobia in the news; the power of corporate influence; gaffes and goofs by leading TV pundits; TV news’ narrow political spectrum; attacks on free speech; and more

Sep
01
2012

'You Have a Picture; See How Complex It Is?'

'First Latina' Maria Hinjosa on reporting for the new America

Maria Hinojosa--Photo Credit: NPR/Michael Paras

Maria Hinojosa, the founding host of public radio’s Latino USA, was the first Latina reporter at NPR, the first Latina correspondent on CNN, the first Latina to anchor PBS’s Frontline, and, in the 1980s, the first Latina to host a primetime TV talkshow, New York Hotline. With the September debut of America by the Numbers from her new production company, Futuro Media Group, Hinojosa will be the first Latina to executive produce and anchor a public affairs program on PBS. FAIR’s Janine Jackson interviewed her on July 23. Extra!: In these “first Latina” situations, did you see pushing for diversity [...]

Aug
01
2012

Putting Consumers Back in Their Place

After ‘pink slime’ victory, reminders that corporations do know best

Pink Slime--Photo Credit: Pinkslime.biz

Corporate news media paid what looked like sympathetic attention to consumer activism that, within weeks, saw the ingredient known as “pink slime” removed from ground beef sold in major supermarkets and fast food chains and provided to public schoolchildren in their lunch. Reporters seemed as compelled and repelled as many consumers by the realization that trimmings “made from cattle parts once considered too contaminated for human consumption” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 3/20/12) can now be found in some 70 percent of beef sold in the U.S.—that is, after “slow cooking, a trip through a centrifuge and an ammonia hydroxide spray to kill [...]

Jun
01
2012

New Media; but Familiar Lack of Diversity

Women, people of color still marginalized online

Recent years have seen much rallying around “traditional” journalism in the face of its supposedly imminent demise, including the mythologizing of pre-Internet news media as a force of social cohesion. Lamenting the “culture of observing events from ‘inside’ a community,” Washington Post columnist and associate editor David Ignatius (5/2/10) contended: When the information landscape was dominated by three networks and a few major newspapers, journalists were trained to report for everyone. Now, niche audiences want more intimacy and connection—even if that means less old-school independence and objectivity. Traditional outlets, of course, did not and do not report “for everyone,” but [...]

Mar
01
2012

Stopping Short on Stop and Frisk

NYT reports racist policy but won’t call for its end

The New York Times (12/1/99) reported in 1999 the finding of an investigation by state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer that the New York Police Department’s “stop and frisk” program unfairly targeted black and Hispanic people. “Police officials have long contended that the disparity was based on the fact that most people are stopped in poor, high-crime neighborhoods, many of which have a majority of black and Hispanic residents,” the story explained. “But the attorney general’s analysis found that, even when the statistics were adjusted to take higher crime rates among minorities into account, the number of blacks and Hispanics stopped [...]

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