National media focus on 2nd Amendment over 4th Amendment.
Search Results for: Josmar Trujillo
Mar
01
2013
Fox News' Civil Rights 'Expert'
Network's Michael Meyers defends racism
During the Barack Obama presidency, questions of race and racism have become highly visible and hotly debated on corporate media. While the president himself has had little to say on these issues, Fox News has its own stable of guests and panelists ready to raise the topic—some of them wearing a “liberal” label, though Extra! readers (3/12) know to take such descriptions with a grain of salt. Among Fox’s race analysts, perhaps none is as effective and credentialed as Michael Meyers, the network’s resident black “liberal” civil rights commentator, a New York Post columnist and head of the New York [...]
Jan
01
2013
Covering Sandy Relief in Superhero Mode
Residents' criticisms and media portrayal at odds
As soon as the water receded from the streets, media trucks and journalists descended upon coastal areas of New Jersey and New York City to report on Hurricane Sandy’s damage. But recovery efforts by public and semi-public officials were slow in developing, leading to a media portrayal of the response that was a far cry from what many residents and activists saw.
Dec
01
2012
Media Laugh Off Criticism of Drug War
Journalists make pot jokes while victims suffer
To those of a certain age, the image of eggs sizzling in a frying pan instantly evokes the Partnership For a Drug-Free America’s 1987 “this is your brain on drugs” ad. But any group that wanted to draw attention to drug use in the 1980s and ’90s didn’t really need to buy ad space; media coverage was already saturated with sensationalized reporting on crack cocaine and other drugs (Extra!, 9/92). This plentiful drug coverage served to support U.S. government policy, encouraging public embrace of a heavy-handed crack-down that began under President Richard Nixon and was expanded by Ronald Reagan. Government [...]
Sep
01
2012
Radicals, Terrorists and Traffickers--Oh My
Creating a potpourri of enemies south of the border
In May, a New York Times story (5/6/12) discussed plans to militarize the U.S. presence in Latin America. For some, this might sound redundant, given U.S. history in the region. Others might be struck by the notion that a nation embroiled in two major wars--and threatening to start another--could find the resources to escalate efforts south of its border. The article, which focused on U.S. efforts to strengthen its anti-drug campaign in Honduras, provided a glimpse of the evolution of the U.S. military's role in the world as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq wind down. That role, the Times [...]
Jun
01
2012
MSNBC MIA on Iran
More Obama boosterism than foreign policy examination
Getting independent, skeptical coverage of official claims about Iran—from its supposed nuclear weapons program (Extra!, 9-10/05, 1/12) to its alleged plans to launch terrorist attacks across the world (Extra!, 3/12)—is essential. One place you might expect to see more critical coverage is on supposedly left-leaning MSNBC. But when it comes to Iran, in what little coverage it offers the channel largely mirrors the Democratic Party line. For the most part, it was hard to find Iran on MSNBC. From January to April, two of MSNBC’s stars, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz, brought it up only 16 and 14 times, respectively. [...]
Apr
01
2012
Right and Early
Sunday morning shows are GOP TV
By Peter Hart
If the Sunday morning TV chat shows seem like a sea of Republican politicians and conservative spinners lately, it’s not your imagination. While you might expect to see a lot of Republican candidates and their surrogates in the thick of a Republican primary contest, the four Sunday morning talk shows—ABC’s This Week, NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday—have been extraordinarily friendly terrain for the right, as a new FAIR study documents. Evaluating the guest lists for the eight months from June 2011 through February 2012, FAIR found a distinct conservative skew in both one-on-one [...]
