Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin:. Republican Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan unveiled his party's budget plan this week. Media consumers learned that Ryan is gutsy, that he's serious as a heart attack, that the plan is bold and sweeping... but what would it mean for peoples' lives? And what would reporting look like if it stayed focused on that. We'll talk to Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post and the American Prospect about the 'vision' in the Ryan budget, which Meyerson says isn't really about the deficit at all. Also on CounterSpin today, seemingly out of nowhere media were [...]
Search Results for: Richard Ryan
Nov
01
2008
'Secret Muslims,' Open Bigotry
Islamophobia in the 2008 presidential campaign
This article is the overview of FAIR's study, "Smearcasting, How Islamophobes Spread Bigotry, Fear and Misinformation." Visit the report's special micro-site at www.smearcasting.com or click here to download the full report. In the 1990 Polish elections a whispering campaign suggesting that Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Roman Catholic, was a “secret Jew” attracted widespread attention in the U.S. press, as did a nearly identical rumor about the leading challenger in Poland’s 1995 election. In no uncertain terms, U.S. news reports called the rumors “ugly examples” (Washington Post, 12/31/90) of the “increasingly visible expressions of anti-Semitism” (New York Times, 1/21/91), [...]
Nov
01
2008
The Food Crisis and the Fear of Scarcity
Media binders blind us to real food solutions
The rising cost of food was all over the news in the spring of 2008, from Fox News (“Food Prices Soaring World-wide,” 3/24/08) to CNN (“Rising Food Prices and Rising Concerns,” 4/21/08) to CBS (“Price of Rice Skyrockets,” 4/23/08). Everyone was covering the story. Many will never forget news clips of desperate Haitians rioting in anger and even forced to eat dirt to stave off hunger. Then in September came the grim U.N. assessment: The number of hungry people worldwide had shot up in one year by 75 million people—reaching 925 million at the beginning of 2008, declared Jacques Diouf [...]
Oct
01
2008
Smearcasting
How Islamophobes spread fear, bigotry and misinformation
http://www.smearcasting.us/FAIR_Smearcasting_Final.pdf Smearcasting: How Islamophobes spread fear, bigotry and misinformation By FAIR October 2008 Researched and written by Steve Rendall, Isabel Macdonald, Veronica Cassidy and Dina Marguerite Jacir Edited by Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas Smearcasting: Table of Contents Making Islamophobia Mainstream: How Muslim-bashers broadcast their bigotry 4 The Dirty Dozen: Who’s Who Among America’s Leading Islamophobes 8 David Horowitz 8 Robert Spencer 8 Daniel Pipes 10 Michael Savage 10 Pat Robertson 11 Sean Hannity 11 Bill O’Reilly 12 Mark Steyn 13 Steve Emerson 14 Michelle Malkin 14 Glenn Beck 15 Debbie Schlussel 16 Case Studies 18 Islamofascism: A fringe term [...]
Jul
01
2007
Disposable People
The ‘upside’ to natural and unnatural disasters
By Roger Bybee
As Hurricane Katrina tore off roofs and exposed the destroyed interiors of homes, it also peeled back the genteel veneer on elite media opinion about New Orleans—revealing that some pundits and reporters viewed the majority of its residents to be essentially irrelevant, if not an outright impediment, to the restructuring of the city’s devastated economy. Whether urban social devastation results from corporate decisions to relocate jobs or a nature-triggered catastrophe, major U.S. media seem to view cities as first and foremost engines of economic growth and profit, with the local population’s needs and culture viewed as barely worthy of mention [...]
Feb
01
2006
20 Stories That Made a Difference
For better or worse
FAIR was founded on the belief that journalism matters—that getting out the truth can improve the world, while news that distorts or denies reality can have terrible consequences. To illustrate this conviction, we've compiled a list of 20 news stories published since FAIR's 1986 debut that had a major impact on society—for good or for ill. The list is not meant to be a comprehensive collection of the most momentous stories of the past 20 years, but rather to be illustrative of the power of media. Stories that should have led to serious changes, but were underplayed by corporate media, [...]
May
01
2003
When Journalism Becomes 'Terrorism'
Perle goes on offensive against investigative reporting
By Richard Ryan
Senior Pentagon adviser Richard Perle abruptly announced his resignation on March 27 as chair of the Defense Policy Board, an influential Pentagon advisory panel. Not coincidentally, Perle had shortly before his resignation described the respected journalist Seymour Hersh as a "terrorist," and threatened to sue Hersh for libel in Britain. Pulitzer-winner Hersh’s report in the New Yorker (dated 3/17/03) on Perle’s messy finances became the first of a series of embarrassing stories that threatened Perle’s considerable access to power. It now looks as though Perle, frequently described as the chief architect of the war in Iraq, launched his counter-attack on [...]
