Search Results for: Robert Weissman and Russell Mokhiber

Aug
01
2011

A Missing Voice at the Washington Post

No “market” for Colman McCarthy’s nonviolence

Colman McCarthy--Photo Credit: americanswhotellthetruth.org

Open the Washington Post to its editorial pages the day after the September 11 attacks, and war talk dominates. Henry Kissinger: “Destroy the Network.” Robert Kagan: “We Must Fight This War.” Charles Krauthammer: “To War, Not to Court.” William S. Cohen: “American Holy War.” There is no column by Colman McCarthy talking peace. From 1969 to 1997, McCarthy wrote a column for the Washington Post. He was let go because the column, he was told, wasn’t making enough money for the company. “The market has spoken,” was the way Robert Kaiser, the managing editor at the Post, put it at [...]

Mar
19
2007

Iraq and the Media

A Critical Timeline

Bush speaks about Iraq invasion--Photo Credit: War Made Easy/Media Education Foundation

It's hardly controversial to suggest that the mainstream media's performance in the lead-up to the Iraq War was a disaster. In retrospect, many journalists and pundits wish they had been more skeptical of the White House's claims about Iraq, particularly its allegations about weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, though, media apologists suggest that the press could not have done much better, since "everyone" was in agreement on the intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons threat. This was never the case. Critical journalists and analysts raised serious questions at the time about what the White House was saying. Often, however, [...]

Aug
09
2001

Diversity Gap in Online Journalism: Yahoo! News Op/Ed skews male, white and right

Note: Please read the latest update to this alert. While the Internet has revolutionized how some people get their news-- forexample, through alternative sites such as IndyMedia.org, AlterNet.org andCommonDreams.org-- corporate media still wield great influence over therange of journalistic debate online. Many web surfers rely on for-profitsearch engines and web directories to guide them to news items of interest. Yahoo!'s daily journalism site Yahoo! News (http://dailynews.yahoo.com), for example, directs visitors to headline reports and columns largelydrawn from wire and syndication services, streamlining the search processand providing what is presented as a customizable one-stop shop for a quickand easy overview of [...]

Aug
01
2001

Questions for Kissinger Go Unasked

Journalists show 'sensitivity' to war-crime suspect’s feelings

While visiting Paris in May, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger received a summons to appear at the French Palace of Justice to answer questions about murders and disappearances in Chile in the 1970s. While the story was carried by major European news outlets, it has received relatively little coverage in U.S. media. The French wanted to ask Kissinger what he knew about Operation Condor, a consortium of Latin American governments that assassinated dissidents in each other’s countries. Evidence that the U.S. government supported Operation Condor has been available for years (Nation, 8/9-16/99; New York Times, 3/6/01). The French magistrate [...]

Jun
12
2001

Boston Globe Ombudsman Distorts Readers' Concerns

In his June 11 column, Boston Globe ombudsman Jack Thomas distorted the concerns of hundreds of letter-writers, and failed in his responsibility to his readers by relying solely on his own paper's version of disputed events. Thomas was responding to the many complaints he received about the paper's rejection of an ad from the environmental group ForestEthics that was critical of the office supply company Staples. Hundreds of people wrote in to question why the Globe editorialized in favor of other publications accepting controversial ads in seeming contradiction of the Globe's own advertising policies. Most of these letter-writers heard about [...]

Jun
05
2001

Boston Globe's Continued Hypocrisy on Free Speech

FAIR sent out an action alert on April 9 asking readers to contact the Boston Globe about the paper's apparent hypocrisy. The Globe had written an editorial (3/20/01) upholding the free-speech right of right-wing activist David Horowitz to place a racist ad in campus newspapers attacking the idea of slavery reparations. The paper told student editors and campus activists: "Far more dangerous than offensive ideas is their censorship,because censorship knows no ideology and will eventually muzzle the views of the minorities as well." But as columnists Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman pointed out ("Focus on the Corporation," 4/3/01), the Globe [...]

Apr
09
2001

Boston Globe's Double Standard on Free Speech?

Conservative activist David Horowitz has generated significant media attention lately over his advertisement "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks Is a Bad Idea for Blacks--and Racist, Too." Horowitz has approached college newspapers across the country to buy space for the ad. Most papers have refused the ad, while at Brown University some students went so far as to steal the newspapers that published the ad. Many media outlets have understandably defended Horowitz on free speech grounds. The Boston Globe, for example, wrote this editorial on March 20: The ideas against slavery reparations contained in an advertisement placed in student newspapers [...]

Feb
06
2001

Support Grows for Dissenting Pacifica Board Members

Amid a crisis that threatens the future of the Pacifica Radio Network, more than 80 prominent progressives have rallied in support of the six dissidents on the Pacifica Foundation's board. These board members want Pacifica's national leadership to reverse course on its takeover of WBAI, and to "build democratic decision-making structures throughout Pacifica." A statement supporting the dissenting board members (below) was signed by the Local Advisory Board chairs of four of Pacifica's five stations and by former Pacifica staffers and board members, as well as by political figures, community leaders, journalists, artists and academics. These include Dennis Brutus, Noam [...]

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