Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: What's public about public TV? That's the question posed by new research by FAIR, the group that brings you this show. PBS was founded to serve as a real alternative to commercial television, to be the place where you could find perspectives and views that the corporations that pay for commercial TV wouldn’t want to support. The network may have some very good programming still, but how well is it serving the goals with which it was charged? FAIR's expose looks at news and public affairs programming, in the wake of the disappearance from [...]
Search Results for: Steve Rendall and Julie Hollar
May
01
2009
Letters to the Editor
Ashamed to Be a Subscriber As a FAIR subscriber and one who has given gift subscriptions to friends and family, I want you to know that “The Online Predator Scare: Profiting From the Panic” by Steve Rendall (4/09) is possibly the worst thing you have ever published. This piece makes me ashamed to be a FAIR subscriber. Your complaints and criticisms are backed up by nothing except the University of New Hampshire study which apparently showed—your expression of those findings is sloppy—that “the actual instance of minors [aged 10 to 17] who were aggressively sexually solicited by adults on the [...]
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 [...]
Sep
01
2007
Millionaires Working for Billionaires
When you’re exposed to network TV news, it’s always good to bear in mind that you’re watching millionaires working for billionaires, telling stories whose main purpose (from an economic perspective) is to get you to hold still long enough for corporate advertisements to rearrange your value system. It’s not surprising that such an institution does a poor job of informing viewers about poverty, as a new FAIR study by Neil deMause and Steve Rendall documents. How could it do a good job? It’s impossible to explain why some people are poor without explaining why other people are rich. And that’s [...]
Jan
01
2007
Letters to the Editor
Truly Perplexed I am truly perplexed by your six-page bombardment, “Are You on the News-Hour Guestlist?” (9-10/06), which argues the program represents “those in power rather than the public PBS is obliged to serve,” that it “mocks the original mandate of public television . . . to be as a forum for debate and controversy . . . and provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard.” Who better to discuss issues of the day than those intimately involved—as long as both sides are presented? Which NewsHour does, in just one hour of the PBS [...]
Oct
13
2006
Julie Hollar and Bob McChesney on the PBS NewsHour and public broadcasting
Download MP3 Today on CounterSpin: A new FAIR study of PBS’s flagship news program, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, finds that the show that describes itself as “evenhanded” and “inclusive of all perspectives” unfortunately fails rather resoundingly on both counts. The findings would be disheartening for any news outlet, but what does it mean that the diversity of the public and the public interest are poorly served even in the arena that was set aside expressly with those values in mind? We’ll talk about the NewsHour study and the ‘public’ in broadcasting with study co-author Julie Hollar of FAIR and [...]
Oct
04
2006
Study Finds Lack of Balance, Diversity, Public at PBS NewsHour
Public TV's flagship news program offers standard corporate fare
(NOTE: Please see the Activism Update regarding this alert.) The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS's flagship news program, touts its "signature style—low-key, evenhanded, inclusive of all perspectives"; Corporation for Public Broadcasting ombud Ken Bode called it "the mother ship of balance." But a new FAIR study finds that the NewsHour fails to provide either balance or diversity of perspectives—or a true public-minded alternative to its corporate competition. To evaluate the NewsHour's evenhandedness and commitment to the public interest, Extra! studied its guestlist during the six-month period spanning October 2005 through March 2006. Among the most prominent findings: Public interest groups [...]
Oct
01
2006
FAIR's Original 1990 NewsHour Study
[Note: This piece is a sidebar to "Are You on the NewsHour’s Guestlist?"] Following FAIR’s landmark 1989 study of ABC’s Nightline, “Are You on the Nightline Guestlist?” (Extra!, 1-2/89), FAIR was urged to compare Nightline’s narrow, elite roster of guests with those of other news programs. In 1990, FAIR published a new study, “All the Usual Suspects: The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and Nightline,” which measured Nightline’s progress in diversifying its own guestlist and compared it to the guestlist of the NewsHour, then co-hosted by Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer. To the surprise of some, FAIR found that the guestlist of the [...]
