FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
The national media watch group
There are instances where guns are successfully used for self-defense or protection, but those are isolated anecdotes, vastly outweighed by the numbers of gun crimes, and the fact that a gun in your home is far less likely to successfully defend against an attacker than it is to kill or harm you or a family member.
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 [...]
Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from investigative reporter Robert Parry's new book, America's Stolen Narrative. One of the book's storylines examines corporate media's role in squelching investigation into whether Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign in 1980 went behind President Jimmy Carter's back to contact Iranian officials then holding 52 Americans hostage, a controversy dubbed the October Surprise. When the possibility of a serious October Surprise investigation emerged in the latter half of 1991, an intimidating phalanx of powerful players was arrayed against it, from Ronald Reagan’s many defenders, to the sitting President George H.W. Bush, to David Rockefeller’s business and [...]
Today, after years of activism, a new law on low-power FM (LPFM) radio is paving the way for the greatest expansion of FM radio in decades. This is a huge victory for media justice.
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 [...]
When congressional Republicans and the White House agreed to their long- awaited “fiscal cliff” tax deal early on January 1, the news media celebrated it as a compromise that raised taxes on the rich while protecting everyone else. As NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell (12/31/12) put it, negotiators had crafted “a genuine compromise on taxes [where] rates would go up for couples earning above $450,000 a year and stay the same for everyone else.” Echoed Nightline’s Terry Moran (ABC, 1/1/13): “This late compromise, it will prevent many of the dreaded effects of the cliff. Only the top 2 percent of Americans [...]
If It Weren’t for Those Meddling Iranians “This demonstrates the ever pernicious Iranian meddling in other countries in the region.” —unnamed U.S. official complaining to Reuters (1/28/13) about Iran allegedly sending arms to Yemen, where the U.S. is conducting a secret drone war Extreme Weather, Unexplained NBC Nightly News (1/13/13) asked a serious question, then offered an unserious answer. Anchor Lester Holt remarked: “Strange winter: Why it is so cold where it should be warm, and so warm where it should be cold. What is going on with all this extreme weather?” Correspondent Kristen Dahlgren turned to the Weather [...]
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 [...]
