Extra! — FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

Jan

2013

Talking About--but Not With--Latino Voters

Electoral power not matched by media presence

Maria Teresa Kumar, a rare out-of-house Latina appearance on TV.
Source: MSNBC's News Nation

The Latino vote has been widely credited in the mainstream news media with playing a major role in securing Barack Obama’s re-election. According to the polling organization Latino Decisions, the president won 75 percent of the Latino vote, compared with 23 percent for Romney, a 3-to-1 margin (Foreign Affairs, 11/15/12). But while the stereotypical sleeping giant woke up, that does not mean that the mainstream media, especially television news shows, wanted to talk with the Latino electorate. They just wanted to talk about them. Extra! looked at hundreds of transcripts of post-election coverage and found that the majority of both [...]

Jan

2013

Dark Money Dominates Election

Campaign--and media coverage--still tainted by Citizens United decision

By Michael Corcoran

CBS's president Les Moonves: What's bad for America is "very good for CBS." (Photo cred.: LATimes.com)

“Super PACs may be bad for America, but they’re very good for CBS.” CBS president Les Moonves’ candid comment at an entertainment law conference (Bloomberg, 3/10/12) was one of the few honest things said by someone so deeply involved in the post–Citizens United political ad frenzy. This past election season was dominated by a record amount of ads, including many that were alarmingly misleading, and which raked in record profits for the media corporations who covered the election. Moonves was celebrating what, according to Bloomberg (3/10/12), was a projected boost in profits “by $180 million this year from political advertising,” [...]

Jan

2013

Sandy and Climate

Media asked wrong questions, got wrong answer

By Neil deMause

Photo cred.: Andrew Mills (The Star-Ledger)

Hurricane Sandy may be remembered not only as the most powerful storm ever to strike the Eastern seaboard, but also as the moment when a large segment of the U.S. media first allowed itself to say the words “climate change” in relation to a severe weather event. And while sometimes the question was dismissed as soon as it was asked—as on NBC’s Meet the Press (11/4/12), where host David Gregory opened the show by asking, “Should more attention be paid to a changing climate’s impact on the severity of these storms?” then implicitly answered his own question by never addressing [...]

Jan

2013

Hating the Oppressed in Gaza

Victims become villains in U.S. coverage

By Rania Khalek

BBC journalist Jihad Masharawi's 11-month-old son Omar died after shrapnel hit the family home in Gaza; the BBC did not devote a story to Masharawi's loss until 10 days later (Photo source: AP)

Malcolm X once said, “If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Nowhere is this warning more relevant than in the corporate media’s one-sided coverage of Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, which left 160 Palestinians dead, including 105 civilians and 34 children (Palestine Centre for Human Rights). In stark contrast, rockets fired into Israel claimed the lives of four Israeli civilians and two soldiers. One civilian death is one too many, no matter which side suffers, but a kill rate of nearly 27 Palestinians [...]

Jan

2013

Lost in Translation

The Quebec student strike in Anglo-American corporate media

By Isabel Macdonald

"It's a Student Strike, It's a People's Struggle," reads the banner. (Photo cred.: legrandecart.net)

When Quebec students went on strike last spring in protest over an announced 75 percent tuition hike—part of a package of austerity measures by Quebec’s provincial government—U.S. media paid scant attention. The six-month-long strike was the largest and longest student strike in North American history; hundreds of thousands of Québécois repeatedly took to the streets, with thousands arrested. Yet the strike elicited not a single story from any of the three major U.S. broadcast networks, PBS NewsHour or the Washington Post. In Morning Edition’s sole story on the Quebec student movement (5/15/12), NPR’s David Greene characterized the protests against the [...]

Dec

2012

Democracy & Double Standards

U.S. coverage of Venezuelan and Georgian elections

By Steve Rendall

"President Mikheil Saakashvili at a rally on Friday in Tbilisi. Parliamentary elections are Monday"

Amnesty International (10/1/12) describes it as a nation where ruling party officials have “abused public institutions and administrative re-sources to restrict the freedom of assembly, expression and association of opposition supporters,” many of whom have been “fined, fired, harassed or detained.” Free speech advocates condemned its president for shuttering an opposition TV station for alleged complicity in a coup plot, right before its 2008 elections. The region’s leading election monitor found those elections plagued by violence, intimidation and ballot box-stuffing. Its president has been criticized for changing the law to sidestep term limits and remain in power. Venezuela? No—U.S. ally [...]

Dec

2012

Fear of a Venezuelan Example

Don’t try this at home, voters

By Keane Bhatt

Over the past 30 years, the top 1 percent of the United States has experienced a 240 percent increase in its real annual income, while the median household income has barely budged (Economic Policy Institute, 6/18/12, 9/13/11). Imagine if this explosive, decades-long growth of inequality were somehow reversed—at an even faster rate than its original expansion. This has actually happened in Venezuela, and it goes a long way toward explaining why President Hugo Chávez was re-elected in October, despite many U.S. media pundits’ predictions of a victory by opposition leader Henrique Capriles (CounterSpin, 10/12/12). The likelihood of coming across an [...]

Dec

2012

Time Gives Up on Factchecking

Corporate media can't find a way to tell the truth

By Peter Hart

"Blue Truth, Red Truth": Time's October 15, 2012, cover story

Reporters appear to be wedded to a set of “rules” that say they are not allowed to convey reality to their readers and viewers.

Talking About--but Not With--Latino Voters

Electoral power not matched by media presence

Dark Money Dominates Election

Campaign--and media coverage--still tainted by Citizens United decision

Sandy and Climate

Media asked wrong questions, got wrong answer

Hating the Oppressed in Gaza

Victims become villains in U.S. coverage

Lost in Translation

The Quebec student strike in Anglo-American corporate media

Democracy & Double Standards

U.S. coverage of Venezuelan and Georgian elections

Fear of a Venezuelan Example

Don’t try this at home, voters

Time Gives Up on Factchecking

Corporate media can't find a way to tell the truth

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