CBS host Bob Schieffer once declared that his show's mission was to "find interesting people from all segments of American life who have something to say and give them a chance to say it." By that standard, Schieffer's Face the Nation--and the rest of the Sunday morning TV chat shows--are failing miserably, according to a new study from FAIR. Evaluating the four Sunday morning talk shows--ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, CBS's Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday--for the eight months from June 2011 through February 2012, FAIR found a distinct conservative, white and male skew in both [...]
Nov
29
2011
Keep the Heat on Corporate Media— Support FAIR Today!
After 25 years, FAIR feels more energized than ever. Why? Our sold-out anniversary celebration in New York with Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore inspired us. Tens of thousands of readers visit our website each and every month. Activists and academics tell us they're drawing on FAIR's expertise and experience. FAIR's analysis has even made it into major media outlets like NPR and the Washington Post. We have documented and debunked media attacks on workers in Wisconsin and beyond. We challenged the media's pro-war tilt from Afghanistan to Libya. And we pushed back against the media panic [...]
Oct
31
2011
FAIR Seeks Columnists
The national media watch group FAIR is looking for two strong writers with distinctive voices to write regular bimonthly columns for our magazine Extra! and for our website. One column would be on issues relating primarily to media and gender; the other column would primarily concern media and race. We're seeking well-documented, fact-based media criticism, focusing on but not necessarily limited to U.S. corporate news coverage. An understanding of the ways that racism, sexism and class bias interact in media is a must. Ability to promote one's work via social media a plus. Yearly pay for each column will be [...]
Jul
12
2011
News Corp's Hack Shows a Double Standard
Palin Hack Had O'Reilly Calling for Criminal Prosecution
The explosive allegations about widespread illegal voicemail hacking by British tabloids owned by Rupert Murdoch are getting very little coverage on Murdoch's Fox News Channel (TVNewser, 7/12/11). But Fox's top host took a very different view when a Republican politician's email account was hacked, calling for the prosecution of the website that published the emails. When Sarah Palin's email account was hacked during the 2008 presidential campaign, Fox host Bill O'Reilly was outraged that anyone could publish such material. On September 17, 2008, O'Reilly said: Now, it is a felony, a federal crime, also a state crime in Alaska to [...]
Oct
19
2010
Taking the Public Out of Public TV
PBS fare differs little from commercial TV
UPDATE: Sign FAIR's petition to bring back Now to Friday nights. A multi-part FAIR exposé of PBS's most prominent news and public affairs programs demonstrates that public television is failing to live up to its mission to provide an alternative to commercial television, to give voice to those "who would otherwise go unheard" and help viewers to "see America whole, in all its diversity," in the words of public TV's founding document. In a special November issue of studies and analyses of PBS's major public affairs shows, FAIR's magazine Extra! shows that "public television" features guestlists strongly dominated by white, [...]
Mar
09
2010
Meacham to PBS Would Send the Wrong Message
According to a report on the New York Times website (3/9/10), PBS is in talks with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham to be co-host of its forthcoming Need to Know program. If the report proves accurate, it gives viewers little hope for the kind of critical, uncompromising programming that public television was created to foster. Meacham's consideration for a show that would replace hard-hitting independent programs Now and the Bill Moyers Journal sends a clear and troubling message about PBS's priorities. Meacham is a fixture on commercial TV pundit shows in addition to his Newsweek duties. In these venues, he is [...]
Jul
28
2009
Doctors, media critics demand broader TV debate on healthcare
Between noon and 1 pm EST, the national media watch group FAIR and local healthcare advocacy groups will deliver a petition signed by over 12,000 people demanding that the TV networks include the single-payer proposal in their coverage of the national healthcare debate. The petition's signatories include Obama's longtime physician, Dr. David Scheiner; filmmaker Michael Moore; former MSNBC host Phil Donahue; actors Mike Farrell, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon; and doctors Quentin Young, Stephanie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program. The petition will be presented to a representative of ABC News, which disinvited Dr. Scheiner [...]
Jul
23
2009
Doctors, Media Critics to Deliver Prescription for a Broader TV Debate on Healthcare
July 28, NYC: Petition delivery at ABC
WHAT: The national media watch group FAIR and local healthcare advocacy groups will deliver a petition signed by over 11,000 people demanding that the TV networks include single-payer in their coverage of the national healthcare debate. The petition's signatories include Obama's longtime physician Dr. David Scheiner, filmmaker Michael Moore, former MSNBC host Phil Donahue, actors Mike Farrell, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, and doctors Quentin Young, Stephanie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program. The petition will be presented to ABC News, which disinvited Dr. Scheiner from its recent forum on healthcare reform, where he'd been [...]
