It's time to tell the TV networks: Sunday morning should be more than GOP TV. Sign FAIR's petition today! A new study from FAIR (Extra!, 4/12) of the Sunday morning network chat shows found a distinct conservative, white and male tilt in the guest lists. In an eight-month study (6/11-2/12) of the four shows--ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, CBS's Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday--FAIR found: * In one-on-one interviews, 70 percent of partisan-affiliated guests were Republican. Those guests were overwhelmingly white (92 percent) and male (86 percent).* Roundtable debate segments weren't much more diverse: 62 percent [...]
Apr
23
2012
Is 'America Revealed'--or PBS?
Dow-sponsored public TV series tracks Dow's product lines
The four-part series America Revealed, airing on PBS stations this month, looks at big-picture economic issues, from agriculture to transportation to manufacturing. The series underwriter? The Dow Chemical Company, whose commercial interests closely track the subjects covered in the PBS series. The first episode (4/11/12) focused on large-scale agriculture, which is one of the industries in which Dow is a major player. The program featured an extended look at the corn industry, including efforts to control pests. As the program explained, the food industry "needed a game changer" in that fight. And it got one: The "genetically modified organism, better [...]
Mar
12
2012
After Afghan Massacre, War Gets Victim Status
Media treat killings as PR problem for occupation
The news that a U.S. Army sergeant killed 16 civilians, most of them children, in southern Afghanistan early Sunday morning was treated by many media outlets primarily as a PR challenge for continued war and occupation of that country. "Afghanistan, once the must-fight war for America, is becoming a public relations headache for the nation's leaders, especially for President Barack Obama," explained an Associated Press analysis piece (3/12/12). Reuters (3/12/12) called it "the latest American public relations disaster in Afghanistan." On the NBC Today show (3/11/12) the question was posed this way: "Could this reignite a new anti-American backlash in [...]
Feb
24
2012
NYT Lets Unnamed Officials Smear Critics as 'Terrorists'
Anonymous attacks violate paper's policy
(UPDATE: The Times public editor has notified FAIR about his email response to readers critical of the February 6 story. You can read it at the FAIR Blog). In two stories this month, New York Times journalists allowed anonymous government officials to smear critics as terrorists and terrorist sympathizers--a shocking violation of the paper's explicit rules against allowing anonymity to be a cover for attacks. In a February 22 story about Khader Adnan--the Palestinian hunger striker challenging the Israeli practice of holding prisoners without trial--reporter Isabel Kershner wrote: An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called the deal [...]
Jan
10
2012
NYT Responds on Iran Alarmism
Public Editor: 'I think the readers are correct on this'
New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane has responded to concerns raised in a FAIR action alert last week (1/6/12), agreeing that the paper wrongly suggested that the International Atomic Energy Agency has concluded that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. In a post at his Times blog (1/10/12), Brisbane agrees that the paper was incorrect in referring to "a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective." As FAIR pointed out, the IAEA report does not make such a firm conclusion, and many critics question the evidence that Agency has collected. [...]
Jan
06
2012
NYT Misleads Readers on Iran Crisis
Paper disappears some inaccurate reporting
In two articles yesterday (1/5/12), the New York Times misled readers about the state of Iran's nuclear program. On the front page, the Times' Steven Erlanger reported this: The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective, is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign. There is no such International Atomic Energy Agency assessment. The IAEA report the Times is mischaracterizing raised questions about the state of the Iranian program, and presented the evidence, mostly years [...]
Dec
27
2011
Occupy the P.U.-litzers!
This year has given us simply too many worthy contenders for FAIR's annual P.U.-litzers--recognizing the stinkiest journalism of the year. A big part of the problem was that so many outlets were striving to distinguish themselves with especially awful coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. So to note those lowlights, we bring you a special installment of P.U.-litzers: The OWS edition. --Early Warning System Award: CNN's Wolf Blitzer On September 19: "Protests here in New York on Wall Street entering a third day. Should New Yorkers be worried at all about what's going on?" --We Could Do It [...]
