FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
It’s an article of faith in the elite ranks of journalism: Political virtue and electoral success reside in the ideological center. Though it’s not overwhelmingly popular with the American public, centrism is the dominant message of national political pundits and journalists—at least for Democrats. While few commentators would disagree with the conventional wisdom that Republican […]
New York Times foreign affairs columnist Tom Friedman is considered by many of his media colleagues to be one of the wisest observers of international affairs. “You have a global brain, my friend,” MSNBC host Chris Matthews once told Friedman (4/21/05). “You’re amazing. You amaze me every time you write a book.” Such praise is […]
When former UN chief weapons inspector David Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee in January 2004, “We were all wrong,” he was admitting that officials had been wrong to claim Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The we-were-all-wrong trope entered the political lexicon as a mea culpa, but today the White House and its […]
In a week in June when 15 GIs were killed in Iraq (6/13-19/05), the war pictures in the New York Times (6/19/05, 6/20/05) featured dazed Iraqis after a suicide bombing, a Marine patrolling, the twisted remains of a vehicle, wounded children, a civilian casualty in a morgue. No photographs featured American casualties—a typical absence in […]
The commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, held at the former Nazi death camp in Poland on January 27, featured speakers warning about a new rise in antisemitism. “From broken windows to death camps was the blink of an eye,” said Moshe Kantor of the European Jewish Congress (New York Times, […]
When Dan Rather stepped down from the CBS Evening News this week, right-wing media critics ought to have been among those most sorry to see him go. Rather has long served as their “liberal media” bogeyman, personifying the nightly news’ supposed tendency to skewer Republicans and coddle Democrats. But given the central role Rather plays […]
At 2 a.m.—midnight in San Jose—on August 18, 1996, I was at a party at my best friend’s house in Indianapolis. I excused myself, went into a bedroom, plugged into my laptop, and dialed into the Mercury’s website. A picture of a man smoking crack, superimposed upon the seal of the CIA, drew itself on […]
In the weeks leading up to the November 2 election, the New York Times was abuzz with excitement. Besides the election itself, the paper’s reporters were hard at work on two hot investigative projects, each of which could have a major impact on the outcome of the tight presidential race. One week before Election […]
A license permits broadcasting, but the licensee has no constitutional right to be the one who holds the license or to monopolize a…frequency to the exclusion of his fellow citizens. There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the Government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others…. It is the right […]
“Like a caged hamster, Senator John Kerry is restless on the road,” wrote the New York Times ‘ Jodi Wilgoren (6/13/04), beginning a piece that promised “authentic insights” into the Democratic presidential candidate. Aside from the banalities (Kerry dislikes wearing suits on hot, humid days, and uses a cellphone more than John Glenn did when […]
Did the Bush administration portray Iraq as an imminent threat in order to justify an invasion? According to the White House, that’s a media hoax. “I think some in the media have chosen to use the word ‘imminent,’” White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters (1/27/04). “Those were not words we used.” With this […]
If you accept the “horserace” metaphor beloved by campaign pundits, it seems like media looked to disqualify former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean even before he left the starting gate. Once thought to be a long-shot contender for the Democratic nomination, Dean found himself anointed as the media front-runner weeks before any voters had their say. […]
Media coverage of the nine Democratic candidates for their party’s nomination presents some as valid contenders, others as ineffective has-beens or laughable distractions.
By the time the war against Iraq began, much of the media had been conditioned to believe, almost as an article of faith, that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was bulging with chemical and biological weapons, despite years of United Nations inspections. Reporters dispensed with the formality of applying modifiers like “alleged” or “suspected” to Iraq’s supposed […]
In the weeks before the invasion of Iraq, a FAIR study documents, network newscasts were dominated by current and former U.S. officials, and largely excluded Americans who were skeptical of or opposed to an invasion of Iraq. Looking at two weeks of coverage, FAIR examined all 393 on-camera sources who appeared in nightly news stories […]
Of all 393 sources, only three (less than 1 percent) were identified with organized protests or anti-war groups.
On February 24, Newsweek broke what may be the biggest story of the Iraq crisis. In a revelation that “raises questions about whether the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist,” the magazine’s issue dated March 3 reported that the Iraqi weapons chief who defected from the regime in 1995 told […]
In reporting on Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5 presentation to the United Nations Security Council, many journalists treated allegations made by Powell as though they were facts. Reporters at several major outlets neglected to observe the journalistic rule of prefacing unverified assertions with words like “claimed” or “alleged.” This is of particular concern […]
While teams of U.N. experts scouring Iraq have yet to find any hidden caches of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, some U.S. journalists seem to have already turned up their own smoking guns. Whether out of excess zeal or simple carelessness, the media’s intensive coverage of the U.N. inspections has repeatedly glided from reporting the […]
Nothing makes a newspaper prouder than a juicy foreign-policy scoop. Except, it seems, when the scoop ends up raising awkward questions about a U.S. administration’s drive for war. Back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq for the U.S.’s own […]
