FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Good evening, I’m Congressman Bernie Sanders and I want to welcome you to what I believe is the first congressional town meeting ever organized to address the issue of corporate control of the media. Thus began the first of two public town meetings in late April 2002, where US Rep. Bernie Sanders (Vt.–Ind.) did what […]
The seemingly endless volleys of attack and retaliation in the Middle East leave many people wondering why the two sides can’t reach an agreement. The answer is simple, according to numerous commentators: At the Camp David meeting in July 2000, Israel “offered extraordinary concessions” (Michael Kelly, Washington Post, 3/13/02), “far-reaching concessions” (Boston Globe, 12/30/01), “unprecedented […]
On an average weeknight, ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News are tuned in by approximately one-quarter of television-viewing homes in the U.S. (Nielsen Media Research, 2001)—about two-thirds of the U.S. public that claims to follow current events regularly (Pew Research Center, 2000). In 22 minutes the newscasts deliver snapshots of […]
The proper topic for an occasion like this, I suppose, is pretty obvious: It would be the question of how the media have handled the major story of the past months, the issue of the “war on terrorism,” so-called, specifically in the Islamic world. Incidentally, by media here I intend the term to be understood […]
News stories about George W. Bush’s appointment of numerous Iran-Contra veterans to key posts have largely relied on past reporting and he-said, she-said soundbites rather than in-depth investigations into their complicity in one of the bloodiest scandals of the past 20 years.
In the study of interviewees on the network’s signature political news show, Special Report with Brit Hume, FAIR found that of 56 partisan guests in a five month period, 50 were Republicans and six were Democrats. That’s 89 percent Republican, a greater than 8 to 1 imbalance.
Fox News Channel‘s star performer is undoubtedly Bill O’Reilly. Host of the nightly talk-show The O’Reilly Factor and author of the best-selling book of the same name, O’Reilly epitomizes Fox‘s in-your-face style. A former anchor for the tabloid Inside Edition whose upcoming contract is reportedly worth $20 million (Boston Globe, 3/14/01), O’Reilly poses nightly as […]
The power to depict history is entangled with the power to create it. George Orwell observed long ago: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” And so it is in 2001, as American media outlets draw conclusions about the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. For conservative […]
“The Palestinians began the latest protests with old-style demonstrations. Then they started shooting at Israeli towns. Now they are attacking settlements. It’s not at all clear what the next step will be, but every step seems to get bloodier.” —”Into the War Zone,” Time (12/4/00) In war—especially the kind of war that has now broken […]
In a 1998 article (4/23/98), New York Times United Nations correspondent Barbara Crossette critiqued the film Genocide by Sanctions, a documentary produced by a coalition of activist groups opposed to the U.N. sanctions on Iraq. Using footage of dying Iraqi children, the film sought to dramatize Iraq’s desperate humanitarian conditions under the U.N. embargo; more […]
As tens of thousands of protesters rallied in Seattle to shut down the opening conference of the World Trade Organization meeting last December, mainstream media treated protesters’ concerns with indifference and often contempt. That hostility translated into slanted coverage of both the demonstrations and the police reaction. A U.S. News & World Report headline, “Hell […]
A detailed investigative article in the October 17 London Observer reported that NATO deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last May. So far, the reaction in the mainstream U.S. media has been a deafening silence.
Mainstream news media are shortchanging the public—especially women—in their coverage of affirmative action. Consideration of affirmative action’s impact and meaning for women of all colors is largely missing from news stories, and women are severely underrepresented on opinion pages. Worse—with a few exceptions, major media are reporting the debate on affirmative action without reference to […]
There have been numerous instances when media have seized on a supposed medical “phenomenon” and hyped it beyond recognition, distorting facts irresponsibly or simply getting them wrong. But few media fabrications have been as invidious, persistent or politically devastating as that of the so-called “crack baby.” Mid-1980s case studies suggested a possible link between women’s […]
If a newspaper has a political agenda, presumably it would be most visible on its editorial page. Examination of editorials in some of the most prominent dailies—the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today—on a range of economic and social issues shows that they tend to articulate the same […]
Executive Summary The conservative critique of the news media rests on two general propositions: (1) journalists’ views are to the left of the public, and (2) journalists frame news content in a way that accentuates these left perspectives. Previous research has revealed persuasive evidence against the latter claim, but the validity of the former claim […]
Examining the aftermath of Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series makes clear that investigative reporting—particularly reporting that approaches politically sensitive agencies such as the CIA—can cost a reporter dearly.
A specter now haunts the world: a global commercial media system dominated by a small number of superpowerful, mostly U.S.-based transnational media corporations. It is a system that works to advance the cause of the global market and promote commercial values, while denigrating journalism and culture not conducive to the immediate bottom line or […]
The media have been duped by a clever campaign whose intention is to get rid of those nasty Social Security programs.
After the San Jose Mercury News linked CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras with the importation of cocaine into poor black areas of Los Angeles, establishment papers relied for their debunking of the Mercury News on the CIA’s own obligatory denials
