FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Any of these stories could have been used as a gateway to discuss many of the crippling economic and social problems the US is facing. But under neoliberalism, every problem is understood through an individualist lens.
It is virtually an iron law of journalism that descriptions of US government-friendly groups will be designed to signal readers that they deserve support.
The political right is uniting with establishment Democrats in denouncing presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders for his supposedly pro-dictatorship stance on Venezuela. And the media are piling on.
Alarmed by the growing threat of progressive policies at home, the establishment has found a one-word weapon to deploy against the rising tide: Venezuela.
Terms like the “Venezuelan people” or “civil society” were used exclusively to refer to opposition groups in alignment with (and funded by) the US government.
We like to think we have an adversarial media—one that will stand up, in particular, to Donald Trump. The media assured us that they would perform their crucial democratic role in holding this dangerous new president and commander-in-chief accountable at every turn. This struck a chord with the public; in the wake of Trump’s […]
While the right’s opposition to her was predictable, the response of centrist and nominally liberal media, who might have been expected to celebrate the arrival of a strong voice on the left, has been decidedly muted.
When Donald Trump took to Twitter to describe the $716 billion Pentagon budget as “crazy,” the prospect of a cut to the military elicited a storm of condemnation across the media landscape.
There is very little discussion of why refugees are so desperate to leave their countries and travel to the US. When any explanation is given for why people are migrating, it is extremely shallow.
A piece that started as a factual news report was transformed into an allegation—after it went viral and was picked up across international media.
The US government and its allies are effectively using the platform to silence dissenting opinion, both at home and on the world stage, controlling what Facebook‘s 2 billion users see and do not see.
Faced with the choice of center-left reformers who may tax business slightly more, and outright fascist candidates, the financial press once again made its decision clear.
For corporate media, the story of Russian fake news influencing the country promotes a climate where they can re-tighten their grip on the means of communication by accusing alternative media on both left and right of being Russian-sponsored fake news.
That these two US government creations, along with a NATO offshoot like the Atlantic Council, are used by Facebook to distinguish real from fake news is effectively state censorship.
Progressives should not necessarily shed tears for Alex Jones, but they should be aware that their media is next in line, and that Jones’ deplatforming sets a dangerous precedent that is already being used against them.
The conspiratorial mindset seeing Russia behind everything has little to do with evidence-based reality, and is increasingly a tool to demonize the establishment’s political enemies.
Across media, coverage of the Venezuelan election was eerily similar. Indeed, most media outlets even used the same word choice and structure in their headlines, declaring Maduro the winner while undermining the system’s legitimacy with the helpful preposition “amid.”
Much of US media, indignant about Russian impact on the US elections, are openly supporting a coup in Venezuela.
