FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Discussing (5/31/09) the “story on the two U.S. journalists detained in North Korea,” NPR Check‘s Mytwords states clearly that it “deserves coverage, as did some coverage of [Roxana] Saberi’s arrest in Iran (though not the wall to wall attention given by NPR).” But a reader‘s link to the L.A. Times‘ May 24 “article on another […]
Progressive critic Dr. Roberto Rodriguez has a new commentary (New America Media, 6/2/09) demonstrating how the miserable press reaction to Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s U.S. Supreme Court “nomination clearly shows us is that what this nation needs is more incisive journalism, not less.” But, Rodriguez laments, “to be sure, the rise of right-wing media, which include […]
“Amid all the recent negatives in the worlds of intelligence and journalism,” Consortium News‘ Robert Parry (6/2/09) has spotted “one encouraging development”: “the recognition of common ground between two beleaguered groups, honest U.S. intelligence analysts and honest American journalists, two groups that previously had been on opposite sides of the secrecy divide.” The strangeness of […]
Writing on Salon (5/31/09, ad-viewing required) of the “controversy surrounding Jeffrey Rosen’s New Republic anonymity-driven smear attack on Sonia Sotomayor’s intellect and character,” Glenn Greenwald sees more evidence that the one trait that defines establishment pundits more than any other is a pathological inability ever to accept blame or admit error. That’s because they work […]
Veteran actor and activist Peter Coyote (SFChronicle.com, 5/30/09) writes about big media’s overriding response to the “Largest Environmental Lawsuit in History–Silence.” Taking a look at “the practices that are going on behind Chevron’s carefully cultivated ‘green’ image” as they “drill for oil in the jungles of the Ecuadorian Amazon,” Coyote does give credit to the […]
Spotting a May 31 Washington Post column “that blamed the United Auto Workers for the bankruptcy of Chrysler and GM,” Dean Baker declares (Beat the Press, 5/31/09) that the D.C. daily “showed yet again why it is known as “Fox on 15th Street”: So what if Toyota has managed to profitably run a plant in […]
Writing at Salon (5/31/09, ad-viewing required) on the murder of “Kansas doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday while attending church services with his wife,” Gabriel Winant wants us to know that there’s no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly […]
Attempting to add appropriate context to mainstream reportage of Sunday’s murder of Kansas doctor George Tiller, the Media Justice Fund blog has reprinted (6/1/09) an October 8, 2006, Women In Media & News post by Jennifer Pozner titled “The Terrorists Who Aren’t in the News: Anti-Abortion Fanatics Spread Fear by Bombings, Murders and Assaults, but […]
“If media reports are to be believed,” Gabriel Arana of the Nation writes (5/27/09), “an Armageddon-like rash of drug-related violence–unlike any seen since ‘Miami Vice years of the 1980s‘–has crossed from Mexico into the United States, ‘just as government officials had feared.’” But that’s a pretty big if, even though “in the national media, it’s […]
In a Smirking Chimp piece (5/29/09) averring that “Everyone Should See Torturing Democracy“–the delayed documentary that “recounts how the Bush White House and the Pentagon decided to make coercive detention and abusive interrogation the official U.S. policy” and “also credits the brave few who stood up to those in power”–PBS‘ Bill Moyers spells out the […]
Claiming that he doesn’t “know at this point whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a good choice for Supreme Court justice or a bad one,” critic Dave Lindorff (ThisCantBeHappening.net, 5/28/09) does note that she “is a lousy judge for writers and other creative people” for ruling “that the [New York] Times and periodical publishers could reprint, […]
Looking at “people of a certain age” for whom “getting a letter published in the Times has always been a very, very big deal,” David Margolick (Nation , 5/27/09) tells the tale of two lifelong friends and constant New York Times letter submitters–one with a “Babe Ruth”-like record of getting his views into print, and […]
Posting to the Columbia Journalism Review‘s Behind the News blog, Megan Garber (5/26/09) catches New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt espousing “a peculiar brand of institutional defensiveness” in his May 23 column: One that plays itself out via divisiveness–and via, in particular, a false dichotomy that aggrandizes Times reporters and dismisses those who are […]
Dubbing National Public Radio “The Counterinsurgency Channel,” blogger Mytwords (NPR Check, 5/28/09) takes issue with a May 27 All Things Considered report “meant to promote an aspect of U.S. counterinsurgency in Afghanistan–the training of Afghan police as part of Task Force Phoenix (what dumb ass names these operations anyway?)”: The report opens with some great […]
Making clear on Salon (5/28/09, ad-viewing required) that his “writing about this issue from the start has not been based on my view that [Judge Sonia] Sotomayor is the best choice” for the U.S. Supreme Court, Glenn Greenwald states that his “interest has been due to the fact that the smears against her were both […]
Blogging (Beat the Press, 5/26/09) about how the “New York Times Cooks the Books on Europe’s Auto Industry,” economist Dean Baker catches the paper “touting the layoffs in the U.S. auto industry as a virtue”–since “it notes that auto industry employment in Europe is remaining steady at around 2.3 million, while it is falling to […]
Noticing that “many of the headlines greeting North Korea’s nuclear blast yesterday carried the phrase ‘as big as the Hiroshima bomb’ or words to that effect,” media writer and Hiroshima in America co-author Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher, 5/26/09) says “that’s not the only reference point that Hiroshima should evoke”: Simply stated: The fact that […]
Observing that Latinobarometro’s 2008 report on Latin American public opinion again “went entirely unreported in almost all of the world’s major media outlets,” with “only small snippets selectively analyzed by writers at the Economist, Christian Science Monitor and Washington Times,” Latin American history major Kevin Young’s ZNet analysis of the survey (5/27/09) gives some probable […]
Recapping at TPM Café (5/27/09) how the U.S. “press bent over backward to paint both Bushes as moderate, sensible, nice guy Republicans,” Editor & Publisher‘s Greg Mitchell writes that “a hard-right [George W.] Bush, whether real or media-created, would have never beaten Gore–not that this one did either.” Reminding us that “the New York Times, […]
Robert Parry (Consortium News, 5/25/09) thinks that “there is no one, it seems, that the U.S. mainstream news media loves more than Colin Powell,” and as proof offers “Powell’s disingenuous response” to Bob Schieffer’s May 24 CBS Face the Nation “question about the ex-secretary of state’s knowledge regarding ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ which the International Committee […]
