FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The Maynard Institute’s Richard Prince (Journal-isms, 3/30/09) has a look at “a two-day conference in Washington called ‘1968 and Beyond: A Symposium on the Impact of the Black Power Movement on America,’” with “hardly anyone from the mainstream media…there to cover it.” Urging his readers to “think beyond the news media script that often pits […]
News reports on a March 25 F-22 crash in Mojave, Calif., that “contained some strange assertions about the cost of the F-22” have budget myth-buster Winslow Wheeler (Military.com, 3/28/09) decrying the “utter hogwash” that reporters printed “possibly based on the price asserted in the Air Force’s ‘fact‘ sheet on the F-22 that was linked to […]
Writing under the pen name Jami Tarn (CounterPunch, 3/27/09), one San Francisco lawyer is rallying against “a hate-filled column in the San Francisco Chronicle.” Chronicle commentator Debra J. Saunders “insinuated that Tristan Anderson, still lingering in a coma in Tel Aviv after taking an Israeli tear gas canister to the face, costing him part of […]
Author and journalist Sheila Gibbons has some regrettably foreseeable news (Womens eNews, 3/30/09) on how female reporters who “worked hard to establish themselves in what had long been a male-dominated field” are faring in a time of massive media cutbacks and layoffs: By the end of 2009, a quarter of all the newsroom jobs that […]
NPR watchdog Mytwords (NPR Check, 3/28/09) would just “love to know what it costs NPR to station Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson in Afghanistan,” from where she dispatches to U.S. public radio such “news” as U.S.-installed Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai telling reporters “that he welcomes the increased American focus on Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan,” that […]
Looking back over how corporate “media abandoned any pretense of objectivity in pushing the original TARP back in the fall,” when “they eagerly pushed the story that the economy would collapse if the TARP did not pass,” Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 3/28/09) recalls how “media never told the public that the Fed had the […]
Jonathan Schwarz has a quick post (3/27/09) over on his A Tiny Revolution blog asking readers, “Have I Lost My Mind?” or “is it really true that the New Republic published a 6,000-word profile of Larry Summers” that wondered if “Summers might appear to have less to contribute on the bank and credit-market front” since […]
Free Press‘ Craig Aaron and Joseph Torres (Guardian.co.uk, 3/26/09) promptly knock down the scary development in which Nancy Pelosi recently “asked attorney general Eric Holder to consider loosening antitrust laws to help out struggling newspapers by allowing more media mergers. Holder responded by saying he is open to revisiting the rules”: Pelosi’s request sounds innocuous […]
David Sirota has a new column (Creators Syndicate, 3/27/09) chronicling the nature of “newspapers’ self-inflicted blows”: First, financially strapped newspapers undermined their comparative advantage by replacing audience-attracting local exclusives with cheaper national content. Then the providers of that national content diverted resources from tough-to-report investigative journalism that builds loyal readership and into paparazzi-like birdcage liner […]
Want to know if “the media did a great job” covering Barack Obama’s second major presidential press conference? Jason Linkins says (Huffington Post, 3/25/09) you can “just ask the media! Because they’ll tell you!” But “at the same time, the media is also quick to point out that the press conference was ‘totally boring!’” Among […]
The New York Times editorial page’s lending of space to former AIG financial vice president Jake DeSantis’ plea for “us all to reconsider our anger toward the poor overworked employees of his unit” has incurred some of Matt Taibbi’s trademark wrath (Alternet, 3/26/09): He acts like he’s a victim because he didn’t get to keep […]
Guest blogging at Women In Media & News (3/25/09), professors Jamii Claiborne and Susanne Gubanc write that, while most “mass media voices had good intentions” and “seemed genuine in their desire to make the alleged February domestic violence incident between the seemingly perfect young celebrity couple, singers Rihanna and Chris Brown, into a ‘teachable moment,’” […]
Responding to a Washington Post op-ed in which one Martin Feldstein “explains how Obama’s proposed limitation on the deductibility of charitable contributions by upper-income taxpayers is a horrible idea,” Jonathan Schwarz (A Tiny Revolution, 3/25/09) asks What does Feldstein have to say about the tax code change? Well: In effect, the change would be a […]
Listening to “budget hawk” media figures who urge President Obama “to commit to spending cuts and/or tax increases” because they are “upset that the deficits projected for 2013 or 2019 are too large,” Dean Baker (TPM Café, 3/25/09) finds it especially annoying to hear the whining from this group of deficit hawks since their whining […]
Considering the fact that, “while the Obama administration says that the problems of the region cannot be solved by military means, the basic approach is reliance on heightened military means,” FAIR associate Norman Solomon (Huffington Post, 3/24/09) thinks that “we desperately need a substantive national debate on U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Solomon […]
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald has an explanation (3/23/09, ad-viewing required) for why he thinks that Howard Kurtz’s belief that the image of corporate reporters as “just a bunch of cozy Washington insiders” is not “that big a deal”—because “there’s such a built-in adversarial relationship between the press and the pols”—constitutes “an extremely funny joke today, showing […]
Proving that the Washington Post is not the only purportedly “liberal” outlet interested in whitewashing the dark history of U.S. involvement in Latin America, Mytwords (NPR Check, 3/23/09) has blogged NPR‘s March 21 episode of Weekend Edition Saturday, in which the show returned to the scene of the crimes of El Salvador’s 1980s bloodbath–a U.S.-nurtured […]
News Corpse blogger Mark Howard goes deep into the belly of the beast (3/21/09) with a look at some revealing comments from Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume upon receiving the William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence: “Thanks to Brent [Bozell] and the team at the Media Research Center…for the tremendous amount […]
Media Bistro‘s Christine Delargy quotes (3/23/09) at length from a letter to the Washington Post questioning the “lack of diversity on WaPo‘s Sunday editorial pages”: Sunday’s editorial pages are presumably the most-read of the week. They should represent the most critical and varied thinking of the week and set the standard for editorial pages. Help […]
Reporting that “L.A. Times blogger Andrew Malcolm started a web freakout” by suggesting “that the White House was blocking press access to a ceremony with the National Newspaper Publisher’s Association,” American Prospect blogger Adam Serwer (3/20/09) writes that, “in fact, part of the ceremony was an exclusive interview which naturally, the NNPA didn’t want other […]
