FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Stating that “a lot of funny things can happen when the media translate science for the public,” science writer Chris Mooney (Nation, 3/6/09) looks over more evidence that the U.S. public got really lucky when CNN‘s Sanjay Gupta was not made Obama’s surgeon general. Mooney’s list of Gupta “approaching medical coverage through ‘one the one […]
Neurologist Robert Burton warns Salon readers (3/12/09, ad-viewing required) of PBS‘s latest infomercial. “By airing another self-help show disguised as medical science–the dubious UltraMind Solution–the public network continues to undermine its credibility,” Burton writes: In May I reported that PBS stations were airing medical programs that weren’t adequately reviewed or vetted by either the local […]
Over on Media Matters’ County Fair blog (3/12/09), Jamison Foser asks, “Is there any major-newspaper reporter who is more consistently wrong than Andrew Malcolm?” The latest gaffe by the Laura Bush flak-turned-L.A. Times writer comes in response to filmmaker Michael Moore’s explaining what he sees as the difference between Democratic framing of Rush Limbaugh as […]
Economics writer David Lieberman (USA Today, 3/11/09) previews a Today show interview with CNBC‘s Mad Money host Jim Cramer by pointing out that Cramer will “have to answer for misguided stock predictions–including some last year urging investors to buy and hold Bear Stearns just before the investment bank collapsed.” But the ironic bit comes after […]
Los Angeles Times reporter Mike Dorning has some important information (3/6/09) absent from coverage of Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s recent surgeon general candidacy–“For several years, Gupta has been co-anchor of a CNN-produced healthcare show distributed monthly via flat-screen TVs provided free to doctor’s offices”: The show is sponsored by healthcare, consumer and pharmaceutical companies that want […]
In his regular Salon feature (3/10/09, ad-viewing required), Glenn Greenwald is having a hard time stomaching corporate media pundits’ righteous “lectures to other countries”: The Washington Post‘s Fred Hiatt today condemns the Obama administration generally and Hillary Clinton specifically for “continu[ing] to devalue and undermine the U.S. diplomatic tradition of human rights advocacy.” Hiatt is […]
Writing that someone needs to “Tell the WSJ: Workers Can Already Unionize Without a Secret Ballot Election” (Beat the Press, 3/10/09), Dean Baker details how big media still gets this wrong: Okay, let’s see if we can teach the Wall Street Journal something this morning. In an article reporting on the prospects for the Employee […]
Jane Kim of CJR.org (3/9/09) quotes some of the reactions to a New York Times reporter asking Barack Obama if he is “a socialist as some people have suggested”: Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post cracks that “the New York Times was THAT CLOSE to a journalistic coup!” and American Prospect‘s Ezra Klein wants to […]
With all the recent headlines posing Rush Limbaugh as the GOP’s de facto leader, Media Matters’ Julie Millican and Nathan Tabak provide a timely look back (3/3/09) at the well-documented record of hateful views espoused by the most popular talk radio host in the United States: On August 23, 2006, discussing the CBS reality TV […]
Today’s Democracy Now! (3/9/09) features Amy Goodman reporting that “a House Appropriations subcommittee has… asked the FCC to look into the allegations” of media activists across the country: Community media groups are accusing the telecom giant AT&T of discriminating against local public access channels across the nation, and the deadline for public comment is midnight […]
Asserting that “one positive aspect of the wreckage left by the Bush presidency is that many of the most sacred Beltway pieties stand exposed as intolerable failures, prominently including our self-destructively blind enabling of virtually all Israeli actions,” Salon.com‘s Glenn Greenwald (3/9/09, ad-viewing required) cites “the last three New York Times columns by Roger Cohen” […]
In the latest installment of a Columbia Journalism Review series on “special interest groups… at Obama’s table” and “how the media are covering them,” Trudy Lieberman (CJR.org, 3/6/09) reports that Saul Friedman, who writes a popular column called Gray Matters for Newsday, has been almost alone in writing about what he has called a “blackout” […]
Consortium News‘ Robert Parry (3/5/09) uses New York Times do-gooder Nicholas Kristof as an example of blatant corporate media hypocrisy: Kristof–like many of his American colleagues–is applauding the International Criminal Court’s arrest order against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for his role in the Darfur conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives…. By […]
Real-life socialist Paul Street (ZNet, 3/5/09) takes issue with a Newsweek cover story “about the Obama administration’s economic recovery and bailout plan… that ‘…has already–under a conservative Republican administration–effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries.’” Though the piece bore “the remarkable title ‘We are All Socialists Now,’” Street lists “four key things missing from this […]
Freelance writer Sally Lehrman (3/5/09) tells us the bad times for newspapers are even worse for ethnic media–and by extension, U.S. democracy as a whole: AsianWeek, San Francisco’s English-language weekly for Asian-Americans, and San Francisco Bay View, which has served the black community there for three decades, both have dumped their print editions. Siglo21, a […]
FAIR founder Jeff Cohen’s Park Center for Independent Media has decided to give its new Izzy Award (3/4/09) “for special achievement in independent media” to Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman, specifically lauding the “two pillars of independent journalism” for “pathbreaking journalistic courage and persistence in confronting conventional wisdom, official deception and controversial issues”: Week after […]
Prefacing a Daily Show segment (3/4/09) with his version of current big-media reporting: “Recent opinion polls indicate that six weeks into Barack Obama’s administration, the American public thinks they approve of his performance–but it turns out they’re wrong,” Jon Stewart runs clips of celebrity news figures like Fox‘s Sean Hannity asking, “How did the market […]
Greg Sargent has some observations (Plum Line, 3/4/09) about the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s new website up called “I’m sorry, Rush” that lampoons the many GOPers who have been forced to prostrate themselves before Rush Limbaugh after criticizing him and enduring the Wrath of Rush or his listeners. The site appears to be off to […]
National Public Radio watchdog Mytwords (NPR Check, 3/3/09) is moved to declare the network’s Palestine/Israel coverage “worse than worthless” after “yesterday morning first featured Michele Kelemen redelivering Secretary of State Clinton’s talking points (Hamas is a terrorist organization, blah, blah, blah, Hamas has to renounce violence, blah, blah, blah, U.S. is giving tons of money […]
Noting that “Republicans and their adjunct outlets have been touting one specific lie above all others lately”–that of a fictitious “$8 billion earmark in the stimulus package to build a high-speed rail connector between Las Vegas and Disneyland”–Political Animal blogger Steve Benen reports (WashingtonMonthly.com, 3/3/09) that “yesterday, Fox News gave the story a twist, changing […]
