FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Adam Liptak of the New York Times (8/31/09) says that we can thank Riverside, California’s Press-Enterprise for having “fought ferociously” in multiple Supreme Court battles ensuring “the press and the public have nearly an absolute constitutional right to attend jury selection in criminal cases.” According to Liptak, “news organizations used to consider those kinds of […]
Eva Paterson (Huffington Post, 8/28/09), president and founder of the Equal Justice Society, has a response to Glenn Beck’s assertion that “I want to point out the silence; no one has challenged these facts” after having been “smearing White House special advisor Van Jones for days on his show.” Being “the person who first hired […]
Media Monitors Network has the latest column from Norman Solomon (8/26/09), in which the longtime analyst of corporate media boosterism for U.S. wars considers a recent swath of stories that “have compared President Johnson’s war in Vietnam and President Obama’s war in Afghanistan.” True, “the comparisons are often valid,” Solomon finds, “but a key parallel […]
On news that “today, a federal court threw out the Federal Communications Commission’s rule to cap cable ownership at 30 percent,” Free Press (8/28/09) comments “the rule served as an important consumer protection from media consolidation and growing cable cartels, and encouraged diversity in ownership in the cable industry.” The media advocacy group’s Ben Scott […]
Stars and Stripes reporters Charlie Reed, Kevin Baron and Leo Shane III (8/27/09) have an update on the military paper’s recent exposure of Iraqi National Congress fabricators the Rendon Group helping the Pentagon in Screening New Embeds in Afghanistan “to determine whether their past coverage has portrayed the U.S. military in a positive light.” A […]
Glenn Greenwald (8/27/09, ad-viewing required) of Salon‘s series of New Republic quotes morphing from condemning a perceived “anti-Lieberman jihad” to calling for “knocking off Democrats like Conrad and Joe Lieberman” charts the outlet’s “rapid and total reversal–one effectuated without the slightest acknowledgment that it even occurred.” Calling the change “just the accountability-free nature of Beltway […]
Noticing that Democratic strategist Mark Penn “is the Wall Street Journal‘s ‘Microtrend’-spotting columnist” and “also CEO of PR giant Burson-Marsteller,” Gawker blogger Hamilton Nolan (8/26/09) posits that “only a scumbag would abuse the former to drum up business for the latter.” Alas, “Scumbag spotted!” is Nolan’s cry when writing that Penn’s latest (old, and none […]
“Robert Samuelson Doesn’t Like Trains” is what Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 8/24/09) takes to be “the unifying theme from his column today, since his arguments against high-speed rail do not make a lot of sense.” In his August 24 broadside against what he dubs Barack Obama’s “Rail Boondoggle,” Samuelson trots out the tired argument […]
Diligent media reformers Free Press (8/19/09) have announced a nifty new “online interactive tool to expose phony grassroots groups hired by big phone and cable companies to advance their political agenda.” They’re talking about “‘astroturf‘ organizations–many of which also work for the health insurance, energy and tobacco industries”– that “are mobilizing to spread misinformation about […]
OpEd News has published an open letter from attorney Dana Jill Simpson (8/20/09) to “Mr. Murdoch and all the editors at the Wall Street Journal,” in which she expresses her wish to “thank you from the very bottom of my heart for running Karl Rove’s delusional article, ‘Closing In on Rove,’ on August 20, 2009″: […]
Longtime friend of FAIR Sam Husseini (Husseini.org, 8/21/09) has a new blog post responding to Robert Kuttner’s recent Washington Post column, in which the American Prospect magazine editor “asks ‘Where are the liberal protesters?’”: It seems like a good question. Until one considers the source of the complaint–and that rather helps answer the question. Maybe […]
Think Progress‘ Matt Corley (8/19/09) has the depressing, if predictable, news that recent polling shows “‘all the misinformation out there’ about healthcare reform proposals in Congress is taking root with many Americans.” Corley is discouraged to see that, “for instance, 45 percent believe the false claim that legislation includes ‘death panels‘ while 55 percent believe […]
Eater blog editor Amanda Kludt (8/20/09) has a sneak look at an embarrassingly fawning New York Times review of a new book by their own recently resigned food critic, Frank Bruni–and, “according to a tipster with a copy (not yet online), it’s a looooovefest”: Exhibit A: His writing has always been muscular and clear. Now […]
Seeing all the press attention given to pitbull-fighter and NFL star Michael Vick‘s return to football, David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet.org, 8/19/09) can’t help but think that Vick should have tortured humans instead of dogs. Then we would have been told to overlook it for the sake of moving forward. Better yet, he should have killed humans […]
Laura Northrup of Consumerist.com (8/15/09) reports that, after 40 years at the Hartford Courant, consumer affairs columnist George Gombossy now says he “‘was fired for doing [his] job,’ after his last column exposed the bedbug-infested mattresses sold by a major Courant advertiser.” The Connecticut paper killed Gombossy’s account of an Attorney General investigation into Sleepy’s–though […]
According to Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald (8/18/09, ad-viewing required), pro-coup lobbyist and frequent news show guest Lanny Davis is merely “masquerading as a ‘political analyst’ and Democratic media pundit,” when really he “is unmoored from any discernible political beliefs other than: ‘I agree with whoever pays me.’” Greenwald’s present example is a new Politico and […]
Columnist Rick Perlstein has a new analysis of “Birthers, Town Hall Hecklers and the Return of Right-Wing Rage” in the Washington Post (8/16/09). In it, he tells why “liberals are right to be vigilant about manufactured outrage,” and particularly about how the mainstream media can too easily become that outrage’s entry into the political debate. […]
Consortium News Robert Parry (8/13/09) is citing media-promoted “‘deathers‘ who claim that President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan would promote euthanasia,” along with how the U.S. “population was persuaded that Iraq was some lethal threat” and “fear-mongering about Iraq somehow sending small remote-controlled airplanes across the Atlantic” as strong arguments against “hopeful slogans that ‘the truth […]
Women In Media & News has reposted Veronica Arreola’s (8/15/09) elucidation of exactly “why women need to be at the freaking table, in the newsroom and holding the editor’s red pen.” To her, “it’s just as simple as women see things differently. Not better, not worse, just differently”: The latest example is the WaPo “Mouthpiece […]
Between the Lines executive producer Scott Harris (8/14/09) has a new Q & A featuring FAIR’s own Peter Hart discussing how “Media Coverage of Healthcare Debate Emphasizes Drama Over Substance.” Asked to assess “corporate media’s coverage of the U.S. healthcare reform debate and conservative activists’ disruption of congressional town hall meetings,” Hart replies: You wonder […]
