FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Politico.com‘s J.H. Snider (2/3/09) has some ideas for how “to ensure that think tanks don’t abuse this public trust” manifested in the fact that “government has granted think tank donors vast tax breaks”: “Media, government, donors and think tanks themselves must all do a better job of holding think tanks accountable.” Think tanks that don’t […]
The tiny West Los Angeles Daily Breeze gets props for running the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Munira Syeda critique (2/1/09) asserting that “any objective report card on the American media coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza would have a grade of ‘C’ at best”: For the most part, the mainstream media reported on the conflict […]
Norman Solomon’s latest column (Creators Syndicate, 1/31/09) looks over a decade in which “the false truism of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction led to the horrors of the Iraq invasion and occupation,” and “in the wake of 9/11, overall, the main journalistic outlets of the United States fed us falsehoods, hysteria, self-righteousness and endless […]
Sometimes iconoclastic Washington pundit E. J. Dionne Jr. comes up with a winner (Washington Post, 2/2/09) in this description of the crucial media role in political chicanery on the national level: If achieving bipartisanship takes priority over the actual content of policy, Republicans are handed a powerful weapon. In theory, they can keep moving the […]
Jonathan Schwarz gives his answer (A Tiny Revolution, 2/1/09) to Political Animal blogger Steve Benen’s question of “why the [Washington] Post‘s op-ed editors feel compelled to publish the same misguided piece from [Amity] Shlaes, making the same misguided argument every month or so”: “Shlaes is employed by the Council on Foreign Relations to lie about […]
Marina Litvinsky’s Inter Press Service review (1/31/09) of “U.S. television coverage of the recent three-week conflict in the Gaza Strip” comes to the unsurprising conclusion that TV journalists “failed to tell both sides of the story, according to a number of media analysts.” But a larger trend is in evidence too: “The most recent conflict… […]
Scott Horton (Harpers.org, 1/30/09) is agog at the fact that, “in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, the indefatigable advocate of crushing the testicles of small children to extract actionable intelligence launches a full frontal attack on President Obama” for re-banning torture. Having “followed [George W. Bush legal torture architect] John Yoo and his writings with some […]
Public Citizen attorney Paul Alan Levy’s news (1/30/09) of bloggers’ win over Fox News provides a dark glimpse into the network’s anti-Fair Use machinations: Public Citizen, which represented ProgressIllinois.com in this matter, tried to talk to Fox about its claim filed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and discuss possible guidelines for future use, […]
Giving TheAtlantic.com‘s Marc Ambinder credit for “at least trying to understand the details of secret ballot/majority sign-up” unionizing legislation, FireDogLake blogger Jane Hamsher (1/23/09) still notes that “he tends to lean a bit heavily on overpaid hacks spreading disinformation on behalf of the business lobby.” Specifically, she takes issue with Ambinder’s citation of a Coalition […]
The invaluable Electronic Intifada website has a Shervan Sardar analysis (1/8/09) of “the first three days of the Israeli offensive from 28-30 December,” during which time he finds editorials and op-eds from five major U.S. papers overwhelmingly adopted the official U.S. and Israeli government talking points on the conflict–even where this version was clearly contradicted […]
Following up on the well-documented phenomenon wherein corporate news outlets justify their mode of getting “conservatives to dominate their shows, booking them as guests far more often than progressives” by using “the rationale… that Republicans were ‘in power,’” ThinkProgress (1/28/09) now shows that “it appears that old habits die hard.” Even with a Democratic president […]
Guessing that the departure of Bill Kristol from the New York Times op-ed page will be “sparing the paper any further embarrassment, Editor & Publisher‘s Greg Mitchell (1/26/09) has “a good belly laugh” at the Times notation of Kristol’s farewell column, reading “All good things must come to end”: Let’s recall some of the highlights […]
Catching Morning Edition correspondent Tom Gjelten asserting that Barack Obama’s prohibition of “the CIA from holding any detainees in secret prisons” is “not a big change” since “those prisons are all closed anyway, according to U.S. officials,” blogger mytwords (NPR Check, 1/23/09) is amazed by the “brilliant reasoning”: “All the CIA secret prisons are closed […]
Fox News anchor Brit Hume’s gratitude toward George W. Bush recently was expressed by Hume’s amazement that “this country would pass into a new presidency eight years later with not a single attack” since September 11, 2001. Mark Howard (News Corpse, 1/27/09) expands on Hume’s list by noting “No hurricanes in New Orleans since Katrina. […]
Credited by the London Review of Books (1/29/09) as the “former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America,” Henry Siegman’s list of official Israeli claims that “most of the Western media have accepted” includes “that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed” and “that Israel has […]
Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall (1/28/09) is bemoaning how “Republicans have been getting a lot of air time and minimal press criticism for a series of arguments about the stimulus that are in most cases transparently ridiculous”: For instance, I heard several House Republicans yesterday making the straight up argument that the renovation of […]
Blogger Brad Jacobson gives play-by-play (MediaBloodhound, 1/28/09) for an epic attempt by MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews to live down his one-time confession to having “felt this thrill going up my leg” during a Barack Obama speech. Matthews’ reparation strategy: “How about facilitating a discussion about Obama’s proposed stimulus plan with two lawmakers from the same party, […]
Economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 1/28/09) points to an embarrassingly simple contradiction in the premise of Washington Post staff writer David Cho’s worry that government plans to give cash to failing banks in exchange for current investors’ shares “could also precipitate a sell-off across the banking system as investors flee, fearing they could be […]
An Associated Press headline about the “Issue of Terrorists’ Rights to Test Obama’s Pledge” to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility spurs Salon critic Glenn Greenwald (1/26/09, ad-viewing required) to put a basic journalistic tenet as simply as possible: “The fact that the U.S. Government accuses someone of X does not mean that they are […]
FAIR friend Tom Tomorrow notifies his readers (ThisModernWorld.com, 1/26/09) that his long-running editorial comic is being cut from possibly the entire Village Voice Media chain: The papers I was running in are: Dallas Observer, New Times Ft. Lauderdale, Houston Press, LA Weekly, Minneapolis City Pages, Nashville Scene, OC Weekly, Pitch Weekly, Denver Westword and the […]
