FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
This week, the FAIR radio showCounterSpin (12/19/08) has constitutional rights advocate Michael Ratner countering the fact that, when the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report finding former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high officials responsible for abusive treatment of detainees in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan, with few exceptions, the media played the story […]
Veteran publisher Tom Engelhardt’s rundown on the decimation of book publishers’ staff (TomDispatch, 12/17/08) compares “collapsing worlds” with newspapers–“a disaster area long before the greatest downturn ‘since the Great Depression’ hit”: The bad news about the news has been flooding in for years, even if it’s worsened under the weight of more general economic tough […]
A major–and majorly disturbing–story of post-Katrina New Orleans is broken (12/17/08) by an independent reporter at the Nation who finds evidence of up to 11 black people shot by white vigilantes in one New Orleans neighborhood immediately after the hurricane. A.C. Thompson writes that over the course of an 18-month investigation, I tracked down figures […]
Associated Press TV writer Lynn Elber reports (12/18/08) the bad news that, “nearly a decade after the NAACP condemned a ‘virtual whiteout’ in broadcast TV, the civil rights group said major networks have stalled in their efforts to further ethnic diversity on-screen and off.” Even worse, television shows of the future could be even less […]
Crooks and Liars blogger Cernig posts (12/15/08) the video of George W. Bush responding to an ABC interviewer’s point that Al-Qaeda did not actually “take their stand” in Iraq “until after the U.S. invaded”: “Yeah, that’s right. So what?” The sad part is that Martha Raddatz’s correction of the inverted justification timeline shows what can […]
A Free Press open letter continues the push (12/18/08) for Barack Obama “to appoint leaders who will reform the media and protect the open Internet.” The letter’s diverse signatories include FAIR, along with the Center for American Progress, Service Employees International Union, National Organization for Women, American Library Association, UNITY: Journalists of Color, the Hip […]
Blogging at VillageVoice.com (12/11/08), regular FAIR contributor Neil deMause notices a report on criticism of the controversial Bronx borough president’s reported Obama appointment: “At least, that’s what you would have read on the New York Daily News website at 2:16 am, when it was posted. By this afternoon, the story, headlined ‘Adolfo Carrion Under Fire,’ […]
Newsweek‘s Michael Isikoff (12/13/08) lays on the cloak-and-dagger prose when telling the tale of how, “in the spring of 2004,” former Justice Department wiretapper Thomas M. Tamm “slipped through the parade of midday subway riders, his heart was pounding, his body trembling,” to “call… the New York Times” and blow the whistle on “a highly […]
Glenn Greenwald has a Salon update (12/15/08, ad-viewing required) on corporate media apathy toward the U.S. Senate report finding George W. Bush and his highest appointees responsible for U.S. detainee “deaths caused by abusive treatment”–many of which “have been formally characterized as ‘homicides’ by autopsies performed in Iraq and Afghanistan”: This report was issued on […]
In his introduction (12/12/08) to an Arundhati Roy analysis of how “our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching ‘India’s 9/11′” in the Mumbai attacks, Tom Engelhardt recalls that the single omnipresent historical reference in the American media immediately in the wake of September 11, 2001, was, of course, “Pearl Harbor“–and those code […]
After comparing how “establishment news outlets… have praised the president-elect’s cautious Cabinet choices” with the similar reaction after Bill Clinton’s first election, Bob Parry writes (Consortium News, 12/15/08) that the reality for those “who resisted the corrupt Bush years–is that we cannot rest on our successes”: You might have thought there would have been a […]
Veteran media blogger Bob Harris looks at (BobHarris.com, 12/11/08) the meager media pick up five hours after “the Washington Post [reported] a bipartisan Senate investigation has concluded that blame for the abuse of prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib… belongs at the very top.” Reading the Post‘s conclusion that “the true genesis of the decision […]
Red state gay rights blogger Brad–not Friedman–has posted (BradBlog, 12/12/08) the latest email drive from Human Rights Campaign regarding the current Newsweek cover story, “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage,” which “provides an in-depth debunking of many of the popular myths about scripture that the religious-right has used time and time again.” HRC President Joe […]
The new edition of FAIR’s radio show CounterSpin (12/12/08) examines the financial collapse of a major U.S. media force: The Tribune Company that owns the Chicago Tribune and the L.A. Times, along with much else, declared bankruptcy this week, just a year after new owner Sam Zell took over, with his notable lack of background […]
Blogging economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 12/12/08) gives the New York Times headline “Goldman, Once Warning of $200 Oil, Sees $45 in 2009” as an example of his radical idea that “this is exactly what the media should be doing when they present forecasts from various experts”: For example, when they share the views […]
The dismal state of corporate newspaper journalism has Philadelphia Inquirer columnist George Curry reconsidering (12/11/08) the value of his lifelong dedication to improving the trade: I have spent most of my career urging young people to consider careers in journalism. I was founding director of workshops affiliated with the National Association of Black Journalists chapters […]
Education author Alfie Kohn’s got a beef (Nation, 12/10/08) with corporate news coverage of Barack Obama’s choices for his cabinet, where “progressives are in short supply”: When he turns his attention to the Education Department, what are the chances he’ll choose someone who is educationally progressive? In fact, just such a person is said to […]
Blogging on the new congressional “report on the activities of Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin” entitled “Deception and Distrust,” Mark Howard (News Corpse, 12/10/08) says the “abuse, manipulation, intimidation and incompetence” detailed “would be shocking if it hadn’t come from the same administration that gave us Alberto Gonzales, Michael Brown, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, […]
WeCanStopTheHate.org brings its fight against hate speech to online media with a post (12/10/08) about reports that Facebook board of directors member Peter Thiel “recently donated $1 million to the anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA,” which the Southern Poverty Law Center “identified… as one of six core organizations in the anti-immigration movement.” Founded by John Tanton and […]
Harold Meyerson’s latest dispatch (WashingtonPost.com, 12/8/08) on Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell retells how “Zell repeatedly and profanely expressed his disdain for quality journalism,” gutting major dailies like the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune because he thought they “carried too much national and international news.” After “hundreds of excellent reporters and editors were unceremoniously shown […]
