FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
New Yorker writer Hendrik Hertzberg tells (12/5/08) of being targeted by Fox‘s Bill O’Reilly for connecting Newt Gingrich to “anti-gay bigotry.” O’Reilly’s grievance against Hertzberg sparks from this passage in the writer’s December 1 New Yorker piece: Like a polluted swamp, anti-gay bigotry is likely to get thicker and more toxic as it dries up. […]
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald “marvels” (12/8/08, ad-viewing required) at “how easily [John Brennan-for-CIA-head proponents] can implant their message into establishment media outlets far and wide, which uncritically publish what they’re told from their cherished ‘intelligence sources’ and without even the pretense of verifying whether any of it is true and/or hearing any divergent views”: All of […]
As President-elect Barack “Obama has made a point of appointing a diverse group of thinkers to his cabinet,” Courtney E. Martin’s American Prospect article (12/8/08) asks, “What about the diversity of opinion outside the White House?”: Let’s start at the top. Kristal Brent Zook, author of I See Black People: The Rise and Fall of […]
Recalling that “during the mid-1960s, the conventional wisdom was what everyone with a modicum of smarts kept saying: higher U.S. troop levels in Vietnam were absolutely necessary,” FAIR associate Norman Solomon is distressed to find (AntiWar.com, 12/9/08) that “today, the conventional wisdom is that higher U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan are absolutely necessary.” Responding to […]
The Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch has propaganda watchdog Diane Farsetta asking (12/5/08) “when will the cable and network television stations that featured the Pentagon’s pundits tell viewers that their war commentary was anything but independent?” Her “prime example” is NBC analyst former general Barry McCaffrey, who shilled Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the […]
Tom Engelhardt’s nearly interminable list of media blogs and features about Barack Obama’s presidential transition has him urging us (TomDispatch, 12/7/08) to “think of all this as Entertainment Weekly married to People magazine for post-election political junkies”: Obama–thank goodness–isn’t George Bush. He doesn’t arrive in office with a crew wedded to a “unitary executive theory” […]
Glenn Greenwald uses his regular Salon feature (12/1/08, ad-viewing required) to publish astounding email correspondence detailing “NBC and McCaffrey’s coordinated responses to the NYT story” that exposed Barry McCaffrey as a prime example of Pentagon propagandists running unchecked in corporate media. One of the more nauseating bits features NBC declaring they: are proud to have […]
This week FAIR’s CounterSpin radio show (12/5/08) takes on an important issue from the last U.S. invasion of Iraq: For years, veterans claiming to suffer from Gulf War Syndrome were derided as cranky and hysterical by the Department of Defense and even by some journalists. Will that change now that a definitive report says the […]
SaveTheInternet.com’s Megan Tady announces (12/2/08) an alternative Help Wanted ad to assist Barack Obama in appointing a new chair for the Federal Communications Commission. The desired qualifications: This job requires a strong commitment to protecting the open Internet, ensuring fast and affordable Internet access for all Americans and diversifying media ownership. Applicant must be willing […]
Noticing how “the U.S. press slowly accepted that this wasn’t an attack on Westerners, that Indians weren’t merely collateral damage” in the Mumbai attacks, Alexander Cockburn is reminded (Nation, 12/3/08) of Victorian novelists’ “scores of selfless characters” for whom “the only thing was to protect the guests.” Other aspects of colonial attitudes have changed–though not […]
Writing on the propensity for “shoveling it all [‘responsibility’ for increased terrorism ‘in the post 9/11-era’] off on the administration that is leaving, while exonerating our culpable media,” Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald takes (11/28/08, ad-viewing required) as his lead example of realpolitik journalism the New York Times editorial page, today, on poor U.S./Latin American relations: “The […]
Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman reminds us (TruthDig, 11/25/08) that, “as President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli/Palestinian conflict”: You may not have heard much lately about the disaster in the Gaza Strip. That silence is intentional: The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering […]
Feeling “especially exasperated by the readiness of TV pundits and op-ed writers to make sweeping statements about the state of the electorate without ever talking to an actual voter,” veteran media critic Michael Massing took an October trip to Ohio (New York Review of Books, 12/18/08) in search of “the concerns and attitudes of ordinary […]
Blogger Carole Cohen has posted (Cleveland Real Estate News, 12/2/08) Margot Friedman’s mass email wherein the media activist bemoans NBC‘s choice of yet another white male to host their premier Sunday news show–yet Friedman finds a silver lining: Thank you for writing a letter to the president of NBC News to ask that the network […]
Interviewed by Democracy Now!‘s Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman (12/1/08) on the Mumbai attacks, Tariq Ali has a “point I would make about this whole business, which is, of course, ghastly, terrible”: I think it should be stated that if images were shown of the killings that were going on in Afghanistan or in Pakistan’s […]
“Piecing Together the Story” (12/1/08) of the horrific attacks in Mumbai, AlterNet editors see “a lot more to the Mumbai attacks than CNN and the New York Times have been reporting.” Among the news “nowhere to be seen in the American mainstream media” are crucial bits like this: Saikat Datta of Outlook India writes that […]
A People’s History of Poverty in America author Stephen Pimpare answers Amy Goodman’s question (Democracy Now!, 11/25/08) of “what about the way the media conveys” poverty in the U.S.?: Well, when there is any attention to poor Americans at all, it tends to be fairly predictable. There was a study done in late 2007 by […]
Feministing blogger Vanessa Valenti (11/21/08) plugs the recent FAIR study of gender disparity at Huffington Post, saying that “too many of us feel that women bloggers are underrepresented and undervalued in the progressive blogosphere, but hard evidence is always helpful.” Valenti’s request for readers’ “thoughts” is met by commenter Renee’s observation that not only are […]
Well aware that “from the aftermath of the 2003 ‘shock and awe’ bombing campaign all the way through Thanksgiving Day 2008, major U.S. news outlets have nearly uniformly blacked out or downplayed reports of the Iraqi death toll,” critic Brad Jacobson notes (MediaBloodhound, 11/30/08) that “a recent Associated Press article reveals the depths to which […]
Commenter milo janus reacts to a Michael Calderone Politico.com piece (11/24/08) on Alan Colmes’ arguably inconsequential departure from Fox News‘ long-running Hannity & Colmes: Word had it some years ago that Jeff Cohen, founder of the liberal media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (who was also producer of the Donahue show on MSNBC […]
