FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Dean Baker makes a particularly sharp point (Beat the Press, 11/18/08) when trying to “imagine that the economy in Venezuela gets really bad in the next few years.” He asks if the Washington Post would then “write about how Hugo Chávez had to cope with enormous economic turmoil?” but decides “that’s unlikely. The Post would […]
Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi‘s look back (11/13/08) at his experience covering the ’08 presidential campaign features this response to Hillary Clinton adviser Mark Penn calling her “a workhorse”: “‘Are you implying,’ snaps one reporter, ‘that Barack Obama is not a workhorse?’” This is what qualifies as a tough question on the campaign trail. The […]
Calling herself “more of an ally than an activist for transgender people,” Veronica Arreola admits (Women In Media & News, 11/16/08) to “not being on top of each nuance of the movement” but still is aghast “at most of the media’s reaction to [Thomas] Beatie’s second pregnancy”: It’s not the headlines that upset me; most […]
Fair Use infringement and talk-radio vitriol meet in a report (Bay City News, 11/13/08) on hate-jock Michael Savage‘s latest charming escapades: Conservative radio talkshow host Michael Savage has been sued in federal court in San Francisco by a liberal film group for making an allegedly baseless demand that YouTube Inc. take down one of its […]
WeCanStopTheHate.org‘s latest push for “media networks… to separate themselves from hate groups and hate speech” quotes (11/14/08) National Council of La Raza President Janet Murguia saying that, with a recent race-motivated Long Island murder, “we have been brutally reminded about the consequences of leaving hate unchecked”: “The wave of hate that is seeping through our […]
The Real News reports (11/15/08) on a censorious Canadian monopoly’s latest misdeeds: In early November, Canadian media giant Canwest Mediaworks dropped its lawsuit against Mordecai Briemberg, a lawsuit which alleged that he infringed on Canwest‘s trademark rights. The case pertained to the creation of a parody of one of Canwest‘s many papers, the Vancouver Sun. […]
The Huffington Post publishes male critic Jeff Cohen’s challenge (11/13/08) to “independent media outlets that contributed so mightily to the stunning election result”: With Democrats in control, will these outlets be guided by principle or just partisanship? Will they speak truth to power and expose corruption and injustice over the long haul–no matter who’s in […]
Media reformer Josh Silver‘s “Look at Media in 2009” (Huffington Post, 11/13/08) necessarily surveys the dire record of corporate news in ’08: The real problem is not the media favoring one candidate over another, but rather its utter failure to practice critical journalism. Turn on your television or radio, and it’s 24/7 horserace political coverage, […]
NPR Check‘s Mytwords finds it (11/13/08) particularly “telling that on the day after the release of a report on the ‘shattered lives‘ of released Guantanamo detainees,” National Public Radio‘s Morning Edition was “doing the awful work of convincing listeners that closing the prison camp will be a lot more complicated than they might have thought”: […]
Speaking out again now that the U.S. presidential election has been decided, Bill Ayers tells Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!, 11/14/08) exactly why his family “actually didn’t pay a lot of attention to” the ongoing media controversy over him: We recognized that there was this cartoon character kind of thrust up on the […]
In the upcoming December 1 issue of the Nation, Fatin Abbas extensively quotes Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina on “The Traps of Safari Journalism”: In his eloquent diatribe “How to Write About Africa,” published several years ago in Granta… Wainaina offers the following advice: “Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of […]
Observing (Creator’s Syndicate, 11/14/08) that “overall, the news media like winners, and an incoming president is the biggest winner of all,” Norman Solomon knows “the period between his opponent’s concession speech and the swearing-in has traditionally been a time of many media upsides without the burdens of actual incumbency.” As a result, despite the vast […]
In his Unclaimed Territory feature at Salon (11/13/08, ad-viewing required), Glenn Greenwald has more on mainstream journalists’ affinity for those “urging the new Obama administration to avoid any investigations or prosecutions of Bush lawbreaking”: This is what has been advocated by everyone from David Broder to top Obama adviser Cass Sunstein. There are few things […]
A Tiny Revolution blogger Jonathan Schwarz quotes (11/12/08) Iraq War booster Michael Hanlon writing on the Politico website that “it is important that Senator Obama hear from centrists on Iraq, and Susan [Rice] may not be such a person on that subject.” In response to the Hanlon assertion that former Bill Clinton official Rice “is […]
Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 11/12/08) wants to know “Where’s the Ridicule?” since “Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced today that he had abandoned… his plan to buy bad assets from banks and other financial institutions.” Now that Mr. Paulson has himself decided that the Troubled Asset Relief Program is not a good idea (for which […]
Nick Turse offers (Nation, 11/13/08) the latest contravention of the standard myth of strongly anti-war corporate media during the Vietnam era: “Pacification’s Deadly Price,” a joint investigation into the slaughter of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops during Operation Speedy Express, was the crowning achievement of [Newsweek Saigon bureau chief Kevin Buckley’s and stringer Alex Shimkin’s] […]
News Corpse blogger Mark Howard chronicles (11/12/08) how “pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, etc.” are not just “on the wrong side of public opinion in the recently concluded election,” but “are also losing listeners and viewers who are rapidly awakening to the dishonesty and hostility wafting through the conservative media’s airwaves”: In […]
Beneath the TPM Café headline “Excitement Is Not Hysteria” (11/11/08), critic William Hartung takes on a Washington Post op-ed that gets scary about those celebrations of Barack Obama’s election: According to Anne Applebaum… the excitement around the world about the election of Barack Obama has reached the point of “mass hysteria.”… She says the following: […]
“A bizarre report from Julie Rovner [of All Things Considered] on healthcare reform and the recent election” catches the attention (11/11/08) of NPR Check‘s Mytwords, since, he notes, “as everyone knows the the voters who helped elect Obama president want and expect major healthcare reform”: Explaining the reasons why even reform (instead of complete overhaul) […]
A current CNN interview of Sarah Palin gives the failed candidate yet more airtime in which she, in the words of In These Times editor Jarrett Dapier, “continues her campaign against Barack Obama and again calls forth the specter of Bill Ayers.” Wolf Blitzer opens the door wide yet again by asking her about her […]
