FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
As “official Washington is buzzing about ‘metrics’” of success in the U.S. war on Afghanistan, Norman Solomon (ZNet, 8/13/09) notes of media’s persistent question, “Can the war in Afghanistan be successful?”–“Don’t ask the dead”: On August 7, under the headline “White House Struggles to Gauge Afghan Success,” a New York Times story made a splash. […]
WashingtonMonthly.com blogger Steve Benen (Political Animal, 8/12/09) has words for corporate pundits lambasting Barack Obama’s “Attention to Detail” as “going “into the weeds”: A few weeks ago, MSNBC‘s First Read had an item questioning whether President Obama “knows too much” about healthcare policy. The piece complained that the president is willing to offer Americans details […]
Media Matters research director Jeremy Schulman (8/12/09) writes that “Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaughand Lou Dobbs have used their radio and television shows to incite hatred and push wild conspiracy theories, leading several of Beck’s advertisers to reportedly pull out of his broadcasts”–one of the hazards inherent in for-profit media. But “many advertisers have nonetheless sponsored […]
Since “on his Wednesday radio show, [Lou] Dobbs as much as announced that CNN president Jon Klein” is forcing him into “focusing on a nonpartisan objective reality that it is our job to cover”–with Dobbs “admitting, ‘I resisted this idea initially’”–author and journalist Leslie Savan (TheNation.com, 8/12/09) has noticed some “kind of French” behavior from […]
When “journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling stepped back onto American soil after being detained in North Korea for over four months. Their safe return was covered widely in the American media, and rightfully so,” writes Women In Media & News guest blogger Tristin Aaron (8/12/09), “yet their reason for traveling to North Korea has […]
Blogging at Jezebel, Sadie Stein (8/12/09) turns the spotlight on the New York Times‘ Cintra Wilson “in a remarkably nasty piece. Brace yourselves, kids”: In a paper often characterized by a tone as carefully bland as NPR‘s, she can be a breath of fresh air. But today’s column, on Manhattan’s first J.C. Penney, is a […]
The Hispanic/Latino Anti-Defamation Coalition, along with the National Hispanic Media Coalition (8/11/09), “applauds” the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for being “the first elected body to take a stand against hate speech in media” by having approved unanimously a resolution urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to conduct a comprehensive investigation on hate speech in […]
News Corpse blogger Mark Howard (8/10/09) calls the fact that “industry sources are reporting that Don Imus is in talks with the Fox Business Network to simulcast his Imus in the Morning radio program” a “de facto admission by FBN that they have failed to attract an audience capable of sustaining the network.” Howard sees […]
In a wide-ranging ZNet interview on both the history and future of U.S. media, Robert McChesney (8/11/09) gets to the kernel of reform activism: The media is one of the key areas in society where power is exercised, reinforced and contested. It is hard to imagine a successful left political project that does not have […]
Foreign Policy In Focus analyst Conn Hallinan (8/6/09) has yet another debunking of “the story most U.S. readers are getting about the coup” in Honduras, being “that Zelaya–an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez–was deposed because he tried to change the constitution to keep himself in power.” Calling this dominant media narrative “a massive distortion […]
Economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 8/9/09) sees the Washington Post as simply “keeping with its strict editorial policy of only letting others tell readers what ‘populists’ think,” when publishing its August 9 “front-page article on setting executive compensation at banks receiving bailout money”—one which “never presented the views of an actual populist.” Instead, Baker […]
National Public Radio monitor mytwords (NPR Check, 8/9/09) has observed what he dubs a “Blackwater Blackout” on the publicly funded “alternative” to corporate radio: On Tuesday, August 4 Jeremy Scahill broke the story about two sworn statements implicating Blackwater (now Xe) founder Erik Prince in the murder of employees or former employees who were cooperating […]
Johann Hari (ZNet, 8/6/09) has an in-depth write-up of “the story of Malalai Joya” that “turns everything we have been told about Afghanistan inside out”: In the official rhetoric, she is what we have been fighting for. Here is a young Afghan woman who set up a secret underground school for girls under the Taliban […]
Partisan blogger Nick (8/6/09) has republished a new email campaign from American Rights at Work that reviews how, “just before Bear Stearns went under, CNBC‘s Jim Cramer had strong advice for his Mad Money viewers: buy Bear Stearns stock, and fast!” Of course, “then the company imploded and thousands of ordinary people saw their retirement […]
Guest Women In Media & News blogger Adele M. Stan (8/5/09) has some more to say about the WashingtonPost.com‘s “now-infamous ‘Mad Bitch’ video”: Last Friday, Talking Points Memo‘s Brian Beutler shone a light on a video produced by the Washington Post that featured one of the two columnists hosting the piece suggesting that, at a […]
In his latest “Dispatch from the Bolivarian Revolution”, blogger Eric Wingerter (BoRev.net, 7/18/09) asks, “Man oh man, how bad does AP reporting have to get before a group of Latin American studies professors from top U.S. universities decides they need to take out a FULL-PAGE AD in the Columbia Journalism Review to respond?” His answer […]
Former TV Newser Brian Stelter’s article (New York Times, 8/7/09) about MSNBC and Fox News having “resumed their long-running feud this week after the New York Times reported that their parent companies, General Electric and the News Corporation, had struck a deal to stop each other’s televised personal attacks” states that “the deal extends beyond […]
Glenn Greenwald has responded via his regular Salon feature (8/6/09, ad-viewing required) to Rush Limbaugh, “speaking to his audience of 15 million, compar[ing] Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler and Nancy Pelosi to Nazi leaders,” by asking you to instead compare (a) the way that a single anonymous person’s comparison of Bush and Hitler swamped our […]
Howard Kurtz recently offered fellow Washington Post reporters Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza a chance to apologize for having, in an online Post feature, “implied Hillary Clinton was a ‘bitch.’” But American Prospect‘s Tapped blogger Adam Serwer (8/5/09) has a question regarding Milbank’s aside that “it’s a brutal world out there in the blogosphere…. I’m […]
As news comes of “yet another horrific mass shooting by yet another disaffected man armed with ammo and a deep hatred of women“–this time “killing three women and injuring nine more” at a Pennsylvania health club–Jennifer Pozner (Women In Media & News, 8/5/09) notices that “the gunman’s stated intention to target only women is eerily […]
