FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Fed up with corporate media neglect–and even abuse–of such issues, the New Routes to Community Health program has announced (Business Wire, 9/30/08) a “new model for improving the health of immigrants in the United States using media created by immigrants”: Eight diverse immigrant-led collaborations across the United States each are receiving $225,000 over three years […]
FAIR associate Norman Solomon pens (Columbus Free Press, 10/13/08) a “Requiem for the Bailout Storyline”: More recent events should not be allowed to obscure the reality that the news media played a pivotal role in stampeding the country into a bailout that was unwise and unjust….
Catching more media dissembling on behalf of U.S. government torture policies, the Daily Beast‘s Scott Horton lets readers know (10/10/08) that on Thursday evening WNET in New York will air an important new documentary by Emmy and Dupont Award winning producer Sherry Jones entitled Torturing Democracy. It appears on WNET and several other affiliates independently […]
Andrew Burmon of Salon reports on corporate media-facilitated “voter fraud hysteria” like the New York Post‘s Ken Blackwell op-ed–“yes, the former Ohio secretary of state of 2004 election infamy–warn[ing of] radical groups sending the nation into a protracted legal battle even worse than the mess back in 2000.” Burmon features (10/15/08, ad-viewing required) Barnard College […]
Just in time for Bob Schieffer’s hosting of the final 2008 U.S. presidential debate, Brad Jacobson has republished (10/15/08) his May 6 MediaBloodhound blog post critiquing Schieffer’s Bush administration record, “which has treaded between muted criticism and outright fawning”: Throughout his January 2006 interview with Bush, Schieffer responded “Um-hmm” and “Okay” and jarringly changed topics […]
Under the headline “Big Media. Bad Idea,” Sophia Banay argues (Portfolio, 10/15/08) that–for anyone “not named Murdoch or Redstone–big media just isn’t working.” Banay uses the language heeded by her audience when writing that you can “say what you want about the benefits of synergies and size for big media companies; for their shareholders, the […]
Writing of FAIR’s new Smearcasters report on the Washington City Paper‘s website (10/13/08), Bobby Allyn finds that “searching U.S. newspapers on Lexis Nexis for ‘Obama,’ ‘Muslim’ and ‘smear’ generates 509 unique hits.” Allyn continues: There have been plenty of reports debunking the Obama Muslim allegation, but not enough about the racial subtext of “smearing” a […]
Hosting David Frum of the National Review on MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow Show (10/13/08), Maddow responds to the “axis of evil” inventor’s complaint of “an intensification of some of the ugliness of tone that has been a feature of American politics”: I wonder if part of the problem, in the way that we haven’t moved through […]
Expanding on her blog post of October 8, FAIR Communications Director Isabel Macdonald details (Common Dreams, 10/13/08) “one small glitch” in “the Obsession campaign‘s marketing plan [that] has been quite slick”: The public doesn’t seem to be buying it. Newspapers that carried the DVD have faced floods of complaints from readers, and the past week […]
New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt examines (10/12/08) his paper’s presidential campaign reportage: Through Friday, of 270 news articles published in the Times about the election since the national tickets were formed in late August, only 29, or a little over 10 percent, were primarily about policy substance. And that is a generous tally […]
In These Times blogger Jarrett Dapier declares it (10/13/08) “a sad day for progressives: Cursor is suspending publication”:
Former FAIR staffer Jennifer L. Pozner gives props on her Women In Media & News site (10/12/08) to a “local Louisiana newspaper report[ing] on the cycle of domestic violence without sensationalism”: Last week, I blogged about the Eunice News, a small, local newspaper in Louisiana that has decided to do something that shouldnâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t be (but […]
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald sees (10/12/08, ad-viewing required) “Bill Kristol in a Nutshell” when observing the New York Times columnist’s statements over the past week. First Greenwald points to an October 5 column in which Kristol “agreed [with Sarah Palin] that the McCain/Palin campaign must attack Obama harder on his ‘associations,’ particularly with Bill Ayers.” Then […]
Dean Baker explains (Beat the Press, 10/13/08) his fantastical headline “USA Today Thinks It’s Possible That Elvis Caused the Financial Meltdown”: “Well, if the Republicans blamed the financial crisis on Elvis Presley, USA Today would probably just write it up politely and then note that the Democrats disagree.” Baker says “that is exactly what the […]
In an OpEd News review (10/13/08) of David W. Moore’s new book, The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls, David Swanson writes of how the longtime Gallup pollster “objects to the fact that polls are conducted and reported as if ignorance and apathy do not exist”: Moore shows that when pollsters […]
Real News head Paul Jay shares his personal vision (10/12/08) of how it takes crises like the the current financial state to jar corporate media into allowing us to “hear… words like capitalism and socialism in the mainstream grammar”: There’s, like, all this–I always thought of Katrina as this moment in Twilight Zone. There’s a […]
The AP files a chapter (10/11/08) in the long story of government surveillance of critical reporters like muckraking columnist Jack Anderson: Documents turned over to the Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act almost three years after Anderson’s death include copies of his columns with critical notes in the margins, summaries of his movements […]
A reader of the NPR Check blog flags a troubling passage from the October 1 All Things Considered: “Some estimates put the number of widows in Iraq at 1 million–women who’ve lost their husbands to Iraq’s endless succession of wars: Iran/Iraq, the invasion of Kuwait, the recent civil war.” Public radio watchdog Mytwords (10/5/08) isn’t […]
Deeming it good news that “the FCC is finally beginning to take some action on perhaps the most egregious propaganda assault ever directed at the American people by their own government,” News Corpse blogger Mark Howard notices (10/9/08) an odd aspect of the Pentagon Pundits story so far: More than 150 retired officers participated in […]
A former ACORN communications coordinator from 2000 to 2003, David Swanson rebuts the “absolutely fraudulent and nationally coordinated attacks… currently all over the news” for American Chronicle readers (10/10/08) In fact, the accusations against ACORN are not about voting, but about voter registration. Now, if some kid fills out bogus forms in order to make […]
