FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Hiroshima in America author Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher, 8/6/09) has taken a hard look at “the suppression of film and photographic evidence of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki” that “would play a key role as America embarked on a nuclear era with severe impact still with us today.” He gives us a […]
Reporting for Associated Press (7/3/09), David Bauder has an update on CNN‘s insistence on “standing behind” Lou Dobbs, who has “become a publicity nightmare for CNN, embarrassed his boss and…on top of all that, his ratings are slipping.” Bauder asks outright: “How does Lou Dobbs keep his job” while plugging the conspiracy theory that Barack […]
FAIR associate Sam Husseini has blogged his reaction (Husseini.org, 7/4/09) to a Barack “Obama Photo Op with Helen Thomas” in which the president “came with cupcakes to wish Helen Thomas a happy birthday”: “Now, if only he’d take her questions.” Obama claimed they have a “common birthday wish”–for a “real healthcare reform bill”–but Thomas is […]
NPR Check blogger mytwords has taken the time (8/4/09) to closely “consider [Scott] Horsley’s verbal sleight of hand” on National Public Radio‘s August 4 Morning Edition: He equates a completely false distortion–characterizing the tepid Democratic health reform proposals as “government-run healthcare” in opposition to “the free market”–with a completely fact-based statement–“we have a system today […]
Quipping that “usually newspapers are big defenders of free speech, but not the Washington Post,” economic reporting critic Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 8/2/09) takes down the paper’s recent piece giving over “nearly 2,000 words to complain that a website had ripped off” one reporter’s story. Careful to say that “the problem was not that […]
A Tiny Revolution blogger Bernard Chazelle (8/2/09) thinks it’s possible that “people fail to appreciate how tough it is to run the government.” As evidence, he offers “two questions Treasury officials and politicians will soon have to answer”: Should a Connecticut trader receive $100 million in executive pay from a bank that would be dead […]
Free Press’s newest release (7/31/09) touts some fresh congressional legislation that “Would Protect Net Neutrality Once and for All.” According to the media reform activists, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 “would protect Network Neutrality under the Communications Act, safeguarding the future of the open Internet and protecting Internet users from discrimination online.” Policy […]
Editorial cartoonist Mikhaela Reid has a new drawing (Women In Media & News, 7/29/09) in reaction to the fact that even Vogue has an annual “Shape” issue where they patronizingly allow someone as (*GASP*) huge as Beyonce or Kate Winslet on the cover in addition to their usual sub-zero model roundupâ┚¬Ã‚¦ then offer drastic dieting […]
Using the screenname “roberwter,” one resident of the Netherlands has posted (YouTube, 7/27/09) “a video response to a Fox News broadcast about my city, Amsterdam.” The short piece starts with clips of Bill O’Reilly and guests claiming that the Dutch‘s “experimentation with social tolerance, free love, free drugs, clearly has backfired” and that “Amsterdam is […]
AlterNet‘s Liliana Segura has traced (7/28/09) the “nasty little rumor” that “Barack Hussein Obama is not a legitimate president because he is not really an American citizen” from “the early days of the presidential race” to its current status as “a full-blown conspiracy theory” that does “nonetheless enjoy increasingly high-profile political support, and media coverage […]
Philadelphia Weekly intern and Prometheus Radio Project volunteer Alyssa Figueroa has produced an excellent document of local media activists taking on global news coverage in her video showing how “nearly 100 people marched to the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s office demanding the paper publish more factual pieces about the coup in Honduras.” PW tells us (7/30/09) that […]
The anti-racism Color of Change organization has sent out an email blast (8/30/09) warning that “more and more, right-wing talkshow hosts are bringing race-based fear mongering into the mainstream.” Still, they claim that “Fox‘s Glenn Beck just took it to another level” with his July 28 statement that “this president has exposed himself as a […]
In a previous post “showing Fox News‘ tendency to mislabel badly behaving Republicans as Democrats,” one of Canadian blogger Joey deVilla’s commenters has pointed out “this map of the Middle East shown on a Fox News in segment where Neil Cavuto interviewed John Bolton.” Noting a problem with the country marked “Egypt”–“that’s not Egypt, that’s […]
Following the growth of “a new right-wing scare tactic” that “has blossomed on conservative blogs and emails lists,” Talking Points Memo Muckraker Zachary Roth (7/28/09) describes the healthcare meme as “the notion that the reform bill making its way through the House would lead to euthanasia by requiring senior citizens to submit to ‘end-of-life consultations’”–and […]
“With the corporate media relentlessly distorting the public discussion around healthcare reform,” Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce Dixon (7/29/09) has enumerated his “Top 10 Ways to Tell Your President & His Party Aren’t Fighting for Healthcare For Everybody,” including: The president and his party, and the corporate media, have spent more time and energy […]
Presenting yet another example of corporate media failure to grasp the concept of “Adjusted for Inflation,” Kevin Drum (MotherJones.com, 7/26/09) has written up a Washington Post piece in which “David Brown says that as treatment for heart attacks has gotten better, it’s also gotten more expensive”: “Over the same period, the charges for treating a […]
Under the succinct Consortium News subhed “Too Late the Leak” (7/24/09), former CIA analyst Ray McGovern revisits the Downing Street Minutes–which he says should represent the kind of documentary evidence after which trial lawyers, intelligence analysts–and serious investigative journalists–lust. Though the unauthorized disclosure did not come early enough to head off the war, which had […]
The United Farm Workers have a new action alert (7/24/09) about “an education war going on in Texas” they note has “major national implications as Texas is such a major purchaser of textbooks and their state’s required curriculum drives the content of textbooks produced nationwide.” Specifically, “the Texas State Board of Education is currently preparing […]
Realizing that “by now, talk of the Iranian elections will have traversed into the abyss of yesterday’s news,” Warehouse magazine contributing writer Mohsen al Attar (7/10/09) still thinks “the events narrate a highly educational tale about the role of media in present-day society”: Few would question the media machine’s efficiency. Once a major media outlet […]
Noticing that “days ago, buried in a chart under the headline “How the Health Care Bills Compare,” the New York Times provided some cogent yet cryptic information,” Norman Solomon (Guernica, 7/23/09) has done some valuable decoding of a Senate committee bill’s “public plan that would ‘compete with private insurers,’” as “the Times chart explained on […]
