FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The L.A. Times has published a commentary from Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Marc Weisbrot (7/23/09) furthering recent exposés on the damaging influence of U.S. lobbyists hired by unlawful regimes throughout the world. Under a headline about “The High-Powered Hidden Support for Honduras’ Coup,” Weisbrot invites us to meet Lanny Davis, Washington lawyer […]
The Media Bloodhound blog’s Brad Jacobson has a post (7/22/09) adding some depth to the Walter Cronkite as belated-Vietnam-War-critic story: Following his death last week, various network news tributes replayed footage of Cronkite’s influential ’68 on-air editorial. Yet scrubbed from the memorializing were similar instances of Cronkite’s journalistic candor regarding Iraq, such as his 2006 […]
David Swanson (OpEd News, 7/22/09) has “another name for ‘what’s called a single-payer system’”–namely: “healthcare as a human right, not a commodity to be purchased. Many humans have this right. They just aren’t Americans.” Of Barack Obama’s July 22 news conference “mention of single-payer in passing, as something that would be better than anything else, […]
Having recently “published a report on 1,200 photos of U.S. torture that I have examined but the public at large has not seen,” activist David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet.org, 7/21/09) now relates how he talked about the photos on a few progressive radio shows. I received calls from some advocacy groups that have been trying for years […]
Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 7/21/09) has synopsized the latest fiasco of a David Brooks column under the headline “David Brooks Wanted Tax Increases to Pay for Stimulus”–since, Baker writes, “that is presumably the implication of his complaint that the Democrats paid for the stimulus package ‘with borrowed money.’” Predictably, “this is not the only […]
Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher (7/21/09) is reporting that newspaper union representatives claim a victory of sorts in the Boston Newspaper Guild’s refusal to accept a deal that “called for smaller benefit cuts and a furlough, but a higher 8.3 percent salary reduction.” The Boston Globe eventually agreed instead to “a 5.94 percent salary […]
In a piece about current media “Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did” by (belatedly) condemning the U.S. war on Vietnam, Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald (7/18/09, ad-viewing required) addresses another recently passed war reporter as well: When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam died, media stars everywhere commemorated his death as though he were one of […]
Norman Solomon has noticed (Common Dreams, 7/20/09) that “media eulogies for Walter Cronkite–including from progressive commentators–rarely talk about his coverage of the Vietnam War before 1968.” An “obit omit” Solomon deems “essential to the myth of Cronkite as a courageous truth-teller”: But facts are facts, and history is history–including what Cronkite actually did as TV’s […]
Citing a Committee of Family Members of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras report “detailing hundreds of cases of human rights abuses committed by the coup regime, including four political assassinations,” Ogg Blog‘s Chuck Ogg (7/17/09) notes that “the situation is getting worse in Honduras…but you wouldn’t know this reading the New York Times“: In fact, […]
Toxic Avenger creator Lloyd Kaufmann has a new McClatchy column (7/16/09) “speaking out on behalf of the little guy–or, in the case of independent film and TV producers, the belittled guy,” who generally is still “at the mercy of a handful of vertically integrated network-studio conglomerates, powerful giants that exercise control over the entertainment and […]
Afghanistan writer Ann Jones has an essay on TomDispatch (7/16/09) in which she calls The Fixer “the best documentary I’ve seen on Afghanistan–so good it’s hard to imagine a better one.” Her description of a scene she found particularly moving demonstrates the harsh reality of unembedded reporting, begetting a corporate media output that merits her […]
In Katha Pollitt’s latest Nation column (7/15/09), she finds it “not hard to poke holes in” the July 2 Time magazine cover story by “Caitlin Flanagan–professional antifeminist, author of a whole book of essays attacking working mothers, herself excepted”–being full of “Flanagan’s predictions of universal doom for the children of divorced or never-married parents”: After […]
Just Foreign Policy national Coordinator Robert Naiman has a follow-up (7/15/09) on his July 13 catch of major U.S. new outlets relying solely on Honduras’ La Prensa, “a pro-coup newspaper, with a history of publishing inaccurate information,” to falsely “indicate that a plurality of Hondurans support the military coup against democratically elected President Zelaya.” Naiman […]
The UNITY: Journalists of Color organization has a new press release (7/14/09) denouncing July 8 comments by Fox and Friends‘ Brian Kilmeade, in which he “made a crude and bafflingly ignorant attempt to dismiss a study on marriage and Alzheimer’s that was conducted in Sweden and Finland.” Kilmeade’s remarks that “we [Americans] keep marrying other […]
Asking his readers to “remember” that, on NBC, Chuck Todd “is billed as a reporter covering the White House, not a pundit expressing opinions,” Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald (7/15/09, ad-viewing required) examines a Todd appearance on the MSNBC show Morning Joe “discussing reports that [U.S. Attorney General] Eric Holder is likely to appoint a prosecutor to […]
Washington Monthly‘s Political Animal blogger Steve Benen (7/16/09) has observed that on July 15, “the Associated Press reported that the House Democratic healthcare plan cost ‘$1.5 trillion,’” and “by the afternoon, the AP reporting didn’t attribute the price tag to anyone; it just stated the figure as fact.” Even though “the day before the AP […]
Editor & Publisher is running a wire item (Associated Press, 7/16/09) on the Richmond Times-Dispatch‘s recent front-page editorial and website video “expressing regret for supporting the state’s fight to maintain separate schools for blacks and whites in the 1950s.” The paper’s confession of its “central role in the ‘dreadful doctrine’ of Massive Resistance–a systematic campaign […]
Free Press campaign coordinator Misty Perez has sent out (7/15/09) a call to action in light of the astonishing figure that “in the first three months of 2009, the phone and cable industries spent at least $20 million to hire more than 400 lobbyists” in an effort to “push for policies that fatten phone and […]
Arianna Huffington’s latest column (Huffington Post, 7/13/09) presents a compelling portrayal of the power of new democratic media–versus the self-preserving corporate model of news gathering–in the Chinese government response to major riots last week: “It choked off the Internet and mobile phone service, blocked Twitter and Fanfou (its Chinese equivalent), deleted updates and videos from […]
Writing that “the swine flu outbreak that wrecked Mexico’s economy this spring, and that the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic last month, may become a case study in reckless journalism,” Miami Herald Latin America correspondent Andres Oppenheimer (7/8/09) admits that he “had taken it for granted that the disease had started in Mexico” […]
