FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
When white phosphorus was used by Saddam Hussein, the weapon was identified by U.S. intelligence as a “chemical weapon.” The New York Times (3/22/95) seemed to concur; In an article noting that white phosphorus was technically classified as an “incendiary weapon,” the paper nonetheless described it as one of “the worst chemical weapons” in existence: […]
In the wake of NY Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman’s call today for terrorism against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a new FAIR Action Alert is calling on the Times to clarify whether this column meets the paper’s standards. You can post copies of your letters to the New York Times in the comments section […]
After taking pictures at a New York demonstration in which, as the Indypendent summarized, “thousands of people rallied at Times Square Sunday afternoon, calling for an immediate end to the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip,” I was rather taken aback by AP‘s account of the same event, which put the number of pro-Palestinian demonstrators […]
Readers of the French wire agency Agence France Presse learned yesterday about a demonstration on Saturday in which “several thousand protesters descended on the White House Saturday in support of Palestinians in war-ravaged Gaza” before marching to “the headquarters of the Washington Post newspaper to protest” what one of the demonstration organizers identified as “its […]
Writing today on the choice of CNN health correspondent Sanjay Gupta as surgeon general for the Obama administration, the Washington Post reported that if he is confirmed by the Senate, Gupta would provide the administration with a skilled television personality to help market what is planned to be a massive reorganization of the U.S. health […]
One would think that Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s record of taking his campaign against undocumented immigrants to what the New York Times has called “unconstitutional extremes” would make any prospective new employer hesitant about hiring him. Not so for Rupert Murdoch; starting December 27, Arpaio will star in a new law enforcement reality TV show on […]
Commenting yesterday on the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George W. Bush, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly declared that “this horrendous story points out how difficult it is to deal with some Muslims”: Many Americans are simply fed up with these displays in the Arab world: unchecked violence, irrational thinking. One could say […]
A just-released FAIR advisory documents the media’s lopsided debate in the lead-up to Obama’s Education secretary selection today. Across a wide range of national media outlets, FAIR provides evidence that only one side has for the most part been allowed to do the talking, marginalizing the most progressive candidate in the running for the post […]
The New York Times‘ bizarre claim that the now infamous shoe-throwing is indicative of Iraqis’ “conflicted views” on Bush should perhaps come as no surprise. As independent journalist Dahr Jamail reveals in the latest issue of FAIR’s magazine Extra!, the paper of record is just as apt a dodger of the indisputable facts of Iraqi […]
Thanks in advance to all the folks who are participating in FAIR’s action alert, “Media Still Letting Bush Lie on Iraq Inspectors.” Please post any responses you receive from ABC and the Washington Post in the comments section of this blog. Update: Feel free to post your letters to ABC and the Washington Post here […]
A recent New York Times article (11/29/08) offers fresh documentation of conflicts of interest involving one of TV’s most famous retired generals, Barry McCaffrey, who continues to be employed as an NBC military analyst even as he rakes in profits from military contractors. The story of how McCaffrey and at least 74 other retired generals […]
A New York Times headline today about President-elect Barack Obama’s nomination of Susan Rice to be U.N. ambassador declared “Obama’s Choice for U.N. Is Advocate of Strong Action Against Mass Killings.” Undoubtedly, one of the greatest mass killings of recent years has been the Iraq War, which Just Foreign Policy estimates has killed nearly 1.3 […]
Obama’s selection of a host of Clinton-era centrists for top posts have been greeted with cheers in the press. ABC‘s George Stephanopoulos gushed that “we have not seen this kind of combination of star power, brain power and political muscle this early in a cabinet in our lifetimes.” Last week, even conservative New York Times […]
Anyone who followed the results of Venezuela’s regional elections last Sunday will know that President Hugo Chavez’s party won 17 out of 22 contests up for grabs, garnering 52.5 percent of the popular vote to the opposition’s 41.1 percent. Unless, that is, they were relying on New York Times Latin America correspondent Simon Romero. Despite […]
The announcement that Alan Colmes is leaving Fox News Channel‘s Hannity & Colmes show, where he serves as co-host to Sean Hannity, raises the pressing question: Will anyone notice? Fox News executives have long represented the show as an evenhanded nightly debate. Yet a reviewer in Britain’s Sunday Business Post (8/24/03) perhaps summarized the peculiarity […]
As well as being infused with a modern-day “white man’s burden” mythology not exactly unheard of in media reporting on Somalia, Time magazine’s article “The Suffering of Somalia” (11/13/08) follows the well-documented pattern of misreporting on recent U.S. intervention on Somalia (see Extra!, 3-4/08)–downplaying the disastrous role of recent U.S. policy in that country: Somalia […]
The New York Times published today a lengthy front-page article about new evidence from independent security observers that contradicted the Georgian government’s account of the conflict in the Caucasus this past August–an account that, as FAIR pointed out at the time (8/14/08), many in the U.S. media had repeated with little skepticism in their rush […]
As FAIR’s magazine Extra! has noted (9-10/08, 11-12/07), it’s often hard to tell from reading the U.S. press that polls have consistently shown a clear majority of Iraqis favor a withdrawal of American troops from their country. Today the New York Times published two articles offering Iraqi perspectives on the significance of Obama’s electoral victory. […]
In the lead-up to the November 4 election, Fox News host Sean Hannity warned (10/26/08) that an Obama victory would represent “a complete liberal takeover.” He opined that a Democratic electoral victory would herald “an unchecked, ultraliberal government, passing the most liberal agenda under the most liberal president in U.S. history.” Citing the National Journal‘s […]
Tom Brokaw, the interim host of NBC‘s Meet the Press, and NBC analyst Chuck Todd expressed bafflement on last Sunday’s Meet the Press (10/26/08) at how Latinos had “turned on the Republican Party” and their “friend” John McCain: TODD: I mean, this, this Hispanic–one of the things we–underreported story of the cycle is how Hispanics […]
