FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
USA Today‘s front-page headline (5/31/13): Churches Sever Scout Sponsorship The online headline, over Bob Smietana’s piece on the reaction of church groups that sponsor Boy Scout troops to the Scouts’ announced plan to accept gay Scouts was longer but no less sweeping: Religious Regretfully Sever Scout Sponsorships That’s bad news for the Scouts, since as […]
The Washington Post‘s Wonkblog has a hopeful headline (5/28/13): The Economy Is Holding Up Surprisingly Well in a Year of Austerity And a version of this piece landed on the front page of the Post‘s print edition, under the headline “Economy Shows Some Endurance.” And here’s the good news in a nutshell: Americans with higher […]
The reality is that it is possible to both protest government intrusions on press freedom and to condemn bad journalism of the sort practiced by Jonathan Karl. It’s important for protect journalism from official control for the same reason that it’s important for media outlets to do a good job.
The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki has figured out who’s to blame for unsafe working conditions for garment workers: people who wear clothing: “The problem isn’t so much evil factory owners as a system that’s great at getting Western consumers what they want but leaves developing-world workers toiling in misery.”
From Free Press’s helpful explainer of the AP phone records scandal, noting the legal background: Smith v. Maryland — In this 1979 decision, the Supreme Court found that people have no expectation of privacy when it comes to the numbers they call because they understand it has to be transmitted through a third party (telephone […]
Hollywood’s latest superhero movie has a political message that’s not particularly hard to decipher. Yet fail to decipher it New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis evidently did.
It shouldn’t be necessary to spell out, but apparently it is, that sending the Central Park Five to prison for a crime they hadn’t committed was wrong because they hadn’t committed the crime.
Where do Americans get the idea that it’s OK to kill civilians? Could it be that they’re listening to media pundits?
I was invited to an event yesterday that was held specifically so that media companies can take money from companies who will pay for the chance to be mistaken for an expert.
The front page of the New York Times had a very definitive headline on Syria and chemical weapons–but when you read the actual story, a much more ambiguous picture emerged.
New Yorker staff writer Jon Lee Anderson has a blog post on the magazine’s website (4/23/13) addressing the controversy over his recent coverage of Venezuela (FAIR Blog, 4/17/13): At issue are sentences in three different pieces written in the course of a number of months—two on the New Yorker‘s website and one in the magazine. […]
The New Yorker is a magazine whose name is practically synonymous with factchecking–which makes you wonder how the glaring, major errors in the its recent coverage of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez got through.
“TERROR RETURNS” ran across USA Today‘s front page (4/16/13) in inch-high letters. Below, the story it referred to had a smaller headline: “That Post-9/11 Quiet? It’s Over.” Rick Hampson and Chuck Raasch’s story began: The blasts on Boylston Street were felt across the nation, shaking and sometimes shattering a fragile hope—formed slowly in the years […]
Former Reagan budget director David Stockman is outraged–outraged I tell you!–by the Federal Reserve increasing the money supply. In a lengthy op-ed on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Review (3/31/13), he condemns “the mad money printers at the Federal Reserve” with their “egregious flood of phony money” and “a radical, uncharted […]
In an article that should go down in the annals of improbable news analyses, Peter Baker argues in the New York Times (3/28/13) that the Chief Justice might be in favor of gay rights if they weren’t so popular: Momentum in the political world for gay rights could actually limit momentum in the legal world. […]
On the 102nd anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, Janine Jackson’s article in the last issue of Extra! (3/13) is a sobering reminder that not that much has changed in the last century as far as worker safety is concerned: What should be done to prevent incidents like the January 26 fire at the Smart […]
The headline on a story by Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi is “On Iraq, Journalists Didn’t Fail. They Just Didn’t Succeed.” To make that case, though, he has to redefine “failure” so far down that it’s hardly possible to avoid failing.
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, claiming victory in the “War on Christmas,” declares that the new battle is the “War on Easter.” In Bill O’Reilly’s conspiracy theory, Barack Obama’s election has emboldened “Secular Progressives” to ban the Easter Bunny because he stands in the way of jailing people who “criticize minorities.”
There was a pair of pictures on the front page of USA Today today, meant to illustrate a story about President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories. It actually illustrated the very different ways Israelis and Palestinians are depicted in U.S. media.
Citing anonymous officials, the New York Times reported that “no party [to an] armistice can unilaterally terminate or alter its terms.” International law expert Francis Boyle says that’s nonsense.
