FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The New York Times (5/25/11) is reporting, perhaps accurately, that Newt Gingrich may have trouble living down his $500,000 credit line at Tiffany’s. But this sentence by Sheryl Gay Stolberg is so Timesian: The way some voters out in the rest of America might see it, he’s a guy who paid more for jewelry than […]
I was struck by the contrast between two passages I came across recently: Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people–including combatants–have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22–less than 3 percent–are women. If Gadhafi were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties. –Alan J. […]
The argument that the finding and killing of Osama bin Laden shows that George W. Bush’s torture policies were justified got another rehearsal in Newsweek fromYale professorStephen Carter (5/5/11): In the end, we were able to track bin Laden because he communicated only through two couriers believed to be brothers. And what was the source […]
“John Paul II’s Beatification Cheered” was USA Today‘s headline (5/2/11)—followed by 19 paragraphs of cheerleading for the accelerated process of declaring the late Pope John Paul II an official saint: Various sources in Eric Lyman’s article called the event “an important day and a wonderful opportunity to recognize a great man,” “a man of God […]
Washington Post editorialist Lee Hockstader wrote a puff profile on Haiti’s thuggish President-elect Michel Martelly (“Haiti’s ‘Sweet Micky’ Martelly Turns Presidential,” 4/24/11), whom he depicts as a fresh, vital force on the political scene, bringing with him energy and a new (mostly untested) crop of advisers, unbeholden to any recent political establishment. Little wonder […]
Working in a time-honored corporate media genre (Extra!, 9-10/97, 9-10/05, 7/10), the Washington Post‘s Edward Cody (4/24/11) tells us that Europe just can’t afford its generous social programs: From blanket health insurance to long vacations and early retirement, the cozy social benefits that have been a way of life in Western Europe since World War […]
“Gadhafi Troops Fire Cluster Bombs Into Civilian Areas,” declares a New York Times headline (4/15/11). The lead of the story makes clear that these weapons are considered in many countries to be illegal: Military forces loyal to Col. Moammar el-Gadhafi have been firing into residential neighborhoods in this embattled city with heavy weapons, including […]
One thing Thomas Friedman demonstrates over and over is that you don’t need to know much to be an expert. Take today’s column (New York Times, 4/13/11), which is based around a contrast between the European wave of democratization in 1989 and the current “Arab spring”: Think about the 1989 democracy wave in Europe. In […]
From a Q&A with NPR ombud Alicia Shepard (CJR, 4/11/11): I also got a call last week from Ralph Nader. He was saying how NPR is really just a corporate toady, and that they don’t have enough progressive voices on, and I hear that quite a bit. I hear that more from people who actually […]
In coverage of the budget negotiations in Washington, which have largely revolved around how much money will be cut from the federal budget, it’s rarely acknowledged that the standard economic assumption is that reducing government spending at a time of diminished economic activity will destroy jobs. As a rule of thumb, every $1 billion in […]
MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow had a discussion last week (3/31/11) about the U.S. role in the Libya War with Col. Jack Jacobs, an MSNBC military consultant. Jacobs described the U.S. military’s “ability to jam communications that take place between units or among units of Gadhafi’s army,” then referred to the U.S.’s ability to jam electronic transmissions […]
Few pieces better illustrate the uselessness of so much corporate media political journalism than Kathleen Hennessey’s piece in the L.A. Times (4/4/11) on Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan. The piece is headlined “House Republican Budget Plan Would Revamp Medicare,” and the lead explains that the GOP budget proposal outlined by Ryan “includes an […]
The bombing of Libya has sharply divided public opinion, but the PBS NewsHour has avoided a wide-ranging debate by overwhelmingly featuring the views of current and former government and military officials. If you’d like to see a more diverse group of voices arguing the pros and cons of intervention, see FAIR’s Action Alert. Please leave […]
In a New York Times science article (3/29/11) about the CIA and Pentagon’s psychological profiling of foreign political figures, reporter Benedict Carey adds a note of caution: Yet the assessments can also be misleading, even embarrassing. Profiles of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq that circulated in the early 1990s suggested that he was ultimately a […]
I wrote a letter to the New York Times in 1991 after they ran a piece by Fox Butterfield (4/17/91) that invaded the privacy (literally peering into her daughter’s bedroom window) and scrutinized the personal life of a woman who accused a member of the Kennedy family of raping her. Clearly some people inside the […]
“Teachers Wonder, Why the Heapings of Scorn?” is the headline of a front-page New York Times piece today (3/3/11). The article by Trip Gabriel reports, “Education experts say teachers have rarely been the targets of such scorn from politicians and voters.” Politicians, sure, but what’s the evidence that voters–i.e., the public–have been heaping scorn on […]
New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera is being promoted to the Times‘ op-ed page, where he’ll appear twice weekly. Regular FAIR Blog readers may recall Nocera as the star of this item (7/1/10): On Saturday (6/26/10), Times business columnist Joe Nocera argued against a proposed moratorium on deepwater drilling. One of his main points […]
New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane (2/27/11) offers a justification that makes very little sense for his paper’s concealing the fact that an American arrested in Pakistan worked for the CIA. The Times, Brisbane wrote, could not “take the risk that reporting the CIA connection would, as warned, lead to Mr. Davis’s death.” Davis […]
A Newsweek report (2/21/11) looks at the CIA’s aerial drone assassination program through the agency’s eyes–leaving questions about civilian deaths and the effort’s dubious legality for a couple of brief paragraphs at the end. To encourage Newsweek to take critics of the drone program seriously, see FAIR’s new Action Alert. Please leave copies of your […]
For a good example of how not to report the Afghan War, check out the lead story in today’s USA Today (2/15/11): General: Taliban ‘Beaten’ by Surge Momentum Shifts in Afghanistan The piece—by Jim Michaels, who has an unfortunate history of this kind of reporting—is mostly sourced to Richard Mills, the Marine general who’s […]
