FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The Washington Post (4/8/10) continues its crusade against Social Security (Action Alert, 1/6/10; FAIR Blog, 5/15/09, 5/13/09, 4/1/09) in a front-page news story by Neil Irwin and Lori Montgomery: Social Security is already draining resources from the broader federal budget, as spending on benefits has risen above this year’s Social Security tax collections. While that […]
New York Times media reporter David Carr wrote the other day (4/5/10) about Sarah Palin’s wide-ranging appeal: Ms. Palin still gets a session in the media spanking machine every time she does anything, but the disapproval seems to further cement the support of her loyalists. Ms. Palin may or may not be qualified to represent […]
FAIR has a new action alert out about the New York Times‘ snubbing the U.S. Senate candidate Jonathan Tasini. While the paper has given intensive coverage to numerous New Yorkers who thought about challenging appointed incumbent Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand–but in the end decided not to run–the Times has ignored Gillibrand’s most prominent actual rival in […]
Like Andrew Malcolm (FAIR Blog, 4/6/10), Bill O’Reilly (O’Reilly Factor, 4/5/10) has a bone to pick with how the “left-wing media” have representing the Tea Party movement. First, he complained, “Tea Party folks were labeled stupid, too dumb to understand complicated issues.” Then the media said that “many Tea Party people are racist and far-right […]
Is theTea Party movement actually more politically diverse than the “liberal media” would have you believe? Andrew Malcolm, a blogger for the L.A. Times who used to be Laura Bush’s press secretary, thinks so. He wrote yesterday (4/5/10) about a pair of polls that came out about the Tea Party movement: For upwards of 12 […]
Implicit in much coverage of the offshore drilling debate is that such oil has the potential to lower gasoline prices. The L.A. Times‘ report (3/30/10) on the Obama administration’s new offshore drilling plan provided this context: The announcement will come in the run-up to summer driving season, as gasoline prices have begun a national march […]
Articles like “Accusations Fly Between Parties Over Threats and Vandalism” in the New York Times today (3/26/10) are fairly useless. Are Republicans “fanning the flames with coded rhetoric,” as a Democratic lawmaker says, or is a Republican representative right that it’s Democrats who are “ratcheting up the rhetoric”? Readers are really left to judge based […]
Newsweek has a regular feature called “The Index” where the magazine picks out three current news events and maps them a 100-point scale, from Awful (1) to Awesome (100). The latest installment in the March 29 issue (which is not online) goes like this: AWESOME (80): Dennis Kucinich, who has voted against a slew of […]
…he would have to take a leave of absence to recover from the shame of having heaped ridicule on a guest who tried to explain to him how Congress could and would pass a healthcare reform bill.
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank (3/18/10) returns from his excursion into mocking right-wingers to return to his natural role of ridiculing single-payer advocates. His target today is Rep. Dennis Kucinich. You know what’s funny about him? He’s short! Or, in Milbank’s words, he’s a “little man,” a “little guy,” a “diminutive figure” and–because he announced […]
Boy, the folks at Amazon.com sure are mean–to hear the New York Times tell it. A March 18 story by Motoko Rich and Brad Stone begins: Amazon.com has threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online unless they agree to a detailed list of concessions regarding the sale of electronic books, according […]
Via Climate Progress (3/16/10), Scientific American guest blogger John Horgan (3/16/10) makes a disturbing claim: Two sources at the Science Times section of the New York Times have told me that a majority of the section’s editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity. Now, reviews of climate research literature […]
FAIR has a new Action Alert out on CNN‘s newest political commentator: Red State‘s Erick Erickson. For some indication of why this is perhaps the creepiest move by a cable network since MSNBC hired Michael Savage–and for an email address to communicate your feelings–click here. Please leave copies of your messages to CNN, or comments […]
Washington Post columnists Dana Milbank and David Broder are both committed guardians of the establishment center, but they don’t always interpret their role in the same way. Milbank led the cheers for White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel as chief dragger to the right (FAIR Blog, 3/2/10), whereas Broder saw his blame-the-boss disloyalty as […]
Offering a critique of the Iraq War drama Green Zone, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat (3/15/10) offers a “narrative of the Iraq invasion, properly told,” that ends with: And you had Saddam Hussein himself, the dictator in his labyrinth, apparently convinced that pretending to have WMD was the best way to keep his […]
New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt has not had a chance yet to respond to questions about his commentary on the ACORN hoax (FAIR Action Alert, 3/11/10), instead devoting his Sunday column (3/14/10) to a discussion of political labeling. It included this question: Why is the American Enterprise Institute almost always called “conservative” in […]
FAIR has a new Action Alert out pointing out that the New York Times has repeatedly published accounts of the right-wing anti-ACORN videos that credulously accepted assertions that have turned out to be false–for example, that one of the video-makers, James O’Keefe, went into ACORN offices dressed as a cartoon pimp. See the alert here […]
Victor Davis Hanson notes that one reason for American exceptionalism may be that we did not inherit from England “a large underclass of only quasi-free people attached to barons as serfs.” Sadly, a worse institution took root here, but never became part of the national psyche. —Rich Lowry & Ramesh Ponnuru (National Review Online, 3/8/10, […]
I don’t know why it should surprise me that Glenn Beck doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but you’d think that if you had a furious grudge against someone who died 40 years before you were born, you would spend at least a little time finding out what exactly was wrong with that historical figure. […]
FAIR has a new Action Alert reacting to reports that PBS‘s replacement for the retiring Bill Moyers and the canceled Now series will be headed by Newsweek editor Jon “Center-Right Nation” Meacham. To learn more or to send a message to PBS ombud Michael Getler, click here. Feel free to leave copies of your responses […]
