FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
AP‘s story (1/28/10) on Ben Bernanke’s reconfirmation as chair of the Federal Reserve states plainly what is more usually the unstated assumption in corporate media coverage of the Fed: The battle over Bernanke’s confirmation has been a test of central bank independence, a crucial element if the Fed is to carry out unpopular but economically […]
AP‘s Calvin Woodward, who has the standing assignment of “factchecking” political speeches, continues to be an embarrassment to genuine factcheckers everywhere–substituting his own weird value judgments, semantic games and crystal-ball gazing for genuine examination of facts (FAIR Blog, 10/30/08, 2/25/09, 4/30/09). In his post–State of the Union effort (1/27/10), he singles out Barack Obama’s call […]
FAIR has a new Action Alert out, “Does NYT‘s Top Israel Reporter Have a Son in the IDF?” (1/27/10), about the New York Times‘ failure to respond to questions about whether Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner’s son is enlisted in Israel’s military, and, if so, whether this poses a conflict of interest. If you send […]
The New York Times, which we had criticized (FAIR Blog, 1/12/10, 1/13/10) for ignoring insurgent candidate Jonathan Tasini in its coverage of the New York Senate race, ran a substantial piece about his candidacy today (1/27/10). While the piece, by N.R. Kleinfield, had a somewhat wry tone as it stressed the “long shot” nature of […]
An interesting catch from Think Progress (1/26/10)–from an interview conducted last year by Fox News‘ Chris Wallace (9/27/09) with pretend pimp James O’Keefe: WALLACE: O’Keefe says he wants to do more undercover films, and he has some targets in mind. He says his friends always tell him the next sting will never work. O’KEEFE: I […]
Time‘s Joe Klein wrote on his magazine’s Swampland blog (1/25/10) that the American public doesn’t understand that the economy benefited from the Obama administration’s stimulus efforts. So far, so good–it’s true that economists generally feel that the stimulus bill had some impact in curbing unemployment, saving about 1.2 million jobs, according to one survey of […]
An enterprising Washington Post report by Joe Stephens (1/23/10) uses the Freedom Of Information Act to uncover the close and creepy relationship between folksy far-right broadcaster Paul Harvey and longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The documents Stephens uncovered show Harvey as just the kind of journalist that Hoover liked: sycophantic (“If the Republic has […]
Amy Wilentz has a strong critique of the media in her column in the new issue of the Nation (2/8/10). Starting with the New York Times‘ David Brooks (1/15/10; see FAIR Blog, 1/15/10), she demolishes his facile comparison of Haiti and Barbados (“Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery […]
The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves. –Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (1/21/10), granting corporations the power to spend untold billions to do our thinking for us
An illuminating account of how conservatives won the Massachusetts Senate race (Washington Independent, 1/20/10) singled out an op-ed by Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal (1/14/10) as having energized citizens to vote against Martha Coakley. And, honestly, the piece does provide plenty of legitimate ammunition for the anti-Coakley side. The op-ed centered on a […]
I agree with much of what Timothy Egan has to say in his recent New York Times blog post (1/20/10), but I’m tired of hearing this: Democrats have to govern in a country that is essentially center-right. What does that even mean? To the right of the center of what? It’s like saying that all […]
digby (1/19/10) spotted a telling moment on the Ed Show (MSNBC, 1/19/10), when host Ed Schultz asked Politico‘s Mike Allen “what’s the next move for progressives” if the Democrat lost in the Massachusetts Senate race. Allen’s response: I would remind you that when Republicans started to eat each other up, we talked about how it […]
The New York Times is one of the most effective tools for limiting discussion in the U.S. political system. Falsely perceived as a left-leaning outlet, it has the power to make the most reasonable proposals seem ultra-radical by placing them beyond the pale. Take yesterday’s review by Times book critic Michiko Kakutani (1/19/10) of progressive […]
It’s striking how the coverage of the Republicans’ gaining a 41st vote in the Senate accepts without question the idea that there is nothing unusual or objectionable about a majority party needing 60 votes to pass any legislation there. This normalization of the filibuster, as I wrote in the December 2009 issue of Extra!, amounts […]
Sam Husseini (1/15/10) recalls a great media quote from one of Martin Luther King’s most powerful sermons, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church (4/30/67): Been a lot of applauding over the last few years. They applauded our total movement; they’ve applauded me. America and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery. And I stood before […]
Various forces have been accused of being behind the January 12 killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi–including the Iranian government, the Iranian opposition, the United States and Israel. To sort through this murky subject, MSNBC (1/12/10) turned to Democratic congressmember Jane Harman, who confidently told Andrea Mitchell: I think the logic here is […]
Glenn Greenwald (Salon, 1/12/10) makes an excellent point about the corrosive effect of the widespread use of anonymous sourcing by the most powerful U.S. news outlets. After listing a number of false stories that got prominent coverage in U.S. media, Greenwald writes: Unjustified anonymity–especially when mindlessly repeating what shielded government sources claim in secret–is the […]
One of the frustrating things about corporate media coverage is that it’s so focused on horserace coverage—who’s likely to win or lose in voting that might be months or years away—and yet they’re so bad at it. Take the matter of Jonathan Tasini, running in the Democratic senatorial primary in New York against incumbent Kirsten […]
New York Times‘ climate change reporter Andrew Revkin is taking a buyout from his employer after a tough year, the Columbia Journalism Review‘s website (12/14/09) reports. Revkin, whom CJR‘s Christine Russell describes as “one of the most influential and respected reporters on the environment,” says that 2009 “has been the hardest year I’ve experienced on […]
We’ve noted the corporate media’s double standard on Nazi analogies: When conservatives are compared to the Third Reich, however obscurely, it’s an outrageous slur, but when leaders of the right charge progressives with Hitler-like tendencies, it’s unremarkable political rhetoric. Political Animal‘s Steve Benen (12/8/09) rounds up some similar examples of criticisms that are outrageous when […]
