FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
We noted recently Fox News‘ peculiar understanding of the Fair Use doctrine, which allows writers, artists and others to make reasonable use of copyrighted material so long as they don’t infringe on the copyright owners’ commercial rights; Fox interprets this to mean that critics should only be allowed to make use of Fox video if […]
There’s a trope that you often see in corporate media discussions of the stimulus plan: Yeah, but do you really want to spend money on that? It may have started with the misrepresented contraceptive plan—which seemed to be grounded in a traditional media fascination/embarrassment at anything involving sex—but now it’s moved on to anything that…well, […]
CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric (1/27/09) introduced a segment on civilian casualties in Afghanistan by saying, “Our Elizabeth Palmer spoke with the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who says the Taliban have become masters of manipulating public opinion.” That commander, Gen. David McKiernan, was CBS’s sole on-camera source for the segment, making assertions like […]
Reading the Electronic Intifada‘s report on how U.S. corporate media coverage of Gaza “blindly asserted Israel’s right of self-defense regardless of what was happening on the ground” reminded me of a passage in the book I’m reading, Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee. Diamond argues that the ability to exterminate other groups of our own kind […]
Looking back on the good old days when we all supported torture, Richard Cohen writes today in the Washington Post (1/27/09): “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” So goes an aphorism that needs to be applied to the current debate over whether those who authorized and used torture should be […]
Leave it to Forbes to get someone from the Hoover Institution to do an “in-depth” feature on “The 25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media” (1/22/09). The results are about as bogus as you might imagine, including a number of people who are not only not liberals, but who are actively loathed by the […]
I don’t know whether George W. Bush will issue a slew of pardons in his last weekend in the White House, but I would expect such pardons to receive less scrutiny than those issued by his predecessor. And if he attempts to pardon those who committed crimes on his behalf, you can count on large […]
Posting his letter to the New York Times on FAIR Blog, FAIR activist bpb points out that not only is Thomas Friedman claiming that terrorism works, he’s making up evidence to claim that terrorism works: There is no evidence for Thomas Friedman’s contention that after Israel’s 2006 war with Hizballah, “Lebanese civilians, in anguish, said […]
It is a hallmark of a sane and moderate society that when it changes leaders and regimes, those left behind should be abandoned to the judgment of history. It is in savage societies that the defeat of a ruling faction entails its humiliation, exile and murder. –Charles Fried, New York Times op-ed page (10/11/09) <!–preview-break–> […]
Another problem with getting your surgeon general pick from corporate media is that they’re likely to have corporate media’s typical biases against marijuana.
Peter Hart asked the New York Times: What should TV reporting of a civilian massacre look like, exactly? Well, I guess the Times thinks they should be covered this way: Extra!: How America’s Leading Paper Covered a Massacre …which is to say, they should be covered almost exclusively from the point of view of the […]
Two things strike me about this appearance by Alan Colmes on the Colbert Report: One, the fact that he would take part with good humor in a humiliating joke that’s on him illustrates why he was the perfect person to play the role of the Liberal To Be Named Later. Second, it’s remarkable that even […]
The New York Times‘ Charles Blow writes on the op-ed page (“Heaven for the Godless?,” 12/27/08): “The Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life: No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.’” He then expresses […]
Discussing the failed auto bailout on CBS Evening News (12/12/08): KATIE COURIC: And it’s almost, meanwhile, turning to Washington, Bob, impossible to figure out just what happened to this auto bailout in the Senate. There’s all this finger pointing going on. What is your take? Can you explain it to us in simple terms? BOB […]
By way of suggesting that corporate media should make even more aggressive efforts to tie President-elect Barack Obama to a politician who called him a “motherfucker” for refusing to try to bribe him, MSNBC‘s Contessa Brewer remarks: I know that there are journalists who are taking a lot of heat for not being aggressive and […]
Newsweek‘s Mark Hosenball writes (12/22/08): The head of Obama’s intel transition team, John Brennan, was the leading candidate for CIA chief until he was slammed by liberal bloggers for not doing enough while serving as a top CIA and anti-terror official to oppose Bush. Actually, “liberal bloggers” hadn’t “slammed” Brennan for “not doing enough…to oppose […]
Sam Dillon’s New York Times piece (12/14/08) is much better than most of the coverage of President-elect Barack Obama’s search for an Education secretary nominee. It’s even got some on-target media criticism: Editorials and opinion articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have described the debate as pitting […]
David Ansen (Newsweek, 12/22/08) has a point when he says that the movie Borat “epitomized the [Bush] era.” But he strikes a jarring note when he says: Racism, misogyny and homophobia come pouring out of the mouths of [Sasha] Baron Cohen’s unsuspecting dupes, and in a time of political correctness, when the slightest suggestion of […]
With Bob Kerrey back in the news (New York Times, 12/11/08) as the faculty of the New School University that he heads gives him a vote of no confidence, it’s worth recalling the kid-glove treatment given to him by most of the media when his involvement in Vietnam-era war crimes was revealed (Extra!, 7–8/01). Oddly, […]
FAIR has a new Action Alert up about ABC‘s gross exaggeration of auto worker compensation. Feel free to post messages sent to ABC here–or any responses you get from the network.
