ABC Distorts Auto Worker Pay
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.
Jim Naureckas
From Selma to Long Island: NYT Denounces Outside Agitators
There was an Editorial Observer piece in the New York Times today (12/4/08) that really read like a piece from the segregated South of the 1950s, taking the side of the Jim Crow-enforcing sheriff against the outside agitators. The piece described an event at a church in Patchogue, N.Y., that encouraged immigrants to talk about […]
John Brennan: ‘Alleged’ Torture Supporter or Victim of Ardent Leftists?
The New York Times yesterday (12/3/08) described problems that President-elect Barack Obama faces in managing the transition at the Central Intelligence Agency. CJR‘s website has an item today (12/4/08) critical of the piece as a “dramatic example” of the Times‘ slanting its intelligence reporting toward sources who “don’t think that anyone who formulated or acquiesced […]
Silver Lining in Economic Crisis: Obama Can Betray Voters
The media trope that presidents-elect ought to break progressive campaign promises really displays the anti-democratic and pro-corporate biases of the press at their most glaring. Who cares what you told the voters? Here’s what the interests that really matter want you to do. The latest instance in this sad series is a USA Today editorial […]
Chris Wallace and Why Watergate Worked
At a screening of the film Frost/Nixon, Fox News Channel‘s Chris Wallace defends George W. Bush against the assertion—which doesn’t seem to have been made by anyone present—that Bush’s crimes were worse than Richard Nixon’s (Salon, 12/2/08): It trivializes Nixon’s crimes and completely misrepresents what George W. Bush did. Whatever George W. Bush did was […]
Robert Samuelson’s Not-to-Do List
Today’s column by Robert Samuelson (Washington Post, 12/1/08) is a classic of the “why the president-elect must break progressive campaign promises” genre. Usually, of course, the new president should keep such promises: Obama won the election, and in normal times, his campaign agenda ought to be front and center. But these are not normal times, […]
Globe Pursues Media’s Corporate Democratic Dreams
Noam Chomsky points out that a Boston Globe analysis (11/9/08) of the Obama victory claims that the president-elect owes nothing to “traditional Democratic constituencies” like labor, women, ethnic minorities and the peace movement, because a “grassroots army of millions”—seemingly unconnected to such constituencies—”propelled” Obama’s win. It’s worth noting, however, that this idea of a Democratic […]
Abandoning Journalism When It’s Needed Most
Here’s the New York Times (11/24/08), reporting the Citigroup bailout: In tense, round-the-clock negotiations that stretched until almost midnight on Sunday, it became clear that the crisis of confidence had to be defused now or the financial markets could plunge further. Note the absence of any source here–that’s reporter Eric Dash, with the authority of […]
The L.A. Times Must Think You Won’t Click Its Links
It says something for the weakness of your argument when you have to turn your opponents’ argument on its head. Take the L.A. Times editorial today (11/24/08) headlined “An Unfair Litmus Test.” The editorial claims that “some ardent supporters of Barack Obama are aggrieved because the president-elect’s emergent national security team includes supporters of the […]
Insurance Underwriters of the World Unite!
The New York Times‘ Jonathan Hicks (11/17/08), writing about newly elected Staten Island Rep. Michael McMahon: Mr. McMahon…stresses his working-class roots, telling voters of his Irish fatherâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s lifelong job as an insurance underwriter. That must be the same working class that Bill O’Reilly comes from.
Ailes: Fox Will Do Fine Pushing Obama Scandals
Interesting catch by digby from Broadcasting & Cable (11/10/08), which was talking to Fox News chief Roger Ailes about what happens to Fox‘s ratings post-election: “I think cable numbers overall will drop, although there is a fascination with Obama,” says Ailes. But he sees light at the end of the tunnel: Historically, the dawning of […]
Fearing Fairness—When You Don’t Know What It Is
After giving a dubious account of the causes of the Democrats’ 1994 electoral disaster, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson (11/14/08) provides an inaccurate description of the Fairness Doctrine, which he calls a federal regulation (overturned by the Reagan administration in 1987) requiring broadcast outlets to give equal time to opposing political viewpoints. Under this doctrine, […]
Post Ombud’s Weak Case for a Pro-Obama Tilt
Washington Post ombud Deborah Howell (11/9/08) charged her paper with “a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama.” But her evidence for this pro-Obama bias was remarkably weak. She presented some counts of stories and pictures, like “the number of Obama stories since November 11 [2007] was 946, compared with [John] McCain’s 786.” But she noted that […]
If There’s One Thing They Can’t Stand, It’s Disarming Candor
The “media bias” against Sarah Palin is a key ingredient of the conservative victimology of 2008, even though when you see negative reports about Palin these days, they’re generally sourced to her erstwhile Republican colleagues—and corporate media sometimes go to absurd lengths to give the attacks a semi-positive spin, as in this Alessandra Stanley piece […]
Ken Walsh vs. the Mystery Van
Award-winning U.S. News & World Report reporter Kenneth Walsh (11/10/08) joins in the media chorus urging Barack Obama and the Democrats to move to the right–for their own good, of course: The initial indications are that Obama will start in the center…. One reason, Democratic advisers say, is that so many new members of Congress […]
Embracing Obama, Despite His ‘Bloodline’
Editor & Publisher‘s Greg Mitchell (11/8/08) notes conservative columnist Kathleen Parker’s “misty-eyed” writing (11/7/08) about the Obama victory: “The little speck of difference that kept us imperceptibly apart had been dissolved in a lovely instant of national consensus that race no longer matters.” But he notes that not so long ago, that “little speck of […]
Ignoring Reality to Analyze Politics
Joshua Holland (AlterNet, 11/10/08) offers “more evidence that much of the traditional media’s analysis of American politics is utterly worthless, and should probably just be ignored out of hand”: Only moments after the networks declared Barack Obama the winner of a dramatic realignment election, William Bennett, the conservative icon, declared on CNN that “America is […]
Complicating Guantanamo
Following the lead of the New York Times, which had a similar story (11/2/08) right before the election, Newsweek‘s Dan Ephron has a piece (11/7/08) on “The Gitmo Dilemma,” explaining why Obama “won’t close the controversial prison soon.” Like the Times story, Newsweek struggles to complicate a simple situation. The U.S. had three things it […]
Getting Serious About Getting Serious About Bipartisanship
You see some absurd standards being set for how far President-elect Barack Obama should tip his cabinet to the right. Al Kamen in the Washington Post (11/7/07) writes that if “he’s serious about this bipartisan thing…then he’s going to have to do better than his predecessors, probably putting at least three non-D’s in the cabinet […]
Dubious Oddsmaking on Obama’s Cabinet
This Newsweek interactive feature that offers odds on Obama’s cabinet picks describes Lawrence Summers, who pushed for the policies that led to the financial crisis (Beat the Press, 11/5/08), as “A world-class economist, the former Harvard University president is valued for his deep experience in handling financial crises,” and calls Richard Holbrooke, whose impossible ultimatums […]
