FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
On the first day of the new Congress, Rep. Steve King (R.-Iowa) introduced legislation to end the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship—or, as he termed it, “closing the ‘anchor baby’ loophole.” King claimed on CNN (1/7/11) that “as many as a million” of these “anchor babies” would flood the country in 2011. At the […]
A New York Times op-ed today (2/15/11) by Scott Turow, Paul Aiken and James Shapiro (“Would the Bard Have Survived the Web?”) uses William Shakespeare as exhibit A in their case for copyright, noting that theater flourished in 16th century England because playwrights were able to make money by charging people to enter their theaters. […]
In the midst of a major recession, one group of people is making out like bandits, and USA Today’s on the case. Wall Street bankers? CEOs? Guess again: It’s government workers. “Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time—in pay and hiring—during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector,” wrote […]
When Bill Moyers announced last November that he would be stepping down from Bill Moyers Journal, and PBS decided to cancel its other Friday night news show, Now, the network lost two hard-hitting independent programs from its lineup. To fill the hole, New York PBS station WNET announced the launch of a new one-hour program, […]
In light of the recent and tragic spate of gay youth suicides, the Washington Post‘s On Faith blog chose to honor National Coming Out day with a guest post (10/11/10) by raging homophobe Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. The post, titled “Christian Compassion Requires the Truth About Harms of Homosexuality,” accused “homosexual activist […]
For the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, NBC anchor Brian Williams (Dateline NBC, 8/22/10) recalled the experience as his own boy’s adventure tale: You know, I’ve been around a lot of guns and a lot of dead bodies, and a lot of people shooting at people to make dead bodies. But you put them all […]
There’s a push for the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act before Congress adjourns for the season, which has sparked some pushback from right-wingers given prominent platforms in the corporate media. The Act, which already passed the House, would help enforce and close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act of 1963; under the law, […]
An AP piece published across the Web today (9/16/10) carries this headline: AP-GfK Poll: Nearly Half Oppose Tax Hikes for Rich. Well, that’s one way of looking at it–just like you could report the results of the 1988 election by saying that Michael Dukakis got “nearly half” of the popular vote. The more logical way […]
When it comes to covering activist gatherings, corporate media have established clear standards: Numbers don’t count nearly as much as politics do. Last fall, when tens of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists and their allies marched on Washington in a grassroots rally for equality, media gave it far less coverage than the […]
The New York Times‘ Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes today (8/31/10) about the possible steps Obama might take to bolster the economy: With voters angry about government spending, and economists divided about just what approach is the correct one, such aggressive steps are by now out of the question. “There’s a deep frustration among economists that […]
In the coverage of Hurricane Katrina’s fifth anniversary, you’ll find several obligatory mentions in the corporate media of the still-decimated Lower Ninth Ward, but you’d be hard pressed to find anything as direct or damning as what you find in independent media coverage–for example, this piece on Women’s eNews (8/29/10) by Kimberly Seals Allers, who […]
Dateline NBC (8/22/10) did a special look back at Hurricane Katrina last weekend in anticipation of the disaster’s five-year anniversary. Watching the collage of 2005 footage and Brian Williams’ present-day commentary, I was struck by his characterization of the violence: You know, I’ve been around a lot of guns and a lot of dead bodies, […]
No, that’s not a typo: Only 1.6 percent of sports coverage on L.A.’s three major network affiliates went to women’s sports. On ESPN Sportscenter, it’s 1.4 percent. It’s just slightly higher when you add in ticker-tape coverage. And it’s getting worse, not better: Those numbers are down from about 5 percent in 1989. And a […]
That’s according to Time magazine’s Alex Perry (7/5/10): If you want to see what’s wrong with Africa, take a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The size of Western Europe, with almost no paved roads, Congo is the sucking vortex where Africa’s heart should be. Independent Congo gave the world Mobutu Sese Seko, who […]
This weekend the New York Times (6/13/10) reminded me once again that I am not the paper’s target audience. While supporters say the estate tax affects only the richest members of society and helps counteract the concentration of wealth, that million-dollar limit would seem to ensnare many people who consider themselves decidedly middle class–especially in […]
The Insight Center for Community Economic Development (3/8/10) released a stunning report about the wealth gap for women of color: Single black women have a median wealth of $100 and Hispanic women of $120—dramatically lower than white men ($43,800), white women ($41,500) or black men ($7,900). The median wealth for single white women in their […]
Peter G. Peterson is on a crusade to end Social Security as we know it, and he’s spread his tentacles throughout the media. Peterson, investment banker and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, is also a co-founder of the Concord Coalition, a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development and a board member of the Committee […]
In his May 23 column–“Moonshine or the Kids?”–New York Times columnist Nick Kristof has hit upon the “simplest option” for keeping poor African kids in school (and ending malaria): getting their fathers to stop drinking, smoking and whoring. There’s an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It’s […]
NBC reporter Ann Curry’s fawning interview with actor Ben Affleck (NBC Nightly News, 5/19/10), about his celebrity activist work in the Congo, is downright embarrassing: CURRY: Why do you pick the place that people think is actually one of the worst places in terms of the number of atrocities, in terms of the level of […]
Canada’s Globe and Mail decided to do a special issue on Africa this Monday, and who better to guest edit than Bono and Bob Geldof? There’s a piece about their day at the paper that’s truly absurd. Here’s the section on “Opinion Pages”: They move back to the meeting table to discuss more content […]
