FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Charlie Savage did some good reporting on the Bush signing statements, but his front-page story in today’s New York Times on reproductive rights groups’ reaction to Sotomayor is way off course. His lead explains that abortion rights advocates are worried about Sotomayor, because “when she has written opinions that touched tangentially on abortion disputes, she […]
The wars that have wracked the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1996, killing well over 5 million people (International Rescue Committee, 1/08) in what may be the deadliest conflict since World War II, are officially over. A peace agreement was signed in 2002, and general elections were held in 2006. But conflict and the […]
Today the Washington Post devoted front-page real estate to an examination of how some wealthy people who don’t think of themselves as wealthy will suffer under Obama’s proposed tax plans. Their primary example is Gail Johnson, who, along with her husband, earns about $515,000 in a typical year from the chain of preschools and after-school […]
ABC‘s Good Morning America did a special 3-part series on race this week, “Black and White Now,” to “look at race relations in America.” All three parts revisited old experiments or news stories. The first (3/31/09) was a repeat of an experiment with children playing with black and white dolls, showing that now kids don’t […]
Caitlin Flanagan, primarily known (and embraced by mainstream media) for her anti-feminist writings, was back in the New York Times this weekend—this time attacking former ’70s radical Sara Jane Olson. As a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, Olson (born Kathleen Soliah) was indicted for plotting to bomb LAPD patrol cars; she evaded capture until […]
The New York Times‘ Peter Baker reports today (3/18/09) that Obama has tapped “a Swahili-speaking retired Air Force officer who grew up in Africa as the son of missionaries” to be his special envoy to Sudan. Does Baker or his Times editors realize that they don’t speak Swahili in Sudan? It’s like reporting that Obama […]
Just last week (2/26/09), Nicholas Kristof, who has written often about the situation in Darfur, was rooting for the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, as a step towards “help[ing] end the long slaughter and instability in Sudan”: Next Wednesday, the International Criminal Court is expected to issue an arrest […]
The night before Obama’s big healthcare summit, NBC Nightly News offered some advice. “There’s a place where policymakers could look for some tips on how an affordable, well-run system operates,” anchor Brian Williams told viewers. “It is already running here in the U.S.” Correspondent Robert Bazell explained: “Many experts agree that whatever happens in the […]
Of all the supposed “pork” in the proposed economic stimulus bill, perhaps none got so much media attention as the provision to extend family planning to more low-income women. As the House struggled to pass the legislation, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) issued a press release (1/23/09) claiming that the plan “includes taxpayer funding for […]
Editor & Publisher reports that the musings of Bono will begin appearing on the New York Times opinion pages this Sunday–the latest episode in a long media tradition of choosing Western celebrities to address issues concerning Africa, one of Bono’s pet projects. Given Bono’s record of cozying up to Western leaders on issues like debt […]
The Associated Press reported on December 27 that “thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons.” In his latest column (1/2/09), Charles Krauthammer pointed to that report to prove just how obvious it is that Israel is the moral actor in […]
With Sen. Hillary Clinton’s historic bid for the presidency and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s subsequent VP nomination on the GOP ticket, women were in the national spotlight in the 2008 election as never before. But while Clinton and Palin generated a good deal of media discussion around the problems facing female candidates, coverage of women […]
The Washington Post recently published an editorial praising the city’s charter schools, claiming that those schools’ students outperform their public school counterparts “not because they come from more privileged backgrounds but because the charters are free to innovate and implement practices that work.” The editorial pointed to an analysis the paper did that found the […]
Just when you thought the “black voters killed gay marriage in California” myth had been completely debunked and put to rest, the New York Times (12/7/08) publishes an op-ed about Prop 8 and how black voters are homophobic. This comes one week after the Times published another op-ed (11/29/08) on Prop 8 and black voters […]
Two weekends ago the New York Times‘ Week In Review section launched an op-ed series called “Transitions,” in which it promised to provide “a series of Op-Ed articles by experts on the most formidable issues facing the new president.” The first installment (11/23/08), on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, featured seven op-eds. FAIR’s Peter […]
Too many things to say, really, about this New York Times online opinion piece by former Dole advisor Douglas MacKinnon. But hereâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s just one: Regarding the Obama phenomenon and the media fascination with him, a senior staffer for a rival Democrat primary opponent offered up this theory to me for part of the bias. This […]
For over a week there have been huge indigenous protests against the Uribe government in Colombia, in which at least two protesters have been killed by police and more than 100 injured. Uribe denied that police were firing at protesters, until CNN got videotape that showed them doing exactly that. How is the New York […]
When is a “flip-flop” evidence of moral character rather than a moral failing? To many in the corporate media, it seems, it’s when the perpetrator is John McCain. While Barack Obama was roundly disparaged for his “flip-flop” on public financing—criticism that largely ignored Obama’s actual promise to pursue an agreement on public financing with his […]
For once, mainstream media have found an anti-government protest to embrace. When the Olympic torch arrived in San Francisco on April 9 and thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to decry human rights abuses by the Chinese government, journalists descended on the scene like ants at a picnic. CNN led the feeding frenzy. The […]
When post-election violence erupted in Kenya at the end of December, U.S. media quickly settled into a familiar story: African tribes were savagely tearing each other apart. Journalists described the events as “savage tribal killings” (L.A. Times, 1/2/08), “gruesome ethnic killings” (Washington Post, 1/6/08) and “tribal riots” (Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 1/3/08). “This is a […]
