FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Earlier this year, I asked my undergraduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to evaluate a barrage of news stories declaring that “teen drivers are more dangerous than anyone thought” (Paula Zahn Now, 1/18/06) in response to an American Automobile Association study warning that crashes involving 15- to 17-year-old drivers killed 31,000 people […]
Black Americans are “insane,” “predators,” “running wild,” “killing each other,” perpetrating “self-destructive sexual behavior and drug use,” and in need of “thundering” condemnations from leaders to halt their culture-driven recklessness. A vicious attack by far-right, race-baiting commentators like Michael Savage or Ann Coulter? No, these are routine disparagements by the New York Times‘ well-respected, progressive […]
1980: The Washington Post‘s front-page profile (9/28/80) of “Jimmy,” a black eight-year-old junkie, ignited pandemonium. Mayor Marion Barry ordered police and teachers to inspect children’s arms for needle holes. Despite a $10,000 reward and intensive searches, neither Jimmy nor any other child addict was found. “Jimmy” did not exist, Post reporter Janet Cooke later confessed. […]
Other than ultra-quotable crime experts such as Princeton’s John (“adolescent superpredator”) DiIulio and Northeastern University’s James Alan (“teenage crime storm”) Fox, few individuals have contributed more to the inflammatory and systematic misportrayal of teenage crime in American than Rolling Stone magazine’s contributing editor Randall Sullivan. Sullivan’s fact-lite, anecdote-laden style specialized in blowing up extremely rare, […]
As America’s officially ignored death toll from overdoses of heroin, cocaine, prescription drugs and alcohol mixed with dope took another huge jump in 1995 (taking 10,000 lives, up 65 percent since 1992), America’s media raged with the threat to the republic posed by . . . sick people smoking marijuana to relieve pain.
In previous decades, American politicians and social scientists predicted waves of violence stemming from “impulsive” blacks, volatile Eastern European immigrants, “hot-blooded” Latin Americans, and other groups “scientifically” judged to harbor innately aggressive traits. In each case, the news media joined in vilifying whatever temporarily unpopular minority that politicians and pseudo-science had flocked to blame. And […]
“Unplanned pregnancies. HIV infection and AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases. Cigarettes, alcohol and drug abuse. Eating disorders. Violence. Suicide. Car crashes.” The 21-word lead-in to a Washington Post (12/22/92) report sums up today’s media image of the teenager: 30 million 12- through 19-year-olds toward whom any sort of moralizing and punishment can be safely directed, […]
