FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
With two words, the governor of California has managed to highlight the confluence of anti-gay bias and misogyny. Open contempt for “girlie men” would have raised fewer eyebrows in the past. Reactions to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s put-down of Democrats in the state legislature — “if they don’t have the guts, I call them girlie men” — […]
Tom Ridge, the federal official in charge of defending the United States against terrorism, was on message when he told a July 14 news conference: “We don’t do politics at Homeland Security.” Such high-level claims of patriotic purity have been routine since 9/11. But in this election year, they’re more ludicrous than ever. Days earlier, […]
The morning after John Kerry announced that John Edwards will be his running mate, powerful newspapers fired warning shots across the bow of the Kerry-Edwards campaign. “It is likely that Mr. Edwards will be dispatched to critical industrial states like Ohio to talk about jobs, as he did with such force in the primary,” the […]
A recent Associated Press dispatch — headlined "Gadget May Help Sleepers Choose Dreams" — told the story of a new product that "can be programmed to help sleepers choose what to dream." Made in Japan, the 14-inch gizmo is called "Dream Workshop." After so much progress has been made to ravage the natural environment all […]
When a federal judge compares George W. Bush to Benito Mussolini, is that newsworthy? After the conservative daily New York Sun broke the story about a speech by Judge Guido Calabresi of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, few media outlets even mentioned what he had to say. “In a way that occurred before but […]
Political myth-making goes into overdrive every four years. With presidential campaigns fixated mostly on media, an array of nonstop spin takes its toll while illogic often takes hold: When heroes are absent, they’re invented. When convenient claims are untrue, they’re defended. Many supporters come to function as enablers — staying silent or mimicking their candidate’s […]
If journalism is history’s first draft, the death of Ronald Reagan has caused a step-up in the mass production of falsified history. It’s mourning in America. The main technique is omission. People who suffered from the Reagan presidency have no media standing today. It’s not cool to mention victims of his policies in, for example, […]
This year, Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign has two trains running that will collide at an unfortunate intersection — the Green Party’s national convention in Milwaukee. The collision course is bad news for all concerned. Nader, one of the great progressive reformers of the 20th century, has been clear and consistent for months in saying that […]
For many years, health-conscious Americans avidly consumed margarine as a wholesome substitute for artery-clogging butter. Only later did research shed light on grim effects of the partially hydrogenated oil in margarine, with results such as higher incidences of heart disease. Putting our trust in bogus alternatives can be dangerous for our bodies. And for the […]
Looking at visual images from U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, news watchers now find themselves in the midst of a jolting experience that roughly resembles a process described by Donald Rumsfeld: “It is the photographs that gives one the vivid realization of what actually took place. Words don’t do it. … You see the photographs, and […]
Among the millions of words that have appeared in the U.S. press since late April about abuse and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, one has been notably missing: Racism. Overall, when it comes to racial aspects, the news coverage is quite PC — as in Pentagon Correct. The outlook is “apple pie” […]
On his way to confirmation as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, the current U.N. envoy John Negroponte was busily twisting language like a pretzel at a Senate hearing the other day. The new Baghdad regime, to be installed on June 30, will have sovereignty. Well, sort of. Negroponte explained: "That is why I use the term […]
Taking the stage at a community center in the small Northern California town of Bolinas, a group of four musicians quickly showed themselves to be returning as a vibrant creative force centered very much in the present. Not that the music of Country Joe and the Fish ever really disappeared. Since the release of the […]
When the anchor of public television’s main news program goes out of his way to tell viewers that he’s setting the record straight about a recent historic event, the people watching are apt to assume that they’re getting accurate information. But with war intensifying in Iraq, a bizarre episode raises some very troubling concerns about […]
With warfare escalating in Iraq, syndicated columnist George Will has just explained the logic of the occupation. “In the war against the militias,” he wrote, “every door American troops crash through, every civilian bystander shot — there will be many — will make matters worse, for a while. Nevertheless, the first task of the occupation […]
Some of the most closely guarded documents in the White House are sure to be the ones written by the president’s top media strategist. The public will never get to see the key memos from Karl Rove, but a typical one these days might read something like… To: George and Dick Re: Media Terrain First, […]
For 30 months, 9/11 was a huge political blessing for George W. Bush. This week, the media halo fell off. Within the space of a few days, culminating with his testimony to the Sept. 11 commission Wednesday afternoon, former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke did serious damage to a public-relations scam that the White House has […]
Political aphorisms don’t get any more cogent: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell’s famous observation goes a long way toward explaining why — a full year after the invasion of Iraq — the media battles over prewar lies are so ferocious in the United States. […]
To encourage restraint in war coverage, governments don’t need to shoot journalists — though sometimes that’s helpful. Thirteen journalists were killed while covering the war and occupation in Iraq last year, says a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The deaths were a subset of 36 on-the-job fatalities related to journalistic work across […]
If Mark Twain were living now instead of a century ago — when he declared himself “an anti-imperialist” and proclaimed that “I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land” — the famous writer’s views would exist well outside the frame of today’s mainstream news media. In the current era, […]
