FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Contempt for the empirical that can’t be readily jiggered or spun is evident at the top of the executive branch in Washington. The country is mired in a discourse that echoes the Scopes trial dramatized in “Inherit the Wind.” Mere rationality would mean lining up on the side of “science” against the modern yahoos and […]
When Martin Luther King Jr. publicly referred to “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government,” he had no way of knowing that his description would ring so true 40 years later. As the autumn of 2007 begins, the reality of Uncle Sam as an unhinged mega-killer haunts a large […]
It evokes a tragedy that marks an epoch. From the outset, the warfare state has exploited “9/11,” a label at once too facile and too laden with historic weight — giving further power to the tacit political axiom that perception is reality. Often it seems that media coverage is all about perception, especially when the […]
Reading his “Letter From Baghdad” column in the New York Times on Sept. 5, you’d never know that Thomas Friedman has a history of enthusiasm for war. Now he laments that Iraq is bad for the United States — “everyone loves seeing us tied down here” — stuck in the “madness that is Iraq.” And […]
The USA’s military spending is now close to $2 billion a day. This fall, the country will begin its seventh year of continuous war, with no end in sight. On the horizon is the very real threat of a massive air assault on Iran. And few in Congress seem willing or able to articulate a […]
The man who ran CNN’s news operation during the invasion of Iraq is now doing damage control in response to a new documentary’s evidence that he kowtowed to the Pentagon on behalf of the cable network. His current denial says a lot about how “liberal media” outlets remain deeply embedded in the mindsets of pro-military […]
The problem with letting history judge is that so many officials get away with murder in the meantime — while precious few choose to face protracted vilification for pursuing truth and peace. A grand total of two people in the entire Congress were able to resist a blood-drenched blank check for the Vietnam War. Standing […]
The U.S. media establishment is mainlining another fix for the Iraq war: It isn’t so bad after all, American military power could turn wrong into right, chronic misleaders now serve as truth-tellers. The hit is that the war must go on. When the White House chief of staff Andrew Card said five years ago that […]
In mid-July, a media advisory from the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer announced a new series of interviews on the PBS show that will address “what Iraq might look like when the U.S. military leaves.” A few days later, Time magazine published a cover story titled “Iraq: What will happen when we leave.” But it turns […]
Former readers of Mad Magazine can remember a regular feature called “Scenes We’d Like to See.” It showed what might happen if candor replaced customary euphemisms and evasions. These days, what media scenes would we like to see? One aspect of news media that needs a different paradigm is the correction ritual. Newspapers are sometimes […]
It was a chilling moment on a split-screen of history. While the Senate debated the Iraq war on the night of July 17, a long-dead senator again renounced a chronic lie about congressional options and presidential power. The Senate was in the final hours of another failure to impede the momentum of war. As the […]
Many of America’s most prominent journalists want us to forget what they were saying and writing more than four years ago to boost the invasion of Iraq. Now, they tiptoe around their own roles in hyping the war and banishing dissent to the media margins. The media watch group FAIR (where I’m an associate) has […]
It’s a popular notion: TV sets and other media devices let us in on the violence of war. “Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens,” President Bush told a news conference more than three years ago. “I don’t. It’s a tough time for the American people to see that. It’s gut-wrenching.” […]
Three years have passed since most Americans came to the conclusion that the Iraq war was a “mistake.” Reporting the results of a Gallup poll in June 2004, USA Today declared: “It is the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a major deployment of U.S. forces a mistake.” And public […]
The cave-in on Capitol Hill — supplying a huge new jolt of funds for the horrific war effort in Iraq — is surprising only to those who haven’t grasped our current circumstances. Public opinion polls aren’t the same as political leverage. The Vietnam War went on for years after polling showed that most Americans opposed […]
Predictably, some critics have decried the current efforts by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. to buy the Dow Jones company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal. But let’s imagine the dynamics that might emerge if Murdoch gains control of that newspaper. Like viewers of his Fox News Channel, readers of The Wall Street Journal under Murdoch […]
Many days after the mass killings at Virginia Tech, grisly stories about the tragedy still dominated front pages and cable television. News of carnage on a vastly larger scale — the war in Iraq — ebbs and flows. The overall coverage of lethal violence, at home and far away, reflects the chronic evasions of the […]
The Pentagon’s most likely next target is Iran. Hillary Clinton says “no option can be taken off the table.” Barack Obama says that the Iranian government is “a threat to all of us” and “we should take no option, including military action, off the table.” John Edwards says, “Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed […]
The media spectacle that John McCain made of himself in Baghdad on April 1 was yet another reprise of a ghastly ritual. Senator McCain expressed “very cautious optimism” and told reporters that the latest version of the U.S. war effort in Iraq is “making progress.” Three years ago, in early April 2004, when an insurrection […]
The days are getting longer, but the media shadows are no shorter as they cover the war in Iraq through American eyes, squinting in Washington’s pallid sun. Debated as an issue of politics, the actual war keeps being drained of life. Abstractions thrive inside the Beltway, while the war effort continues: funded by the U.S. […]
