FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Every four years, when summer begins, the national media curtain rises on an overheated stage of presidential politics. Like drama critics clutching their programs, thousands of journalists are keenly alert to the feverish orchestration for the Republican and Democratic conventions later in the season. The political show must go on — no matter how phony […]
One phrase — “security zone” — sums up an entire era of media spin about Israel’s 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon. When Israel completed its pullout in late May, most U.S. news outlets remained in sync with the kind of coverage that they’ve provided for more than two decades. In March 1978, the U.N. Security […]
Inside the temples of true believers, ardent faith has a way of prevailing. And so, in the Dot-Com year of 2000, vast numbers of followers seem eager to fulfill a sacred digital future. Implicit and largely unspoken, the virtual Ten Commandments of Dot-Comity are now widespread: You shall have no other gods before media synergy. […]
After the "Love Bug" virus struck millions of computer hard drives, many news outlets attributed the magnitude of the damage to overwhelming reliance on the same type of software. Suddenly, in the digital world, steep downsides of technical conformity were obvious. But such concerns should also extend to the shortage of variety in media content. […]
Last fall, when Jean Kilbourne’s new book "Deadly Persuasion" was arriving on shelves, Publishers Weekly praised it as "a wake-up call about the damaging effects of advertising in our media-saturated culture." But six months later, the mass media’s fingers remain firmly on the snooze button. It’s hardly surprising that few national media outlets have reviewed […]
The push by federal regulators to break up Microsoft is big news. Until recently, the software giant seemed untouchable — and few people demanded effective antitrust efforts against monopoly power in the software industry. These days, a similar lack of vision is routine in looking at the media business. Today, just six corporations have a […]
During the recent protests in Washington against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the leading cable news network became fascinated with “independent media.” Journalism free of huge economic interests — what a concept! “Modern-day demonstrators say you just can’t trust folks like us, the so-called corporate media,” a CNN anchor explained, introducing a report […]
Converging on the nation’s capital this weekend, thousands of protesters hope to do more than simply disrupt high-level meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on Sunday and Monday. Demonstrators are eager to help build a movement that can prevail over those powerful institutions. But America’s mainstream news outlets are ill-positioned to […]
Oh Elian, we love you! We’re the News Media. And you’re incredibly special. Many politicians, legal experts, psychologists, celebrities and pundits want the world to know that they fervently desire what’s best for you. We’ve been glad to put you on national television — live if possible — playing on a backyard swing set or […]
Nearly five years after its purchase of ABC, the Disney Company made history in late March by subjecting a confused 6-year-old boy to a preposterous "interview." For ABC News superstar Diane Sawyer, it was all in a day’s work. But former viewers of the Mickey Mouse Club had good reason to cringe. Whatever his failings, […]
Despite all the emphasis on new media, photography has never lost the power to move us. Some recent photo essays in major American magazines, focusing on the poor and dispossessed, are efforts to break through abstraction and indifference. They tell us a lot about the potential impacts — and common limitations — of photojournalism. The […]
SAN QUENTIN, Calif. — The moon, a bit more than half full, glowed in a sky of stars and darkness. Only a faint breeze was blowing across the San Francisco Bay. A few yards from the dark water’s edge, vans from local TV stations lined the road ending at prison gates. The state was ready […]
More than two months have passed since America Online and Time Warner announced plans to merge. Big news at the time, the formation of the world’s largest media firm is already old hat. And so it goes: Like the rest of us, journalists quickly get used to the latest consolidation of media power. One of […]
For Americans watching TV news, March began in typical fashion. When five people were shot on the first day of the month in a town near Pittsburgh, cable networks swiftly jumped into action. They devoted hour after hour to the tragedy — giving viewers plenty of live footage from helicopters, interviews with terrified eyewitnesses and […]
Twenty million listeners are accustomed to hearing the refrain on the radio: “I’m Dr. Laura Schlesinger.” While many assume that she’s a licensed physician or psychologist, her doctorate is actually in physiology. What’s most unfortunate is that Schlesinger uses her enormous media power to violate a key precept of health care: First, do no harm. […]
What if a big restaurant chain announced that it was hiring a chief inspector — and filled the job with the person who’d been in charge of the company’s kitchens? We might roll our eyes if the incoming inspector proclaimed from the outset that the meals on the menu were delicious and nutritious. National Public […]
A specter is haunting cyberspace — the specter of e-vandalism. Media alarms have been loud recently: Electronic commerce is under siege. A virtual crime wave threatens to wreak havoc on the World Wide Web. Any site is vulnerable, no matter how big. Let’s not bother to shed tears for the likes of E*Trade, Amazon.com and […]
Time magazine recently offered some notable journalism. A 14-page investigative report — "Big Money and Politics: Who Gets Hurt?" — provided extensive coverage of how government decisions really get made in the nation’s capital. The cover story, by Donald Barlett and James Steele, was terrific. But the mass media’s response to the new expose was […]
Andrew Jackson won the White House in 1828 with a fresh approach to oratory. “Jackson was the first president to master the liberal rhetoric,” wrote historian Howard Zinn, who called it “the new politics of ambiguity — speaking for the lower and middle classes to get their support in times of rapid growth and potential […]
Toward the end of the stunning new documentary "Regret to Inform," the camera focuses on the widow of an American pilot who died in Vietnam. "I don’t think he wanted to be an aggressor," Diane Van Renselaar says, her voice etched with sorrow. "I think he was unwillingly cast in that role the moment that […]
