FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
And so, early in the year 2000, it came to pass that visions of a seamless media web enraptured the keepers of pecuniary faith as never before. A grand new structure, AOL Time Warner, emerged while a few men proclaimed themselves trustees of a holy endeavor. They told the people about a wondrous New Media […]
A few numbers tell a dramatic story about extreme changes in media fascination with the Internet. After the 1990s ended, I set out to gauge how news coverage of cyberspace shifted during the last half of the decade. The comprehensive Nexis database yielded some revealing statistics: In 1995, media outlets were transfixed with the Internet […]
In the nation’s biggest news weekly, the final headline of 1999 posed a question that preoccupies many journalists these days: “A Second American Century?” Providing some answers on the last page of Time’s Dec. 27 issue, pundit Charles Krauthammer was upbeat. “The world at the turn of the 21st century is not multipolar but unipolar,” […]
The arrival of 2000 reminds us that life is short. Deadening routines often squander our time, while evasions take unnecessary tolls in human suffering. But much better possibilities remain. Every day, a nationwide media barrage encourages us to be cynical and passive. Endless dramas of politics and grand commerce — amorality plays — are performed […]
P.U.-litzer Prizes recognize some of America’s stinkiest media performances. Each year, I work with Jeff Cohen of the media watch group FAIR to sift through hundreds of deserving entries. The competition is always fierce. But only an elite few can walk off with a P.U.-litzer. Here are the eighth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, for the foulest […]
When the World Trade Organization summit collapsed in Seattle, major American news outlets seemed to go into shock. The failure to launch a new round of global trade talks stunned many journalists who were accustomed to covering the WTO with great reverence. In the wake of the crucial meeting, the mainstream media plunged into stages […]
It’s a pro-democracy movement. And it’s global. The vibrant social forces that converged on Seattle — and proceeded to deflate the WTO summit — are complex, diverse and sometimes contradictory. Yet the threads of their demands form a distinct weave: We want full democratic rights for all people. Leaders of the U.S. government are pleased […]
SEATTLE — After enjoying a free ride in American news media for many years, the World Trade Organization just hit a brick wall. The credit should go to a vast array of civic activists — represented by tens of thousands of protesters from every continent who took to the streets here with determined nonviolence. The […]
Welcome to an all-new episode of “Media Jeopardy!” This is a game that never ends, whether you like it or not. A reminder of the rules: First, listen carefully to the answer. Then, try to come up with the correct question. Today’s main category is: “Overseas and Under-reported.” When President Clinton visited this far-off nation […]
When thousands of protesters converge on Seattle at the end of this month to challenge the global summit of the World Trade Organization, they’re unlikely to get a fair hearing from America’s mass media. Consider how one of the nation’s most influential newspapers framed the upcoming confrontation as November began. The Washington Post reported on […]
With the start of 2000 less than two months away, I’ve been thinking about a beloved American writer who stuck his neck out the last time people went through a change of centuries. We revere Mark Twain as a superb storyteller who generates waves of laughter with powerful undertows of biting satire. One generation after […]
A specter is haunting America — the specter of populism. Now that Patrick Buchanan has left the Republican fold to seek the Reform Party’s presidential nomination, a lot of journalists will be analyzing his denunciations of the bipartisan establishment. In the months ahead, many pundits are going to throw brickbats in his direction. But Buchanan […]
If you’re watching much television these days, you’ve probably seen a lot of commercials for online investing. Many large brokerage firms are now urging people to play the stock market via the Internet. So, in routine fashion, TV spots dramatize cyber-trading as an activity that brings excitement, independence, financial security and even self-realization. Helping to […]
This is a tale of two magazines. One of them has more than 100 colorful pages of ads packed into each issue. Brand names evoke the very good life just out of reach: Saks and Victoria’s Secret, Gucci and Mercedes-Benz, Armani and Cartier. The articles are equally cool in this new magazine named Talk, which […]
It’s known as advertising, but we may as well call it psychological warfare. Our entire society is a free-fire zone for nonstop commercial assaults. Everyone is in the cross hairs — no matter how young. And quite a few professionals with formal training in psychology have enlisted in the never-ending war. That’s what worries the […]
After weeks of bitter partisan wrangling over budget issues, the federal government began its new fiscal year on October 1. Such political confrontations have become routine in Washington. As strategists work overtime, news accounts provide us with ping-pong journalism — informing the country about the latest shots that top politicos have slammed across the net. […]
On the first day of January, many public ceremonies will feature time capsules — sealed long ago, when “the year 2000” sounded incredibly futuristic. Those containers, intended for opening at the start of the new millennium, presumably hold evocative symbols of earlier eras. But as the moment nears to open old time capsules, we might […]
The black-and-white TV footage is grainy and faded, but it still jumps off the screen — a portentous clash between a prominent reporter and a maverick politician. Thirty-five years ago, on the CBS program "Face the Nation," journalist Peter Lisagor argued with a senator who stood almost alone on Capitol Hill, strongly opposing the war […]
When the story about Viacom and CBS broke, news accounts quickly depicted a match made in corporate heaven — at more than $37 billion, the largest media merger in history. With the public kept outside the frame, it was a rosy picture. "Analysts hailed the deal as a good fit between two complementary companies," the […]
No matter how nice it may be, ritual coverage of Labor Day doesn’t begin to make up for routine media themes the rest of the year. We’re accustomed to a negative spin about American labor. In other contexts, we might recognize those themes as signs of implicit bias, outright prejudice or even bigotry. For instance: […]
