FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
It’s important to step back and figure out what “divisive” means here. Republicans and corporate interests are opposed to this idea, but the American people say they overwhelmingly support the concept of paying people at the bottom of the wage scale more.
When NewsHour anchor Gwen Ifill said, “We will hear more from Margaret [Warner] as she travels through Israel, the West Bank and Gaza over the next week and a half,” That sounded like it could be be an interesting opportunity for TV viewers to get a glimpse of Palestinian life. But that’s not what PBS chose to put on the air.
TV news is often not all that informative. Sometimes that’s because the reports are so short–a few hundred words. But then there are TV reports that manage to use their short space to garble the details of a story completely. ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl’s piece about the Senate confirmation hearing for Obama’s CIA pick John Brennan fit into the latter category.
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza wrote a piece giving Barack Obama some advice on what to say in his State of the Union address. The article almost reads like a parody of Beltway punditry.
This week on FAIR TV we take a look at the the “informal arrangement” between several media outlets–including the New York Times and the Washington Post– to not report news about a CIA drone base.
We also talk about the curious standard for “confirming” news from Israeli government officials, and we take a look at the 60 Minutes softball interview with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The early headline on a New York Times story (2/7/13) by Adam Nagourney was, “Millionaires Consider Leaving California Over Taxes.” At some point they changed the headline, probably because there’s nothing in the article that would support it. But the problems with the piece remain. The story it’s trying to tell is about a new […]
On last night’s O’Reilly Factor, the Fox News host wondered why NBC has failed to cover the new revelations about the White House drone program. The real question here is why Fox doesn’t let O’Reilly have access to the Internet.
The Washington Post reported some news that it’s known for years, but had decided not tell us until now: The CIA has a drone base in Saudi Arabia. Their rationale for withholding this information was simple: The government didn’t want them to. And from what the Post is telling us today, they weren’t the only ones.
Last night, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews hosted a discussion on the Obama administration’s recently disclosed “white paper” justifying its policy of using drones to strike at U.S. citizens. Matthews ultimately deciding that the policy was defensible–on the grounds that the CIA director Leon Panetta goes to church.
At the top of his 60 Minutes interview with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Steve Kroft declares, “The White House offered us 30 minutes, barely enough time to scratch the surface of their complicated personal and professional relationship, let alone discuss their policies.” Apparently what that meant was, “So I didn’t bother to ask them about that policy stuff.”
Ten years ago today, Colin Powell made the Bush administration’s case for going to war against Iraq, and much of what he said was false. Most of the journalists who promoted his justifications for the war paid no price for their failures.
NBC’s Richard Engel report that “what we’ve been able to confirm” is that a Syrian convoy attacked by Israel “was packed with fairly sophisticated Russian anti-aircraft missiles.” It is highly doubtful that Engel could “confirm” any such thing–unless by “confirm” he means that NBC is confirming that government sources are claiming what they are claiming.
PBS ombud Michael Getler agrees with FAIR that the recent Nova special on drones that was underwritten by Lockheed Martin–a major military contractor and drone manufacturer–violates PBS funding guidelines.
This week on FAIR TV, we look at the bubble that Joe Scarborough and David Gregory live in– where the government must make “big” spending cuts, and Paul Krugman doesn’t know economic. Also, does ABC’s Martha Raddatz understand what the government is telling her about Syria? And Reuters grants a U.S. government official anonymity to complain about Iran meddling in other countries.
Fareed Zakaria in his latest Washington Post column argues that pro-democracy movements would be better off with less democracy. To Zakaria, Egypt tried too much democracy too soon. “In Jordan, by contrast, the king did not rush to hold elections”– shocking!–but instead “appointed a council to propose changes to the constitution.”
Anonymous government sources speaking to the New York Times, along with intelligence based on satellite imagery, tell a frightening story: The brutal leader of an unfriendly Arab country is preparing to unleash chemical weapons. Sound familiar? There are significant differences between the allegations about Syria’s WMDs today and Iraq’s nonexistent weapons in 2003. But the […]
On Monday’s edition of the NewsHour (1/28/13), host Gwen Ifill referred to concerns about the “threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program,” and told viewers that a story “looks at the debate in Israel over how to deal with the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.” How hard is it for NewsHour to understand that allegations are not facts?
When the PBS NewsHour took a look at military spending cuts, the segment unfortunately presented a very narrow view of the issue–one that mimics the kind of coverage we see elsewhere in the corporate media.
The implication of Martha Raddatz’s quotation of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is that Syria has loaded chemical weapons at the ready, and that it would take a matter of hours for the Assad government to use them. But that’s not what Panetta told…well, Raddatz herself.
The country that has invaded and occupied two countries in the region, and is currently waging a drone war in Yemen–not to mention the occasional cluster bomb attack–is granted anonymity to call out another country’s alleged “meddling” there.
