WaPo’s Debate Advice: Make Sure Your Lies Are Devastating
The lesson seems to be: Make sure your lie is really devastating, since the fact that it’s a lie won’t matter much.
Peter Hart
Washington Post Greens Fracking
The Washington Post editorial page (10/5/12) weighed in on the contentious environmental issue of fracking. No surprise–they’re all for it. “Fracking’s Green Side” is the headline in the print edition. (The Web version is different.) The editors write: Those who would ban fracking or regulate it into oblivion ignore the exceptional benefits that inexpensive natural […]
ABC’s Very Efficient Anti-Chavez Propaganda
If you’re listening to a report on an Official Enemy like Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, you expect to hear a litany of misdeeds, real or imagined, about the leader in question. Just check out ABC World News (10/7/12), where anchor David Muir started out with this: And a fierce enemy of the United States, Venezuela’s […]
What Are Enemies For?: Iran Sham Helps PBS Smear Chavez
It’s no secret that U.S. media outlets don’t have much love for left-wing Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. A PBS NewsHour segment (10/5/12) just ahead of the recent election showed just how far you could go. Correspondent Ray Suarez opened by calling the election “a watershed moment for the world’s second-largest oil-producing nation and a critical supplier […]
FAIR TV: Time’s Fact Check FAIL, Chavez’s Savvy Daughter-Hugging, Are Afghans Human?
The new episode of FAIR TV. This week we take a look at Time‘s big fact checking cover story and how the Washington Post talks about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. We also ask the question: Do media think Afghans are humans too? Take a look and please share this with your friends.
When Did Checking the Facts Become Taking a Candidate ‘at His Word’?
Before the first presidential debate, CNN sent out a press release to promote the idea that they’d be doing factchecking of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. It’s kind of sad that this would be considered a novel enough idea to warrant a press release, but the actual factchecking was nothing you’d want to call attention […]
Time: Obama’s Lies Are Worse Because They’re More Accurate
In Time magazine’s new cover story (“Blue Truth, Red Truth,” 10/3/12), Michael Scherer attempts to sort out the puzzle of campaign season factchecking. But while the cover promises to tell us which candidate is telling the truth, it mostly manages to capture some of the corporate media’s worst factchecking tropes. The article kicks off with […]
How to Tell When ‘Humans’ Die in a U.S. War
ABC World News‘ David Muir (9/30/12) took note of the 2,000th U.S. military death in Afghanistan this way: Overseas now to Afghanistan, and a stark reminder tonight of the human cost of war. An attack at a checkpoint left two Americans dead, one of them a serviceman, the 2,000th U.S. military death since the war […]
Actual Suppression vs. Imaginary Fraud
As usual, comedian Jon Stewart explained reality on a fake news show better than most “real” news outlets. On the August 16 broadcast of Comedy Central’s Daily Show, Stewart imagined a world where peanut butter was treated with “huge amounts of hydrochloric acid to dissolve any potential dragon bones.” Sure, people die from the acid—but the dragon bone problem is […]
FAIR TV: ‘Professor’ Netanyahu, the ‘End’ of the Afghan Surge and WaPo/Big Oil Update
This week on FAIR TV: Was Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN address, illustrated with a cartoon bomb, really “professorial”? Plus some thoughts on whether the media should be declaring the Afghan surge “over,” and an update on what the Washington Post is telling activists about its ties to Big Oil.
NYT and Professor Netanyahu
Even stranger is the New York Times going on to point out that Iran’s uranium stockpile that could even be used for a weapon is getting smaller.
Romney’s Latest Gaffe: Telling the Truth on Taxes
We’re familiar with campaign reports that don’t do enough factchecking. But here’s a strange one from ABC World News (9/25/12), which seems to be complaining that Mitt Romney departed from his usual misleading claims about how Obama’s been raising your taxes. Pointing this out would be a good thing. The problem is that you have […]
NYT on Obama’s Deficit Talk: Get a Load of Brainiac
The New York Times‘ Jackie Calmes has a piece yesterday (9/26/12) on Obama’s failure to rein in the budget deficit. The big problem is that Obama’s explanation is apparently hard to follow: Four years ago, Barack Obama campaigned for president on a promise to cut annual federal budget deficits in half by the end of […]
Ted Koppel’s Terrible Media Criticism
TV news veteran Ted Koppel has done two pieces on NBC‘s Rock Center that attempt to critique the partisanship of today’s media system. But what the reports really illustrate is that some people aren’t very good at playing media critic—especially when they feel obligated to suggest that “both sides” are equally at fault. Koppel’s first […]
FAIR TV: Big Media Bury Occupy, Phony Terror Plot, Afghan Airstrikes
How did the New York Times cover Occupy Wall Street’s anniversary? Did corporate media even mention the NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan that killed eight women? And what makes an FBI terrorism investigation newsworthy? All that on this week’s edition of FAIR TV. Please take a look, and spread the word.
Is the Afghan Surge Really Over?
Misleading media reports today are announcing the end of the U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan. USA Today: And the Washington Post: There are many more along the same lines. It’s important to understand that the troop reductions are only part of the total troop surge that happened under Obama. As […]
Quantifying ‘Muslim Rage’
Sometimes very little can tell you a lot. Here’s Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News, updating viewers on protests that are linked to that famous anti-Islamic video: Overseas tonight, new and deadly retribution from that amateur Internet film that’s enraged much of the Muslim world. The “Muslim world” is, well, enormous–somewhere in the neighborhood of […]
NYT Buries Occupy Wall Street
The Paper of Record has spoken: We didn’t think much of Occupy before, and now what we think is that it’s over. The day before Occupy activists were gathering to mark the movement’s one-year anniversary, Times columnist Joe Nocera wrote (9/16/12): “For all intents and purposes, the Occupy movement is dead.” Before the collapse of […]
After NATO Strike Kills 8 Afghan Women, Pundits Still Wonder: Why Do They Hate Us?
The protests and violence in Egypt, Libya and Yemen have caused a notable uptick in media discussions about, as Newsweek‘s cover puts it, “Muslim Rage.” Part of the corporate media’s job is to make sure real political grievances are mostly kept out of the discussion. It’s a lot easier to talk about angry mobs and […]
At NYT, She Said No to ‘He Said/She Said’—but They Said Yes
An New York Times editor doesn’t seem to think checking the integrity of your argument is the business of the Paper of Record.
