FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
It was inevitable that Fox host Bill O’Reilly would weigh in on the Planned Parenthood/Komen Foundation controversy. And perhaps just as inevitable that he’d mangle the facts along the way. Here he is, on Friday night (2/3/12): Last year the Komen Foundation gave Planned Parenthood $680,000. Now, that is the source of controversy because as […]
Not even a week after Barack Obama declared that not too many civilians die in the CIA’s drone strikes in Pakistan, a new report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism finds that “at least 50 civilians” have been killed in rescues attempts, 20 in strikes on funerals, with at least 282 total civilians killed since […]
The conventional understanding you get from the media is that Israel is worried that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a serious threat to the country’s existence. Is that really what’s happening, though? Another interpretation is that Iran might want nuclear weapons not to launch any such an attack but to prevent an attack on its […]
If you’ve read FAIR’s latest alert on ABC’s Iran propaganda, let ABC know how you feel. And please post your letters/comments in the thread below.
New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer (2/2/12) accurately reports how Republicans want to frame the disputed over the Keystone XL pipeline. But she does almost nothing to challenge that framing. Under the headline, “For GOP, Pipeline Is Central to Agenda,” Steinhauer explains: Republicans are framing Keystone as an urgent jobs and energy project at a […]
Alarmist corporate media coverage of the “threat” from Iran is everywhere, thanks to a Senate appearance yesterday by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. But Clapper said very little in his remarks that would justify the propagandistic coverage we’re seeing. His main point was that Iran could launch attacks if it felt threatened. It is […]
Barack Obama did something yesterday that government leaders tend not to do: He talked about the CIA drone war in Pakistan. This admission–which, it should be pointed out, happened in a Google-sponsored Q & A with the public, not a session with reporters–made it into the papers. The New York Times (1/31/12) flagged civilian deaths […]
During an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski (1/25/12), NBC‘s Today host Ann Curry said this: Well, one of the key topics that we have been hearing a lot about is all of this concern about Iran. You know what’s been happening, the concerns, the tensions in the Straits of Hormuz, the concerns about Iran’s rise in […]
No comment. NBC Nightly News (1/29/12) LESTER HOLT: And a sign of the times tonight on a football field in Hawaii. The NFL is relaxing its strict social media policy and allowing players to use Twitter to interact with fans during the Pro Bowl in Honolulu. There’ll be one designated computer on each sideline, no […]
At a time when millions of Americans are are experiencing massive unemployment, a painfully slow economic recovery, wage stagnation and the after-effects of the bursting of a multi-trillion dollar housing bubble, isn’t it time someone demanded that they suffer a little bit? Of course not, you might say. But that’s why you don’t work in […]
By the tone of some of the media coverage, you might have thought Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a plan to slash military spending yesterday. On the front page of USA Today (1/27/12), under the headline “Panetta Backs Far Leaner Military,” readers learn in the first paragraph: The Pentagon’s new plan to cut Defense spending […]
You may have heard last week that right-wing media critics were howling about this: “Those liberals are calling us dumb!” seemed to be the feeling on the right–a strange reaction to a piece written by conservative Andrew Sullivan. Newsweek is back on the case this week: The response to conservative Sullivan comes from…. conservative writer […]
With New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane continuing to puzzle over whether (or how) the Paper of Record should factcheck politicians, one might wonder whether other newspapers worry about the same thing. Take USA Today (please!). Yesterday the paper reported on the very contentious matter of the Keystone XL pipeline and jobs–a favorite issue […]
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote a baffling column today (1/24/12) praising part of Newt Gingrich’s political persona—not the bad stuff, but the man “of big ideas,” as he put it (italics his). Cohen gives one example: Out of nowhere, he has exhumed Saul Alinsky, whose fame is limited to university sociology departments, and yet […]
To me, the most interesting observation after the South Carolina primary came from New York magazine reporter and regular TV pundit John Heilemann, who said this on MSNBC (h/t Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars): Gingrich is going to get so much free media attention over the next few days. It is going to be […]
A new research paper by a team of economists got a lot of pretty favorable press because it appears to deliver results that would seem to confirm what many in the media believe about American schools: If you could just use standardized test scores to weed out underperforming teachers, you would see serious improvement in […]
Time columnist Joe Klein jumped to Newt Gingrich‘s defense (12/19/11) when the Republican presidential candidate floated the idea that poor school children should work as janitors at their schools. Klein’s endorsement (FAIR Blog, 12/9/11) earned him a coveted P.U. Litzer Prize. But apparently there’s more to it. As Klein explains in this week’s issue of […]
If Arthur Brisbane wants the Times to consider becoming factchecking ‘truth vigilantes,” this is hopefully not what he had in mind. At last night’s Republican debate (1/19/12), CNN host John King asked the candidates how they would convince a corporation like Apple to employ more workers in the United States: It employs about 500,000 people […]
Today’s front page of USA Today: The paper adds that “Obama was putting politics ahead of jobs and the nation’s energy security by rejecting the pipeline now, Republicans and oil industry leaders said.” It closes with this: Business leaders and Republicans say approving the project now would create as many as 20,000 jobs for an […]
Remember last week’s uproar about the New York Times and factchecking? In today’s paper, we see a great example of how this works. Former Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd’s new job is as a lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America, which means he’s leading the charge in support of SOPA, the bill that big […]
