FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
New York Times reporter Matt Bai apparently really, really cares about the budget deficit– so much so that he’s done reporting suggesting that the rest of us care about it as much as he does. He’s also demonstrated his concern by writing an outrageously misleading article about Social Security and the deficit (the Times had […]
Yesterday (11/22/10) Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post wrote a column headlined “Obama’s Foreign Policy Needs an Update,” where he worried that the White House suffers from a”lack of grand strategy — or strategists. Its top foreign-policy makers are a former senator, a Washington lawyer and a former Senate staffer. There is no Henry Kissinger, […]
Patrick Cockburn has a wonderful piece in the Independent (11/23/10) on the hazards of embedded journalism that is a must-read. He points out: “Embedding” also puts limitations on location and movement. Iraq and Afghanistan are essentially guerrilla wars, and the successful guerrilla commander will avoid fighting the enemy main force and instead attack where his […]
If you had concluded that the Afghan War was in disarray, the front page of the New York Times today probably didn’t do much to change your mind: Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor By DEXTER FILKINS and CARLOTTA GALL KABUL, Afghanistan – For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan […]
The Irish economy is in need of a $100 billion bailout, thanks in large part to the bursting of its housing bubble. But for years the Irish model was lionized by U.S. pundits. ThinkProgress blogger Matthew Yglesias digs up a 2005 piece by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman that said: There is a huge […]
In today’s New York Times (11/22/10), Kim Severson covers the annual protest at the U.S. military training facility formerly known as the School of Americas. The point of the story, though, is that the protests aren’t such a big deal anymore (the headline: “Fort Benning Protest Dwindles, if Not Its Passion.”) The dismissive tone was […]
There’s a lot to say about Ethan Bronner’s Week in Review piece in the New York Times (11/21/10). The headline says a lot on its own: “Why America Chases an Israeli-Palestinian Peace.” This is ironic, at the very least, given the role the U.S. has historically played in making peace quite difficult. And the current […]
The civilian trial of terrorism suspect Ahmed Ghailani, who was linked to the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, was unsatisfying to those who believe that accused terroristsshould not be tried in civilian courts. To them, the scoreboard tells the story: Ghailani was convicted on one count, and acquitted onover 280 other charges. The […]
I caught this story at Single Payer Action. The account is based on a talk veteran reporter Chris Hedges gave recently at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, New York: “Knopf –which, of course, like all of these large publishing houses is owned by a large transnational corporation–asked me to write a book on […]
Beware: The dean of the D.C. press corps is disappointed. In his Washington Post column today (“Dodgeball for Democrats,” 11/18/10), David Broder leads off with this: When the rules of the House of Representatives forced the Democrats to confront a painful choice among their leaders, they did what Democrats are often inclined to do. They […]
Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia caused a bit of an uproar at a hearing yesterday. As Brian Stelter reported at his New York Times blog (11/17/10), Rockefeller mused: There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC, “Out. Off. End. Goodbye.” It […]
The Los Angeles Times reports today (11/16/10) that Barack Obama might give a tax break to the wealthy after all: Obama has loosened his longstanding view that tax cuts should be extended permanently only for households earning less than $250,000 a year ($200,000 for singles). When a reporter suggests that a politician has “loosened” his […]
You got a sense from some of the coverage of the Simpson/Bowles deficit commission report that their right-leaning prescription was exactly the kind of solution the corporate media could get behind. Charlie Rose could apparently only find two panelists who wished the commission had gone further with its spending cuts. On NBC‘s Meet the Press […]
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann’s indefinite suspension for violating network policies regarding political donations lasted all of two work days. On his Wednesday show (11/10/10), Olbermann brought up the point that FAIR made in our alert–the difficulty of squaring such a policy with MSNBC parent General Electric‘s political giving and multi-million dollar lobbying. Olbermann was joined […]
As you may have gathered by now, the deficit reduction plan offered by debt commission chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles is pretty unpopular, particularly on the left. But one place it was well-received: The Charlie Rose Show, a comfortable place for CEOs and insiders to pontificate. The fact that this show is a staple […]
It’s never hard to figure out what side the media are on when it comes to corporate-friendly “free trade” deals. They’re for them,because they’re “free,” and people whooppose themapparentlyprefer protectionism over freedom. So Barack Obama’s apparent failure tonegotiate a trade deal with South Korea is bad news–thoughit’s hard to read the papers and figure out […]
Time magazine’s Joe Klein has read George W. Bush’s memoir, and has a few criticisms (11/11/10); for instance, he points out that Bush never stops to wonder if the UN inspectors, whom Saddam Hussein had allowed back into Iraq, were not finding weapons of mass destruction because, maybe, uh, the WMD didn’t exist. That’s a […]
Reporting on the proposal from debt commission chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, a New York Times article (11/11/10) by Jackie Calmes framed the discussion this way: Mr. Obama created the commission last February in the hope it would provide political cover for bold action against deficits in 2011. His stance now, in the wake […]
NBC star Matt Lauer’s one-on-one interview with George W. Bush revealed very little in the way of information, though some lessons could be drawn from Lauer’s mediocre performance. Here was one comment from near the top of the interview: The Florida recount. Hanging chads. A divided Supreme Court. George Bush had a rough road to […]
–On Democracy Now! (11/8/10): While Keith Olbermann’s donations became front-page news, little attention has been paid to the massive amount of political spending by MSNBC‘s parent company General Electric, one of the nation’s largest military contractors. Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting reports GE made over $2 million in political contributions in the 2010 election cycle. […]
