FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
As if journalists “embedding” with U.S. troops isn’t troubling enough, Stars and Stripes is reporting that reporters looking to embed with U.S. troops in Afghanistan will face some troubling screening: As more journalists seek permission to accompany U.S. forces engaged in escalating military operations in Afghanistan, many of them could be screened by a controversial […]
Independent journalist Jeremy Scahill (The Nation, Democracy Now!) appeared on HBO‘s Real Time With Bill Maher alongside NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd. Because Jeremy isn’t the type to let such an opportunity to go to waste, he used some of his time to castigate the corporate media for failing to question the White House […]
Back in May, CBS‘ 60 Minutes aired a terrible report on the Air Force’s use of drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan– see FAIR’s action alert for all the details. CBS never responded to the criticism, but they did re-air the segment this past Sunday, without any major changes. To let CBS know how you feel […]
Conservative columnist and TV pundit Robert Novak died this morning at the age of 78. While Novak will likely be best remembered for his involvement in the Valerie Plame scandal, it’s worth recalling some of his other notable contributions to the public debate. As we pointed out here on the FAIR Blog, Novak pronounced himself […]
The big news in the health reform debate is that the White House seems to be willing to give up on the “public option,” a government insurance program that would compete with private insurers. Everyone sees this as a big story, but there’s something revealing about the way the Washington Post‘s Ceci Conollyled her piece: […]
The escalation of the Afghanistan war is the “Topic A” discussion on the Washington Post op-ed page on Sunday. (It’s a regular feature where they ask a panel of Important People to weigh in on an issue of the day.) The title was “How Many Troops for Afghanistan?”—one can already spot the problem with that—but […]
The dominant story from Hillary Clinton’s trip to Africa was not her comments about combating rape and sexual violence in Congo. No, the top story was Clinton’s testy response to a question about what her husband thought of Chinese business interests in Kenya Congo. That exchange prompted a whole story in today’s New York Times […]
The Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus writes (8/9/09)(under the headline “Analysts Expect Long-Term, Costly U.S. Campaign in Afghanistan”) that “military experts are warning that the United States is taking on security and political commitments that will last at least a decade and a cost that will probably eclipse that of the Iraq War.” What follows is […]
The Washington Post editorial page weighed in on the troubling scenes from congressional “town hall” healthcare discussions, where angry right-wing protesters have shouted down politicians, threatened violence, compared Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler and so on. As the Post‘s subhead put it (perhaps too kindly), “Rhetoric and distortion imperil the opportunity to fix the American […]
Today’s Washington Post offers a helpful lesson on the media’s notion of centrism; see the headline and subhead: Senators Closer to Health Package: Bipartisan Talks on Reform Move Toward Center The “talks” refer to the plan coming out of the Senate Finance Committee–a plan that “seeks middle ground” and couldprovide media-friendly “bipartisan agreement.” One of […]
Under the headline “Future Nominations Are at Stake in Hearing,” New York Times reporters Peter Baker and Charlie Savage suggested that Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination is a given; the real battle among partisans and legal activists is “to define the parameters of an acceptable nomination in case another seat opens up during Mr. Obama’s presidency.” Interesting, […]
New York Times reporter John F. Burns turned in a piece on Sunday about the debate in Britain over the Afghanistan war (“Criticism of Afghan War Is on the Rise in Britain,” 7/12/09), in light of the increase in British casualties in recent weeks. Burns writes: So far, however, the reaction in Britain has not […]
In a News Analysis piece (7/11/09), New York Times reporter Adam Nossiter attempts to illustrate the difference between some African countries and more enlightened nations, writing: The gulf separating the West and many African leaders on fundamental issues like human rights was on display just last week. The African Union announced that it would refuse […]
Some voices in the corporate media have pushed for government intervention to relax ownership restrictions in order to allow for the creation of even bigger media conglomerates—which seems a bit like a hangover victim’s thirst for the hair of the dog that bit them. New York Times reporter Carr (5/9/09) confessed that while as a […]
While the Internet in general is sometimes fingered as the newspaper industry’s problem, these days the search engine Google seems to get more attention, and vitriol, from corporate media. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd (4/15/09) summed up the media industry’s complaint: Robert Thomson, the top editor of the Wall Street Journal, denounced websites like […]
[See also the sidebar to this piece, Sotomayor vs. Bork: NYT by the Numbers] Writing about Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Politico’s Mike Allen (5/27/09) declared: The media’s left-of-center bias is rarely more apparent than during court fights. The coverage running up to the pick was slanted heavily […]
In today’s New York Times (6/19/09), Kevin Sack’s article about the prospects for healthcare reform devotes all of a paragraph to single-payer: Seeking broad popular support, the president and congressional leaders have played between the 40-yard lines of the health policy spectrum. Those who favor a single-payer, government-run insurance system have been marginalized, along with […]
Washington Post columnist David Broder has made a career out of advocating a certain type of corporate centrism–earning him the honorary (?) title of the Dean of the D.C. Press Corps. The formula is pretty simple: Argue that Democratic politicians should move to the right. So with healthcare reform a major issue, Broder’s formula is […]
Advocates of a single-payer health plan in the United States aren’t exactly accustomed to seeing their efforts covered in the corporate media–or in the headline of a major newspaper story, no less. The Washington Post reminded us on June 6 what happens when media finally get around to taking a look at the issue. Under […]
MSNBC‘s Morning Joe program seems to have turned its conspicuous consumption of Starbucks drinks into a paid commercial for the coffee chain, according to this morning’s New York Times (6/1/09). As Brian Stelter put it, Joe Scarborough “sips Frappuccinos on camera so often that some viewers have wondered whether it is a form of product […]
