FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Regular NewsHour left/right panelists Mark Shields and David Brooks were off on April 18. Sitting in on the right was former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson. In the liberal chair was Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, who is not exactly known for her strong progressive views. And in fact, Marcus established that fact right from the […]
Washington Post/Newsweek economics columnist Robert Samuelson was recently out plugging his new book at an event recorded by C-SPAN. Samuelson began his remarks (watch the video here, at the 4:20 mark) by saying: I am not an economist. I’m a journalist. And so that anything I say that seems contradictory to what a freshman in […]
A nice round-up from TVNewser of the evening newscasts. Will conservatives ever catch abreak from the left-wing media? How The Evening Newscasts Covered the Tea Parties NBC Nightly News led with two stories on tax day. Lee Cowan reported on the tea parties while Savannah Guthrie reported on the White House message of middle-class tax […]
In today’s New York Times (4/16/07), Jane Perlez is wondering about Pakistani government officials who complain about U.S. drones attacks in their country. Perlez starts by floating the idea that Pakistan can’t possibly be against the strikes, because the government has asked to have some control over the use of the drones: In fact, both […]
With Fox News Channel relentlessly promoting—and MSNBC mostly mocking—the right-wing “tea party” demonstrations around the country today, middle-of-the-road media critics are making a typically middle-of-the-road complaint: Yes, Fox shouldn’t be sponsoring such events, but the rest of the corporate media shouldn’t just ignore these allegedly newsworthy events. As Howard Kurtz put it in the Washington […]
Richard Cohen’s Washington Post column today (4/14/09) is about how the new George W. Bush Policy Institute should focus primarily on Bush’s managerial errors: Conventional wisdom holds that the bungling of the Iraq war was a consequence of ideology run amok. Maybe. But it was also an example of awful management. Whether you supported the […]
From the O’Reilly Factor last night (4/14/09): So far, the United Nations has not responded to the pirate threat. Are you surprised? Talking Points believes the U.N. could blockade the Somali ports where the pirates live, thereby crushing the threat. Is that hard? No, all it takes is will. I suppose what he’s really saying […]
There’s nothing the corporate media love more than centrism and “bipartisanship,” so the Washington Post offered up a double scoop on Sunday. Dan Balz’s piece”Partisans Argue Over Partisanship” looked at whether Barack Obama has lived up to his campaign pledge to”move the country away from the red-blue divisions of the past.” Balz notes that there […]
A New York Post feature headlined “A Day in the Life of Bill O’Reilly” offers this insight into life working for the Fox host: “The staff of 15 meets 7:30 every morning. Working for me, you’ve got to be a Navy SEAL. No mistakes. I need facts, or it’ll get rammed down my throat.” Huh. […]
It was surprising to see that critical scholar Mahmood Mamdani’s new book (which is largely about debunking Western notions about Darfur and genocide—something he discussed on CounterSpin) got a positive review in the New York Times (3/30/09). Today (4/3/09) the paper sort of apologizes, in an editor’s note (only in the print edition, so far): […]
Is it possible for the Washington Post to be embarrassed by George Will? After a series of erroneous claims in a column about climate change, Will is at it again today (4/2/09), laughing off the use of compact fluorescent lightbulbs as a poor fix for a nonexistent problem: Reducing carbon emissions supposedly will reverse warming, […]
Note: This article is a sidebar to “Fear & Favor 2008.” From time to time we get a peek behind the corporate media curtain, thanks to anecdotes shared by those in a position to know how the news business works. Some are remarkably candid, if lacking in specifics—as when former CBS anchor Dan Rather declared […]
An exchange from the Chris Matthews Show (3/22/09)–featuring the host, columnist Kathleen Parker, NBC‘s Mark Whitaker and Time columnist Joe Klein–about the threat to investigative reporting in the wake of corporate media’s current financial woes: MATTHEWS: The Washington Post did it with that… WHITAKER: Right, the Washington Post. MATTHEWS: You know when we found out […]
The Washington Post editorial page produced a remarkable editorial on Saturday (3/21/09) headlined “Victory in El Salvador.” It’s not surprising that the Post would try to argue that the victory of left-wing FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes was not another sign that the region’s politics are shifting to the left. No, in fact it was […]
The lead of an article in the New York Times today (3/23/09): KABUL, Afghanistan – A predawn raid by United States Special Forces that killed five people on Sunday has produced sharply conflicting accounts from the American military and local Afghan officials as to whether the dead were civilians or militants, resurrecting a sore point […]
You can accuse some in the media of paying too much attention to the bonuses at AIG, but on ABC‘s newscast they’ve been doing the opposite–trying to tell people to stop talking down “our” company. ABC‘s World News With Charles Gibson, March 17: CHARLES GIBSON: Let me turn to Betsy Stark. There is an awful […]
Courtesy of the New York Daily News (3/18/09): ABC‘s World News anchor Charles Gibson at one point considered being a sports reporter. However, he ultimately realized the job was more difficult than it looked. “I began to realize that sports journalism was so difficult because if you cover a team, you have to stay in […]
“I think the best journalism in America is business journalism precisely because they deal with real metrics. You can actually–they know things.” –George Will, ABC‘s This Week, 3/15/09 It’s possible that Will actually believes this. Read Dean Starkman’s piece in Mother Jones, “How Could 9,000 Business Reporters Blow It?,” for another take. Or this piece […]
People dislike the Afghan war more than ever, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll; 42 percent of Americans now think invading that country was a mistake. For some reason,the paper’sfrontpage write-up of the poll (3/17/09) quotes two experts: John Naglof the Center for a New American Security and Thomas Donnellyofthe American Enterprise Institute. Both […]
On this morning’s Fox & Friends, the hosts were having a laugh about Mauricio Funes, the new president of El Salvador. Funes won as the candidate of the FMLN, the political party of the former guerrilla group–and he was once a freelancer for CNN. Ergo, Fox couldmake jokes aboutCNN‘s “communist” ties. One of the hosts […]
