FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The Washington Post‘s editorial endorsement of Barack Obama (10/17/08) is not a total shock, and neither are the paper’s caveats about supporting Obama. In fact, what the piece offers is a helpful reminder of the establishment media’s center-right politics: Obama’s apparent desire to achieve universal healthcare is deemed acceptable, “though we question whether his plan […]
Washington Post fact-checker Michael Dobbs weighs in (10/16/08) on last night’s debate—the headline more or less gives it away (“Both Campaigns Distorting Facts on Money Matters”). His first fact-check, though, hardly clears the air. Some of the sharpest back-and-forth over economic issues concerned the taxes that an Ohio plumber named Joe Wurzelbacher stands to pay […]
Over at Media Matters’ County Fair blog, they’ve updated their tally of ACORN mentions on cable news: *Number of times CNN has mentioned ACORN since Friday: 67 *Number of times Fox News has mentioned Joe Biden since Friday: 130 *Number of times Fox News has mentioned Sarah Palin since Friday: 541 *Number of times Fox […]
A piece in the Politico (10/16/08) wonders whether media fact-checking is actually useful. While of course bad fact-checking—of which there are examples aplenty—is a problem, Politico gets a McCain aide to complain about the whole enterprise: “In 2004, Factcheck.org was considered [the] authority,” said a senior McCain aide, who was provided by the campaign to […]
USA Today weighs in on the ACORN “vote fraud” controversy with a story headlined “Campaigns Take Aim as New Vote Fraud Allegations Emerge.” The story’s lead suggests a typically bad rendition of the media’s usual “false balance” routine, reporting that the McCain and Obama campaigns are “trading accusations of voter fraud and voter suppression and […]
On October 3, NBC Nightly News presented a “fact check” of the Palin/Biden debate, courtesy of reporter Andrea Mitchell. The report adhered to the unfortunate (and much discussed here at fair.org) tendency of media “false balance.” Here’s Mitchell’s first catch: MITCHELL: Both candidates exaggerated, Palin on a natural gas pipeline in Alaska. PALIN: We’re building […]
Many corporate media pundits seemed to grade the Biden/Palin debate on a rather extreme curve; if Palin could manage to show up and not embarrass herself, the event could be deemed a “tie”–as in the AP analysis headlined “Palin Tops Debate Expectations.” In USA Today, Susan Page wrote, “Both candidates exuded confidence and determination–a victory […]
The New York Times splashed the Barack Obama-Bill Ayers “connection” story on the front page of Saturday’s paper. Obama’s practically non-existent ties to former Weather Underground figure William Ayers have been the subject of endless speculation among folks like right-wing yakker Sean Hannity, who suggested to ABC‘sGeorge Stephanopoulos that he should ask about Obama about […]
Who knows when U.S. troops will be leaving Iraq, but the Washington Post reports that the Pentagon has a long-term strategy for the information war:
When Russia and Georgia clashed in August over Georgia’s separatist enclaves, U.S. corporate media frequently evoked the Cold War as a key to understanding the conflict—and they themselves certainly played their Cold War part, generally placing white hats on Washington’s allies and black hats on Moscow’s. On August 11, NBC Nightly News reporter Jim Maceda […]
The most conspicuous thing about the mainstream media’s election-year discussion of the Iraq War is the lack of one. The numbers tell much of the story. Although it had been the main news story between January and May of 2007, totaling 20 percent of the news hole, that number declined to just 4 percent in […]
It’s safe to assume that Barack Obama knew he could expect certain lines of attack when he decided to run for president: whispers about his religious beliefs, for example, or questions regarding his patriotism. And sure enough, those issues came up almost as soon as the campaign started. But it’s difficult to imagine that Obama—whose […]
[Note: This is a sidebar to “Obama the Snob?: Hanging the ‘elitist’ label on another Democratic candidate“] It’s “not always easy to say exactly who, or what, constitutes the elite,” pointed out New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller (5/25/08). But it’s not that hard to see what message is being sent by those who level […]
[Note: This is a sidebar to “Obama the Snob?: Hanging the ‘elitist’ label on another Democratic candidate“] In the 2004 election, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was crowned by an influential Beltway publication with an unexpected designation: He was, according to its calculation, the most liberal member of the Senate (National Journal, 2/28/04). The ranking […]
It’s hardly controversial to point out that many in the corporate media have a fondness for presumptive GOP White House nominee John McCain. The prevailing journalistic attitude was expressed by Washington Post columnist David Broder (4/24/08): “In an age of deep cynicism about politicians of both parties, McCain is the rare exception who is not […]
The New York Times’ “Week in Review” has now offered two panels of opinion on the Iraq War—one on March 16 pondering the fifth anniversary of the invasion, the other on May 4 commemorating George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech—that completely excluded the views of those who opposed the war in 2003. The March 16 […]
If you pay even passing attention to national politics, you know that presumptive GOP presidential candidate John McCain is a maverick who bucks his own party’s line and never wavers in his political beliefs. At least, that’s what the corporate media say—reality tells a very different story. A candidate could only get away with such […]
When corporate media have discussed the Iraq War as an issue in the 2008 presidential election—which is not very often, given the press’s eagerness to play down the war’s importance—pundits have treated it as an advantage for presumptive GOP candidate Sen. John McCain over his eventual Democratic opponent. Given that McCain calls for a continuation […]
Many political reporters and pundits would probably like to forget the months they spent talking about how Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani was a strong front-runner amidst a relatively weak field. Giuliani enjoyed remarkably upbeat coverage for much of his campaign (Extra!, 5–6/07, 11–12/07), and even as he exited the race media continued their mythologizing, […]
Leading up to the New Hampshire primary, the storyline on the Democratic side was the disastrous state of the Clinton campaign. Her loss was a given; it seemed the only considerations were the margin of defeat and whether or not she would even continue running at all. The day of the primary, the Washington Post […]
