Film Official Secrets Is Tip of Mammoth Iceberg
Katharine Gun’s revelations showed before the invasion that people on the inside, whose livelihood depends on following the party line, were willing to risk jail time to expose the lies and threats.
Sam Husseini
Euphemisms All the Way Down
“Developer” is an incredibly positive term that has burrowed so deeply into our language that we rarely think to question it.
Triumph of Conventional Wisdom: AP Expunges Iran/Contra Pardons from Barr’s Record
In “Barr as Attorney General: Old Job, Very Different Washington,” Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker made no mention whatsoever of Barr’s role in Iran/Contra pardons.
To Anthony Bourdain, the World Was the Star
Bourdain’s death should be a wake-up call to people from documentary filmmakers to independent media outfits wanting to use the internet in creative ways: There’s a hunger among regular people in the US for the unvarnished realities of the rest of the world, and major media are serving up precious little to feed it.
Anthony Bourdain: The Last Gasp of CNN’s Original Vision
Anthony Bourdain’s programs were in sharp contrast to corporate media’s typically cliched depiction of other countries, frequently shown as synonymous with their caricatured rulers, with canned images tirelessly repeated.
Jack Shaheen, Vital Critic of Denigrating Images
A longtime FAIR friend, Jack Shaheen died on Monday. A humanist to the core, he warned about the creation of “the character whom we hate and we detest.”
Should Media Expose Sources Who Lied to Them?
Identity protection for whistleblowers and other sources is a cornerstone of good journalism. And sources can pass on false or flawed reporting without any ill intent. But what of sources that intentionally use media outlets to disseminate dubious information?
Commenting on Orlando, NPR Terrorism Reporter Reverses Political Lesson of Madrid Blast
During NPR’s national coverage of the horrific shooting in Orlando, NPR “counter-terrorism correspondent” Dina Temple-Raston made a critical false claim that deserves an on-air correction.
Media Mind-Readers
As the U.S. government pressured the U.N. Security Council in October 2002 to endorse an invasion of Iraq, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw reported (10/17/02): “In Washington, administration officials worry that the continuing U.N. debate will only embolden Saddam if the language of the resolution is loaded with ambiguities.” By talking about the officials’ “worry,” Brokaw […]
Right-Wing Business in Farmer’s Overalls
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) bills itself as the voice of American agriculture—and often succeeds in getting the media to identify it as such. In an article about an EPA study of insecticides, USA Today (10/28/99) turned to an EPA critic at the AFBF, describing it as a group that “promotes farmers’ interests.” Similarly, […]
Harvard’s ‘Best and Brightest’ Aided Russia’s Economic Ruin
U.S. policy toward Russia has contributed to that country’s sorry conditions—with the Harvard Institute for International Development’s Russia project (HIID) playing a major role.
The Fumento Mythology
A decade after writing The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, Michael Fumento of the Hudson Institute continues to minimize and skew the AIDS crisis. Fumento is a virtual poster child for what right-wing institutions can foster: Prior to joining Hudson, he’s had stints at the American Enterprise Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was legal […]
Brookings: The Establishment’s Think Tank
“I want it implemented…. God damn it, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.” So railed President Richard Nixon (Abuse of Power, Stanley Kutler) to his aides about papers regarding the Vietnam War that he thought were at the Brookings Institution. The documents the White House apparently wanted to get […]
Forget Murphy Brown
“Now that she is no longer doing Murphy Brown, it dawned on me that she may want to do a story or two for us,” 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt told New York magazine (8/17/98). Once they spot a story “worth her doing,” they’ll give actress Candice Bergen “a chance to do it.” Will […]
What’s in a Name?
“The forces of terrorism are in a coalition, engaged in an information warfare campaign against Israel, a campaign in which the American news media is serving as the witting or unwitting ally of Arafat.” So House speaker Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) told the cheering audience at AIPAC’s (American-Israeli Political Action Committee) national convention (C-SPAN, 4/8/97). Democrats […]
Media Bomb on TWA Crash
Two days after the crash of TWA Flight 800, the New York Times (7/19/96) ran a story headlined “Newspapers Were Wary This Time, and Didn’t Jump to Conclusions.” The Times argued that the memory of how much of the media rushed to blame Arabs after the Oklahoma City bombing (Extra!, 7-8/95) prevented any jumping to […]
Islam: Fundamental Misunderstandings About a Growing Faith
There are approximately 5 million Muslims in the U.S. — nearly as many as there are Jews, and more than there are Episcopalians. Early in the next century, Islam will probably be the largest non-Christian religion in the country (L.A. Times, 12/17/94). Yet there’s rarely a mention of Muslims in the media that doesn’t have […]
Felons on the Air
General Electric‘s ownership of the NBC TV network has been in the news in recent months. As Extra! went to press, companies like Time Warner, Disney, ITT and Turner Broadcasting have reportedly been negotiating to either buy NBC outright or enter into some kind of partnership with GE. But a little-noted aspect of communications law […]
Religion and Politics
In a recent keynote address to the Religion Newswriters Association, Bill Moyers noted, “For broadcast executives, news of the soul is no news at all.” Such dissatisfaction with religion coverage seems to be shared by many Americans. Stewart Hoover has found that newspaper readers rated religion as an important topic for papers to cover (above […]
Media Not Doing Justice to Mideast Peace
As virtually all media outlets celebrated the “magnificent spectacle of peacemaking” in Washington (Newsweek, 9/27/93), leading media voices were often more jubilant than accurate in their reporting. Even as the Israelis and Palestinians were lauded for “emerging from the clutches of history” (Time, 9/13/93), too many journalists clung to past habits of bias in their […]
