FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Appearing on MSNBC’s Situation with Tucker Carlson (2/14/06), conservative talkshow host and film critic Michael Medved linked an Oscar nomination he disapproved of to a mental illness he called “Bush hatred”: This Bush hatred is a disease, and it’s completely obsessive. And it’s reached the extent that if you take a look at movies that […]
[Note: This piece is a sidebar to ‘Wall Street Does Not Like Newspapers’.] Since CounterSpin’s interview with Ben Bagdikian, McClatchy has announced a pending deal that will turn over four of the former Knight Ridder papers—the St. Paul Pioneer Press, San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times and Monterey County Herald—to the Denver-based MediaNews Group. […]
On April 10, Washington Post columnist and deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl penned a column arguing that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is not very popular and has little democratic legitimacy. FAIR sent the following letter to Diehl on April 18, questioning the accuracy of his comments and his overall thesis. FAIR’s letter has so […]
When former UN chief weapons inspector David Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee in January 2004, “We were all wrong,” he was admitting that officials had been wrong to claim Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The we-were-all-wrong trope entered the political lexicon as a mea culpa, but today the White House and its […]
Since 1979, C-SPAN has provided an invaluable service to viewers with its no-frills coverage of congressional hearings, press briefings, demonstrations, book readings and other political events. By presenting public affairs with a minimal intrusion by hosts or reporters, C-SPAN has gained a reputation as a frictionless conveyer of raw political information to the public. In […]
[Note: This piece is a sidebar to “Failing At Its No. 1 Goal.”] Although occasionally Washington Journal will have on two or more guests at one time, debates between guests are a rarity. In the first years of its decade-long run, however, the show hosted more such debates—and FAIR routinely criticized C-SPAN for the show’s […]
U.S. news media outlets have largely decided to echo White House charges despite the shortage of facts.
The U.S. is violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That view, far from exotic or extreme, was expressed repeatedly by arms control experts and international officials at the month-long NPT review conference held at the U.N. in May. It is embraced by U.S. establishment figures such as former President Jimmy Carter and Kennedy-era Defense Secretary […]
The commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, held at the former Nazi death camp in Poland on January 27, featured speakers warning about a new rise in antisemitism. “From broken windows to death camps was the blink of an eye,” said Moshe Kantor of the European Jewish Congress (New York Times, […]
While some examples of increasing anti-Semitism go little noted, considerable attention has been paid to dubious accusations that seem to equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Before Harvard President Laurence Summers drew fire for suggesting that women were inherently inferior at math and science (see Extra!,5-6/2005), he stirred things up by proclaiming that a new […]
Resurgences of biological determinism correlate with periods of political retrenchment and destruction of social generosity. —Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man. ”If the black man wins,” warned a New York Times editorial on the eve of the historic 1910 fight between Jack Johnson and ”Great White Hope” Jim Jeffries, ”thousands and thousands of his […]
A license permits broadcasting, but the licensee has no constitutional right to be the one who holds the license or to monopolize a…frequency to the exclusion of his fellow citizens. There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the Government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others…. It is the right […]
From the Iraq War to the 2004 presidential race, reporters shirked their journalistic duty to take a critical approach to official and partisan claims —to document them when they are true, and debunk them when they are false.
In a July appearance on CNN ‘s Paula Zahn Now, conservative pundit John Fund inadvertently captured the absurd state of American television debate as he faced off with centrist columnist Matthew Miller: Matt and I both agree that gay marriage is a mistake for slightly different reasons. Such debates, spanning the spectrum from A to […]
For decades, journalists and pundits have invoked the New Republic magazine to prove that a conservative idea has support across the spectrum. Drawing on the magazine’s historical association with the American left, the phrase “even the New Republic,” as in “even the New Republic supports the Contras,” has become journalistic shorthand for “even liberal opinion […]
FAIR’s latest study of Fox ’s Special Report With Brit Hume finds the network’s flagship news show still listing right—heavily favoring conservative and Republican guests in its one-on-one interviews. And, according to the study, Special Report rarely features women or non-white guests in these prominent newsmaker inter-view spots. In previous studies FAIR has found that […]
When National Public Radio was launched in 1971, it promised to be an alternative to commercial media that would “promote personal growth rather than corporate gain” and “speak with many voices, many dialects.” In 1993, when FAIR published a study of NPR’s guestlist that challenged the network’s alternative credentials (Extra!, 4-5/93), incoming NPR president Delano […]
Did the Bush administration portray Iraq as an imminent threat in order to justify an invasion? According to the White House, that’s a media hoax. “I think some in the media have chosen to use the word ‘imminent,’” White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters (1/27/04). “Those were not words we used.” With this […]
Reporting on the ratings rivalry between the Fox News Channel (FNC) and CNN is often misleading—and almost always over-hyped. “Fox Tops CNN as Choice for Cable News,” declared one typical headline (Chicago Tribune , 3/24/03). “Fox News Channel Continues to Crush CNN ,” reported Knight Ridder (Dallas Morning News , 2/3/04) in a column comparing […]
Hannity & Colmes, Fox News Channel‘s primetime debate show, figures prominently in the cable network’s campaign to market its right leaning programming as “fair & balanced,” the network’s ever-present slogan. Fox News executives argue that the show, pitting conservative Sean Hannity against liberal Alan Colmes with guests from both right and left, presents a spirited […]
