FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
On June 5, 1999, thousands of anti-war activists protested the bombing of Yugoslavia by rallying in Washington, D.C. and marching from the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial to the Pentagon. A June 7 Nexis search of the major American news outlets (including newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, along with ABC, NBC, […]
Media commentators have been asserting that the Kosovo peace plan adopted June 3 by the Serbian Assembly vindicates NATO’s airstrikes on Yugoslavia. A New York Times editorial (6/4/99) claimed the plan, if genuine, shows that NATO’s “sustained bombing has been more effective than many critics allowed” and represents a “victory for the principles of democracy […]
—New evidence has emerged confirming that the U.S. deliberately set out to thwart the Rambouillet peace talks in France in order to provide a “trigger” for NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia. Furthermore, correspondents from major American news organizations reportedly knew about this plan to stymie the Kosovo peace talks, but did not inform their readers or […]
In May, there was a huge break in the story of the recent U.S. missile attack on Sudan. But you’d hardly know it from reading the U.S. press. In a tremendous reversal on the part of the U.S. government, the Treasury Department decided to unfreeze the assets of Saleh Idris, the owner of the El […]
The indictment of Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes is the story of the day–the New York Times ran two front page pieces on it on the day the announcement was made (5/27/99). And Milosevic’s indictment is an important story for the American media to cover. But isn’t it at least as important for the press […]
In the latest in a series of “accidental” bombings of Yugoslavian civilians by the U.S., some 80 ethnic Albanians were killed May 13 in the Kosovo village of Korisa. But the Pentagon did not admit that it had in fact bombed the village until several days later; during the first news cycle, when the story […]
Time magazine’s May 17 issue ran a feature on the funding of the Kosovo Liberation Army, titled “A Fighting Chance,” suggesting that the KLA is sustained by donations from ethnic Albanians outside of Kosovo. The article reports that the Republic of Kosova Fund holds “more than $33 million” in a bank in Albania, yet in […]
Forty-seven civilians die when the bus they’re riding on is hit by a missile and incinerated. Fifty-eight people are murdered in an attack on their village. The two killings, occurring in the same region, comparable in scale, must be equally worthy of investigation and condemnation, right? Not at the New York Times. “Survivor Tells of […]
A FAIR analysis of sources on ABC‘s Nightline and PBS‘s NewsHour during the first two weeks of the bombing of Yugoslavia found an abundance of representatives of the U.S. government and NATO, along with many other supporters of the NATO bombing. Opponents of the airstrikes received scant attention, however; in almost all stories, debate focused […]
To see who informs major network news discussions of Social Security reform, FAIR searched the Lexis/Nexis database for ABC, NBC and CBS evening news stories on the subject between January 1, 1998 and February 1, 1999. We identified all sources who appeared and spoke on screen, and classified them by whom they represented and what […]
John Tierney, a columnist for the New York Times Metro section with an almost religious devotion to spreading the free market gospel, isn’t too impressed with complaints of police brutality made by black and Latino youth. Even when police firing 41 bullets killed an unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, as he tried to enter his […]
Howard Stern, a radio host whose program is syndicated by a CBS subsidiary, responded to the massacre in Littleton, Colorado by suggesting that female victims should have been raped as well as murdered. Here are Stern’s comments, as reported by the Rocky Mountain News (4/24/99): “There were some really good-looking girls running out with their […]
FAIR’s Action Alert on April 8 encouraged media activists to contact CNN in response to a report by Bill Schneider that there was “no action out there on the streets or on campuses — no marches, no demonstrations, no teach-ins.” On April 9, FAIR associate Norman Solomon appeared on CNN‘s “TalkBack Live” to discuss media […]
(Posted here with the NWLC’s kind permission) The National Desk program “Title IX and Women in Sports: What’s Wrong with This Picture?” was filled with misinformation, myth, and fabrications. In short, it was an irresponsible broadcast masquerading as serious journalism. Virtually every aspect of the program, from the title, host Larry Elder’s repeated untruths about […]
On April 20th, CounterSpin, the national radio show produced by the media watch group FAIR, was taken off the air while in-progress by WPFW, the Washington, D.C.-based Pacifica affiliate. The show included a segment on media coverage of the use of depleted uranium weapons by NATO forces in the Balkans, followed by an interview with […]
It might as well. Throughout April, the PBS program National Desk is presenting a three-part series on “the gender wars,” in which they aim to address “whether the advancement of women in virtually all areas of society can be achieved without a retreat, in some way, on the part of men.” This manipulative framing of […]
A shattered apartment block, a gutted passenger train, a devastated refugee convoy–scenes of destruction caused by U.S. bombing are becoming more and more common as the war with Yugoslavia drags on. Whether you hold Slobodan Milosevic or Bill Clinton more to blame for the consequences of NATO bombing, one group of people has so far […]
On April 1, ABC‘s Nightline did a segment that criticized the one-sided coverage of the war—on Serbian TV. Reviewing supposedly absurd claims, ABC aired what it described as “this astonishing claim” from a Belgrade news account: They even use radioactive weapons…which are forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Astonishing, perhaps—but is it true? The fact is, […]
(NOTE: Read the update to this alert.) On April 7, CNN‘s Bill Schneider offered this analysis of the anti-war sentiment in the country: “What’s missing from the Kosovo story is anti-war protest, at least on the left.” Schneider continued by saying that there was “no action out there on the streets or on campuses — […]
FAIR’s extensive research into the mass media has led us to see the connection between unaccountable corporate structures at news outlets and declining commitment to the public interest. While FAIR considers Pacifica to be one of the most important independent media outlets in the country, we feel the need to express our belief that Pacifica […]
