FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Nightline‘s Ted Koppel left the Republican convention in San Diego early, complaining that no news was happening. It’s certainly true that little journalism was being practiced. “This convention is more of an infomercial than a news event,” Koppel pronounced (Nightline, 8/13/96), explaining his decision to go back to Washington after two days of on-site convention […]
Among the elite of media pundits are the “terrorism experts,” whose authoritative pronouncements are almost never challenged by the news outlets that rely on them. Many of them (including Richard Haass of Brookings and Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies) were featured in a Sept. 1, 1996 New York Times piece […]
One of the biggest dramas of the 1996 election–for the political press corps, at least–has been the question of the Republican platform’s abortion plank. Would Bob Dole alienate the religious right by trying to change the plank? Would he alienate pro-choice voters by not changing it? Will Pat Buchanan walk out of the convention? Can […]
Thanks in part to activists from all over the country who contacted ABC and Disney, FAIR’s campaign against the bigotry of talkshow host Bob Grant has been a success. The success was not in Grant’s firing from New York’s WABC, the flagship of Disney/ABC‘s radio empire. FAIR, in fact, never called for Grant to be […]
The last issue of Extra! (5-6/96) discussed the threat that public television stations might be sold to commercial broadcasters. One of the first such sales may be imminent–and now is the time to try to stop it. Pittsburgh is one of 30-some metropolitan regions across the country that is fortunate enough to have more than […]
Long before Ted Kaczynski’s arrest, we knew exactly how the Unabomber felt about the left: “Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful,” he wrote in his 35,000 word manifesto. “They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality…. The leftist is antagonistic […]
CNN has announced two new hosts to speak “from the left” on Crossfire. While some see an improvement over Crossfire‘s previous “left” hosts–Tom Braden, a former CIA official, and Michael Kinsley, who once promoted Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for president (Time, 5/15/89)–CNN has a long way to go before its left-right debate show […]
There seems to be a growing attempt by pundits both of the right and center to claim that significant racism no longer exists. The American Enterprise Institute’s Dinesh D’Souza, of course, makes this claim in his book The End of Racism, in which he asserts that racism “no longer has the power to thwart blacks […]
LIMBAUGH: “Look what they did to Newt. Newt didn’t even say it. But people called my radio show today thinking Newt Gingrich predicted a stock market crash by December 15. That’s because of the way the press is reporting it…. This is the best example I can give you to show you the unfairness, the […]
Here is a sampling of Buchanan’s views: On African-Americans After Sen. Carol Moseley Braun blocked a federal patent for a Confederate flag insignia, Buchanan wrote that she was “putting on an act” by associating the Confederacy with slavery: “The War Between the States was about independence, about self-determination, about the right of a people to […]
Newsweek‘s January 8 cover featured a piece headlined “Cheer Up America: It’s Not as Bad as You Think.” In the article, economics reporter Robert J. Samuelson argued that the source of Americans’ current dissatisfaction is our utopian notion of a society in which problems like poverty and job insecurity can be solved. These ideals should […]
As part of its takeover of ABC/Cap Cities, Disney is acquiring the ABC Radio Networks –and in doing so, it may already have silenced the most distinctive new voice on talk radio. ABC had been distributing the talkshow of Jim Hightower, the sharp-tongued Texas populist. Hightower is an unabashed advocate for blue-collar workers, family farmers, […]
TCI, the cable company that controls TV access to roughly 20 percent of the country’s cable households, has used its position as gatekeeper to acquire stakes in many different programming ventures. The company owns parts of media outlets ranging from the Home Shopping Channel to the News Hour With Jim Lehrer. Now TCI is launching […]
What’s wrong with media mergers? A look at the history of ABC–the network that the Walt Disney Company is in the process of swallowing up–illustrates nearly every argument against consolidation of media ownership. ABC can trace its origins back to 1919, when RCA, the Radio Corporation of America, was created by a consortium of General […]
One pundit who had no problem with the summer’s media merger marathon was USA Today columnist Michael Gartner. “It makes no difference if media are owned by corporations or families or individuals,” he wrote (8/8/95). “What matters are the integrity and intelligence and intrepidness of those owners.” Gartner wrote from experience: “For five years, I […]
The Philadelphia Inquirer recently announced a shake-up in its editorial pages (9/10/95), dumping long-time syndicated contributors Jeff Greenfield, Richard Reeves and George Will in favor of E.J. Dionne, David Shribman and Joseph Sobran. Greenfield is a centrist, while Reeves is a moderate liberal, so their replacement by two other Beltway centrists marks a slight shift […]
When Sen. Bill Bradley (D.-N.J.) announced he was retiring from the Senate, ABC News pundit Jeff Greenfield wrote a column (Dayton Daily News, 8/18/95) about how much “respect and admiration” the “political establishment,” including the Washington press corps, has for him. One example Greenfield gives of the integrity that made Bradley “so special as a […]
Q. What do MacNeil/Lehrer‘s Mark Shields, U.S. News & World Report‘s Steve Roberts and Gloria Borger, syndicated columnist Haynes Johnson and former New York Times reporter Hedrick Smith have in common? A. They all receive a weekly paycheck from Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest military contractor. The pundits are paid to appear on a D.C.-area […]
In the late ’80s, there was a lot of talk about “high-definition television” (HDTV)–a new generation of TV technology that promised cinema-quality images for home viewers. The catch was that the FCC would have to turn over to station owners vast amounts of unused broadcast spectrum space to carry the new data-rich transmissions. It sounded […]
One can hardly find a better illustration of the dangers of media monopoly than the relationship between Time Warner, TCI and CNN. CNN is generally thought of as the property of Ted Turner. In fact, to raise money in the 1980s, Turner sold a large stake in Turner Broadcasting–which owns CNN and other cable channels–to […]
