FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
1. When Anita Hill took a polygraph test to try to substantiate her charges of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas, the Wall Street Journal attacked her in an editorial (10/15/91) titled “Credibility Gulch”: “Lie detector tests are so unreliable they are rarely allowed as evidence in court.” But just eight months later (6/9/92), when the […]
The strategy of Pennsylvania is designed to keep Mumia Abu-Jamal silent until he can be silenced permanently.
Bill Clinton was roundly condemned by right-wing talk radio hosts and their allies for “politicizing” the Oklahoma City bombing, but his basic point is undeniable: There is much speech on the radio today that advocates or justifies violence.
True Confession “I admit it — the liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.” — William Kristol, editor of the Standard, Rupert Murdoch’s soon-to-be-launched conservative weekly (New Yorker, 5/22/95) Dole’s True Lies Sen. Robert Dole condemns Hollywood for producing “nightmares of […]
Steve Emerson: Emerson is a journalist (late of U.S. News & World Report and CNN) noted for his anonymous U.S. and Israeli intelligence sources (Extra!, 10-11/92, 11-12/93). These sources led him to announce, in the wake of the World Trade Center explosion, that the “bomber or bombers may be from one of the former Yugoslav […]
FAIR, along with a coalition of religious and civil rights leaders, has written to ABC/Capital Cities CEO Tom Murphy to condemn the use of ABC-controlled airwaves for neo-Nazi and white supremacist recruiting. WABC radio talkshow host Bob Grant has repeatedly permitted and even assisted hate groups in giving out phone numbers and addresses on his […]
Ranger Rush LIMBAUGH: On his April 5 radio show, Limbaugh announced he was going to “nuke FAIR” with new information he had found about forests: “This, of course, is an area about which I’ve come under severe and fallacious attack by this media watchdog bunch of homies called Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting,” Limbaugh said. […]
Responding to criticism of religious broadcaster Pat Robertson anti-semitic conspiracy theories (Extra!, 3–4/95), Christian Coalition spokesperson Ralph Reed declared that Robertson’s group “believed in a nation that ‘is not officially Christian, Jewish or Muslim,’ where anyone can run for office without church or synagogue attendance becoming an issue,” the New York Times reported (4/4/95). But […]
Few targets of the “welfare reform” campaign are more vulnerable than disabled children. Yet funds for those children, in the form of the Supplemental Security Income program, were under attack on PrimeTime Live‘s Oct. 13, 1994 broadcast. “It’s a program designed to help disabled children, but parents are helping themselves,” ABC‘s Diane Sawyer announced. “Chief […]
Over Newt’s Dead Body The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will get no more money from the federal government, Newt Gingrich declared in February (Washington Post,2/17/95). “They still don’t realize that the appropriation is gone, that the game is over,” the House speaker told fellow Republicans. “The power of the speaker is the power of recognition, […]
It’s been estimated that a typical American TV viewer sees 100 commercials a day. That’s 36,500 a year, or perhaps 2.5 million over the course of the viewer’s lifetime. Just about every one of those commercials is carefully crafted to convey the message: If you buy our product, you will be complete. Part reviewer, part […]
1. Poor women have more children because of the “financial incentives” of welfare benefits. Repeated studies show no correlation between benefit levels and women’s choice to have children. (See, for example, Urban Institute Policy and Research Report, Fall/93.) States providing relatively higher benefits do not show higher birth rates among recipients. In any case, welfare […]
In media commentary on the Smithsonian Institute’s proposed display of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, words were often turned on their heads: Because the proposed exhibit didn’t strictly adhere to the official version of history, it was called “politically correct.”
The lawmakers who launched the public television system in 1967 were concerned that government-funded TV would become government-controlled TV. To protect against this, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was created, a non-governmental, non-profit entity set up to disburse federal funds to public broadcasters. The idea was that CPB would be a “heat-shield,” protecting public TV […]
Listening to the likes of new House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Sen. Larry Pressler, who have threatened to “zero out” funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), you would think that U.S. public television is promoting a “liberal agenda.” On the other hand, bureaucrats from CPB and from PBS, which gets its federal funding […]
By Daniel Junas Sun Myung Moon, the charismatic leader of the Unification Church, founded the Washington Times on May 18, 1982, the day after he was convicted of tax fraud and related charges. That conviction, for which Moon served 14 months in federal prison, contributed to a widespread perception that Moon was a discredited and […]
Since winning control of Congress, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) has constantly complained about “destructive” and “negative” coverage from the “liberal elite media.” For example, when asked on Nightline (11/29/94) about his reference to the Clintons as “counter-culture McGoverniks,” he first insisted that he had been misquoted—”I used the term McGovernite, not McGovernik—it was one of […]
The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, public television’s flagship news program, is being bought out by a private, for-profit media conglomerate. Liberty Media, a subsidiary of TCI, the nation’s largest cable systems operator, is buying two-thirds of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, the show’s producer. The mere fact that the NewsHour can be absorbed by a corporate media conglomerate illustrates how […]
Would it surprise you that the most listened-to talk radio station in the country, owned by one of the most important media companies, has as its highest rated host a man who sounds like a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan? The station is New York City’s WABC, flagship of the ABC Radio Network, and […]
The New Yorker magazine wrote an editorial (10/17/94) to mark President Aristide’s return to Port-au-Prince. “Political murders,” the liberal weekly stated, “have practically ended…. Haiti’s extreme human rights emergency — the reign of torture, terror and death…is for the moment over.” In fact, as the Weekly News Update on the Americas (published by the Nicaragua […]
