FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The media guardians of the Conventional Wisdom long ago decided that the Iran/Contra scandal is an old, irrelevant story that we would be better off forgetting. When President George Bush, just after losing his re-election bid, pardoned many of the leading figures in the scandal, PBS‘s Robert MacNeil (12/24/92) asked, “Why not bring in the […]
Nightline‘s December 8, 1993 program was a prime example of imbalanced, irresponsible journalism. The issue was the killing of doctors who perform abortions: not how it can be prevented, but whether such attacks are justified. Invited into the studio to discuss this “issue” were Helen Alvare, a representative of the Catholic Bishops Pro-Life Committee, an […]
In the Jan./Feb. 1993 issue of Extra!, writers John Summa and Patrice Greanville reported that news coverage of NAFTA had a pronounced pro-“free trade” slant, promoting the views of government and business groups who support NAFTA. Critics of the pact, like environmentalists and labor unions who warned that the pact could have negative effects on […]
A new study of public television programming challenges many of the premises of the conservative-dominated debate over public television bias. The independently conducted study, a version of which will appear in the September/October issue of FAIR’s magazine Extra!, is the first ever to examine public TV’s full evening schedule. It focuses, in particular, on the […]
In the media smear campaign against Lani Guinier, Clinton’s nominee as assistant attorney general for civil rights, her views were not only distorted, but in many cases presented as the exact opposite of her actual beliefs. One of the most prominent themes of the attack on Guinier was her supposed support for electoral districts shaped […]
In an October 1992 editorial, the New York Times proclaimed that “the debate over healthcare reform is over. Managed competition has won.” This outcome, the Times announced (10/10/92), was “delicious” and “wondrous.” In fact, the debate over healthcare reform still goes on, but you might not know it from establishment media. While the New York […]
Back in 1990, the grassroots group Neighbor to Neighbor called for a boycott of Folgers coffee to protest human rights abuses in El Salvador, a country Folgers bought coffee beans from. When Neighbor to Neighbor tried to run ads publicizing this boycott, however, nearly every TV station turned the group down. The reason stations were […]
The debate over repealing the military’s prohibition of homosexuality—not so much a question of “letting gays in,” as it was sometimes described, but a matter of ending discrimination against the thousands of gay men and lesbians already in the armed forces—has been peculiarly limited. The reasons military leaders give for maintaining the ban were often […]
In your piece, “How Seventeen Undermines Young Women” (Extra!, 1-2/93), Kimberly Phillips set out with a thesis and then searched for the facts to support it. Yes, we are a commercially supported magazine, and it is my supposition that Kimberly’s objection to our fashion and beauty stories is that concern with appearance is damaging to […]
Second Opinion Being a terrorism expert means never having to say you’re sorry. After the World Trade Center bombing, Steven Emerson of CNN’s Special Assignment Unit filed an “exclusive report” (3/2/93) announcing that unnamed “law enforcement officials…suspect the bomber or bombers may be from one of the former Yugoslav republics.” Three days later, after Mohammed […]
A study of National Public Radio commissioned by FAIR indicates that public radio’s leading news programs fail– in reporting, analysis and commentary– to reflect the diversity of the public. The study, conducted by Charlotte Ryan of the Boston College Media Research and Action Project, examined transcripts of all weekday broadcasts of All Things Considered and […]
The first question national media need to ask themselves about Somalia is: Where were we? In January 1991, six leading relief agencies warned that 20 million people in Africa faced starvation unless food aid was forthcoming–mainly in Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia. (See Hunger in Africa — A Story Still Untold, Extra! September 1992) In the […]
Most of the major media reacted to George Bush’s last-minute pardon of leading Iran/Contra figures with less than outrage. The conventional wisdom in media circles for years has been that the scandal is old news and it should just go away. Robert MacNeil of the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour (12/24/92) spoke for many in the media when […]
The Washington Post (12/11/92) reported on Clinton’s economic team in an article headlined “Clinton Appointees Form a Collage of Varying Economic Views.” The piece claimed that Clinton’s administration would be a “tent big enough to accomodate a wide variety of viewpoints.” How wide are the viewpoints represented? The article cites Lloyd Bentsen, an “old-time wheeler-dealer” […]
Juan Gonzalez, a columnist for the New York Daily News when the paper was bought by real estate developer/publisher Mort Zuckerman, wrote an angry column about the purchase that never appeared in his paper (New York Newsday, 12/2/92). It began with the words, “Some people never get accustomed to having a bully’s foot on their […]
An op-ed in the Nov. 11, 1992 New York Post worried that 25 percent of African-American New Yorkers rely on black-owned WLIB and “militant black weeklies” for their news—not on “mainstream media whose perspective could counter extremist views.” While FAIR encourages news consumers to get the widest selection of sources possible, we’re also worried about […]
The jockeying by presidential candidates to win the support of pundits and funders is known as the “first primary.” Bill Clinton won that primary by presenting himself as the kind of centrist politician that political insiders are comfortable with: tough on foreign policy, skeptical of social programs, friendly toward business. In the real election, Clinton […]
Recent media coverage of immigration has been dominated by anti-immigrant voices; immigrant and refugee rights advocates have been slighted. In this often one-sided discussion, no group has enjoyed more exposure than the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Retorm (also abbreviated as “FAIR,” not to be confused with the media watch group FAIR). Media outlets have […]
The question is not whether the media were unfair to George Bush, or whether the media were unfair to Bill Clinton. The question the media have to ask themselves is whether they were fair to the American people. After 1988, an election year dominated by non-issues, deceptive attacks, substanceless one-liners and photo opportunities, the media […]
It was fashionable to bemoan the networks’ lack of gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Democratic conventions. ABC‘s Peter Jennings (Washington Post, 7/12/92) said it was “a little sad” that the networks were passing up “a chance to present the democratic process in the purest sense.” Of course, modern stage-managed conventions are anything but a democratic process—and […]
