FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Bill Clinton’s remarks about rapper Sister Souljah were part of a clear, if some what peculiar, political strategy: identify those voting blocs most likely to support you, and alienate them. This strategy was outlined in a David Broder/Thomas Edsall Washington Post piece (6/12/92) just before the Rainbow Coalition conference: “Some top advisers to Clinton argue that…he […]
‘Politically Correct’ Since 1990, some news outlets have seemed less concerned about racism than about the allegedly overzealous activists who challenge inequality–denounced as “politically correct” in countless media stories. A computer search of the Los Angeles Times for the phrase “politically correct” or “political correctness” during the six months before the Rodney King case verdict […]
The U.S. Senate has been taken for a ride on public broadcasting by the same right-wing critics who have long sought to destroy any alternative to commercial broadcasting. The current attacks on public TV — made by people who don’t seem to watch the programming — turn reality upside down. Many PBS stations air three […]
In covering the vote by the Philippines senate to close the U.S. naval base at Subic Bay, major U.S. newspapers contrasted the clamor of “anti-American nationalists” with the silent majority who wanted the bases to stay. “Opinion polls show that two-thirds of [Filipinos] prefer that Subic Bay remain,” wrote the Chicago Tribune‘s Uli Schmetzer (9/10/91). […]
Patrick Buchanan and David Duke today find themselves in the same place—using nearly identical issues and rhetoric to challenge George Bush from the right. But they took different paths to get to this point: Duke rose to prominence through the use of KKK robes; Buchanan rode a more conventional vehicle: television. Although Duke recently received […]
“The senior editor leveled with me,” the reporter told Extra!. “His words were: Time is institutionally behind the Contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you’d have no trouble getting it in the magazine.’”
When People’s Dirk Mathison infiltrated the exclusive Bohemian Grove retreat, he got a view into the US elite that very few reporters have glimpsed. Unfortunately, that elite includes the management of Time Warner, the owner of People, which prevented Mathison from telling his story.
“A decade after Washington declared war on businesses that expose the public to hazardous wastes,” began a New York Times front-page article (9/1/91), “environmental experts are questioning the unquestionable: Is it worth spending a staggering $300 billion to $700 billion to restore waste sites to pristine condition?” Leaving aside the question of when the U.S. […]
Many newspaper sections exists solely to serve specific types of advertisers—what Sunday paper would be complete without a Car or a Travel section? But in few sections of the paper does the advertiser have as much power as in the Real Estate pages.
The end of saturation coverage of the Gulf War has left some journalists feeling nostalgic. “Mark Thompson, defense correspondent for Knight-Ridder Newspapers, says his days feel shapeless without the comforting rhythm of the morning briefing from Riyadh and the afternoon session at the Pentagon,” according to the Washington Post‘s Howard Kurtz (3/25/91). “There’s nothing better […]
In the wake of the Gulf War, a New York Timeseditorial (4/15/91) claimed that since the end of the Cold War, the U.N. Security Council is “no longer paralyzed by Soviet vetoes.” The comment shows that Cold War propaganda lives on: For years, it hasn’t been the USSR that has been paralyzing the Security Council, […]
The extent to which Gulf War reporting was controlled by the Bush administration was seldom detailed by the press and hence widely misunderstood by the public, which largely bought the argument that restrictions were necessary for some vaguely defined “security” reasons. Such arguments were belied by the Pentagon’s arbitrary ban on coverage of coffins returning […]
Media polls have proclaimed, in self-congratulatory fashion, that about 70 percent of the public thinks the media did a good job in reporting the Gulf War. But if one measures the media by how well they inform the public, a recent study indicates they failed dismally. The study, conducted by the University of Massachusetts’ Center […]
The morning after the U.S. began the bombing of Iraq, NBC‘s Robert Bazell reported the Pentagon’s assessment via the Today show: “It was spectacular news,” Bazell summarized. “We’ve lost only one casualty.” Other networks were similarly ecstatic. CBS‘s Charles Osgood (1/17/91) described the early bombing of Iraq as “a marvel,” while the same network’s Jim […]
1. Secret U.S. Arms Shipments to Iraq (Murray Waas, Village Voice, 12/18/90): The Reagan administration reportedly sent sophisticated weaponry to Iraq through third-country cut-outs. Waas indicated that the secret policy violated U.S. arms export laws. 2. The Diplomatic Scandal (Murray Waas, Village Voice, 1/22/91): U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie now claims that her assurance […]
“Even though a story can be incredibly preposterous in the Western mind, it can resonate deeply in other parts of the world,” Todd Levanthal, a U.S. Information Agency specialist on disinformation, told the New York Times (9/16/90). “The key is predisposition to believe, not the crudity of the charge.” While the point of the article […]
“Stones fell on Jews who…were simply praying peacefully at the Western Wall,” reported Dean Reynolds on Nightline (10/9/90). His version coincided with nearly all accounts of the Oct. 8 killing of some 17 Palestinians outside the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. CBS Evening News showed stones, thrown by Palestinians, flying over the Wailing Wall. What […]
Forbes magazine seems to be taking its slogan–“capitalist tool”–a bit too literally. In 1989 (6/26/89), Forbes printed a full-page house ad in its pages, soliciting insurance company advertising for a special section: “Clearly there has never been a time when it has been more critical for the insurance industry to tell its story…. Be part […]
From the beginning of the Persian Gulf crisis in August 1990, most of the mainstream U.S. media went into war mode: Their main mission was not journalism, but the creation of a national consensus in support of the U.S. military buildup. The media acknowledged this mission as they begged to he allowed to report from […]
FAIR’s new study– “Lost in the Margins: Labor and the Media”– surveys coverage of U.S. workers and their unions in 1989. Based on various methods of analysis– including a minute-count of nightly network news shows and a questionnaire circulated among the country’s leading dailies– the study concludes that “the lives of 100 million working people […]
