Reporter Gets Scoop, Then Gets Shafted
“Doing your job too well at the Plain Dealer, when it interferes with the business relations of the management, can be hazardous to your occupational health.”
FAIR
Racism in Sports Journalism
A USA Today survey (6/26/87) of minorities in sports media reveals that of the 254 writers who cover the 26 Major League Baseball teams, there are only four blacks, one Hispanic and one Asian. (Only six are women.) Of baseball’s 141 TV broadcasters, only five are black, all ex-players. No minority announcers are on English-language […]
PBS Drops Documentary on Religious Right
Award-winning filmmaker Antony Thomas was putting the final touches on his TV documentary about the religious right last April, just when the Jim and Tammy Bakker scandal broke. PBS Frontline had put up half the film’s $360,000 budget and was set to run it in two parts on May 12 and 19. It couldn’t have […]
Klaus Barbie the Businessman
An otherwise excellent New York Times Magazine article on Nazi fugitive Klaus Barbie failed to mention Barbie’s continuing role as a CIA asset.
PBS Reviews Its Programing
Right-wing pressure played a major role in prompting PBS to review its programing policies. The heat came from extremist groups such as AIM and from the Reaganite-dominated Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which had threatened its own investigation of PBS program content. In support of independence for public television, FAIR executive director Jeff Cohen addressed the […]
Nuclear Broadcasting Company?
Shouldn’t we demand that media disclose their financial ties when they produce news stories that could impact the profits of their corporate parent?
Washington’s Worst Kept Secret
Since 1985, reports linking Contra arms suppliers to cocaine smuggling have run in progressive publications and a few mainstream outlets. But CBS West 57th’s well-documented segment on the CIA/Contra drug connection (4/6/87) was the first serious network probe.
