FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
“Let me be very clear,” declared Sen. John Ensign (R.-Nev.), “WikiLeaks is not a whistleblower website and [Julian] Assange is not a journalist.” Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin concurred: “Assange is not a ‘journalist,’ any more than the ‘editor’ of Al-Qaeda’s new English-language magazine Inspire is a ‘journalist,’” she wrote on her Facebook page, adding […]
“Climate is the issue of our time,” says Scientific American editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina (Observations, 10/28/10). So why does her magazine keep treating human-caused global warming as an open question? DiChristina was responding to criticism her magazine had received (Climate Progress, 10/26/10; FAIR Blog, 10/27/10) over a November 2010 article by Michael Lemonick about Judith Curry, […]
Judge’s Conflicts Stricken From Record Under U.S. law, a judge must disqualify himself “in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” or in which the judge “has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding.” But the conflicts of federal Judge Henry Hudson were […]
The political context of the current Egyptian uprising is clear: The United States has steadfastly supported dictator Hosni Mubarak, whose rule has been marked by sham elections and the jailing and torture of dissidents, propping up his regime since 1981 with some $60 billion in aid, most of it military. But since U.S. corporate media […]
With increasing vehemence since the midterm elections, pundits and journalists have recommended Barack Obama move to the right–and now are citing recent polling to suggest that the president has benefited from following their advice. But there is little evidence that Obama’s current approval ratings have anything to do with a rightward shift, and the entire […]
Whether the abrupt termination of MSNBC host Keith Olbermann’s contract on January 21 was connected to Olbermann’s left-of-center politics or the recent purchase of NBC by Comcast from General Electric, the host’s departure provides an opportunity to reflect on the bigger picture. MSNBC‘s current liberal identity is generally attributed to Olbermann, whose success offered compelling […]
The discussion of violent and paranoid rhetoric in the media is long overdue, whether or not it is ever determined that accused Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner was somehow influenced or motivated by such rhetoric. Before the shooting, there had been a remarkable surge of politically motivated violence (FAIR Blog, 1/12/11). Despite media efforts to […]
Having concluded that the United States needs an austerity program to cure its economic ills (Extra!, 1/10), and having decided in advance that the 2010 midterms were a mandate for downsizing the federal government (Extra!, 12/10), the leading outlets of the corporate media fixed on the deficit commission created by Barack Obama as a test […]
PBS, Diversity & Public Media Your November issue’s analysis of PBS news and public affairs programs illuminated a pervasive lack of diversity and gender equity in guest appearances on those shows. While the conclusions to which your exposé point are valid concerns and well substantiated with empirical data, there is one ironic omission. Tavis Smiley […]
Bush’s Choice of an Interviewer Was a Slam Dunk Interviewing George W. Bush about his new book, NBC’s Matt Lauer (11/8/10) remarked: “He says he eventually decided to go to war based on Saddam Hussein’s defiance and what seemed to be rock-solid intelligence. On the subject of WMD, George Tenet famously said, ‘It’s a slam […]
At the end of every year FAIR rounds up some of the stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance. This year brought no shortage of contenders; indeed, the hardest part of the P.U.-litzers is narrowing down the list. Readers who think we missed one can share their nominations at the FAIR Blog (fair.org/blog). And without further […]
In U.S. elite media, the main revelation of the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables is that the U.S. government conducts its foreign policy in a largely admirable fashion.
Certain editions of the New York Times (12/3/10) published today an update to its reporting on Iranian weapons with a much more skeptical tone than its original article. The first article (11/29/10), headlined “Iran Fortifies Its Missilies With the Aid of North Korea,” presented the case in definitive terms: Iran now possesses powerful missiles with […]
Heads GOP Wins, Tails Dems Lose The Sunday after the midterm elections (11/7/10), Meet the Press featured two conservative Republican guests, Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.). That’s only natural, right, because the GOP did so well in the elections? Flash back to November 12, 2006, when Meet the Press’s then-host Tim […]
While we had to wait until Election Night to find out that John Boehner eclipsed Nancy Pelosi, and that Harry Reid withstood Sharron Angle, one politician’s success was pre-ordained by corporate media long before the votes were cast: Herbert Hoover. Although pundits rarely if ever named the long-dead former president as a winner of the […]
A November 29 New York Times article alleging that Iran possesses powerful missiles with “the capacity to strike at capitals in Western Europe” appears to rest on incredibly shaky evidence–amounting to a German newspaper article that did not fully corroborate the U.S. claims the Times was touting. The piece relied on one of the cables […]
Tonight’s broadcast of the Charlie Rose Show will feature a discussion of the budget deficit with progressive economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). As FAIR’s recent action alert noted (11/16/10), the Rose show’s discussion of the White House deficit commission has been dominated by right-leaning […]
A report from the co-chairs of the White House deficit commission has generated significant criticism. But on public television mainstay Charlie Rose, viewers are hearing only from supporters of the center-right plan to cut spending and lower taxes for the wealthy. The first Charlie Rose discussion on November 11 featured Harvard economics professor Martin Feldstein, […]
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has been placed on indefinite suspension without pay in the wake of a Politico report (11/5/10) that revealed Olbermann had donated $7,200 to three Democratic candidates, in violation of NBC‘s standards barring employees from making political contributions. A journalist donating money to a political candidate raises obvious conflict of interest questions; […]
With the Democrats suffering substantial losses in Tuesday’s midterms, many journalists and pundits were offering a familiar diagnosis (Extra!, 7-8/06; FAIR Media Advisory, 2/3/09): The Democrats had misread their mandate and governed too far to the left. The solution, as always, is for Democrats to move to the right and reclaim “the center.” But this […]
