FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Think of the great robbery teams: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid…Bonnie and Clyde…Bill Clinton and Orrin Hatch? Yes, Clinton and Hatch pulled off one of the greatest robberies of all time—stealing billions of dollars worth of cultural treasures from the public for the benefit of corporations via the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act—written […]
E-book skullduggery is afoot, warned New York Times reporters Motoko Rich and Brad Stone (3/18/10), reporting that “Amazon.com has threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online unless they agree to a detailed list of concessions regarding the sale of electronic books.” Tabbed on the website as “Amazon May Impede Access to […]
Newsweek Blames the ‘Left’ for Bush-Era Disasters Jon Meacham’s editor’s note in the June 7 Newsweek, looking back on the failures of the last decade, made a fervently centrist point: “The history of these years fails to fit neatly into the ideological categories of left or right, for both public and private enterprises have managed […]
The website WikiLeaks posted tens of thousands of classified intelligence documents relating to the Afghanistan War on Sunday, July 25. Spanning the years 2004-09, the documents had been shared in advance with reporters from the New York Times, the British Guardian and the German Der Spiegel, all of which produced long pieces offering their […]
In response to hundreds of letters from FAIR activists, PBS ombud Michael Getler (7/16/10) agreed with FAIR’s criticism (Action Alert, 7/12/10) of the 3-hour PBS documentary Turmoil and Triumph, a tribute to former Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz funded in part by institutions and individuals with close ties to Shultz. Getler found Turmoil to […]
Many PBS stations around the country will begin airing a three-part, three-hour documentary tonight (7/12/10) about Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz. According to the New York Times (7/12/10), the unusually lengthy, completely uncritical tribute is partially sponsored by corporations linked to Shultz’s corporate career. The special, Turmoil and Triumph, was funded by the Stephen […]
It’s hard to imagine a worse situation than the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but the Niger delta in Nigeria has by some accounts suffered spills equaling the Exxon Valdez every year for five decades. Besides the rare report, though, you wouldn’t know about that from U.S. corporate media. FAIR’s radio show CounterSpin […]
The media firestorm over the Rolling Stone profile (6/22/10) of General Stanley McChrystal mostly missed the real point of the article, which was a damning portrait of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Much of the media coverage stressed the criticism and insults hurled by McChrystal and his staff at various administration figures. Some of these […]
Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress like to argue that public concern over federal budget deficits makes it impossible to pass a new round of job-creating stimulus spending. And corporate media like to echo these sentiments, despite there being little evidence that citizens are as concerned about these issues as inside-the-Beltway deficit hawks. In the […]
In the aftermath of Israel’s May 31 raid on the Gaza humanitarian aid flotilla that killed nine activists, the Washington Post and New York Times have propagated an inaccurate historical context that serves to bolster Israeli claims. The conventional rendition is that Israel invaded Gaza at the end of 2008 in order to stop a […]
The May 31 Israeli attack on the Free Gaza humanitarian flotilla has returned some media attention to the humanitarian crisis faced by 1.5 million Palestinians living under Israeli blockade in the Gaza Strip. But some media figures have sought to deny the existence of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza at all. The Gaza Strip remains […]
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has repeatedly cited one reason to support Arizona’s harsh new anti-immigrant law: the state’s exploding crime rate. As FAIR documented in a May 17 Action Alert, there is no such crime wave in the state. What’s more, most research shows that immigrants tend to commit less crime than the population […]
On May 31, the Israeli military attacked a flotilla of boats full of civilians attempting to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip. Reports indicate that at least nine and as many as 16 of the activists on board were killed, though details remain sketchy due to Israel’s censorious limitations on media coverage. Much of […]
Iraq War’s DU Tonnage Overstated I’m grateful to Extra! and Dahr Jamail for reviewing the health impact of depleted uranium (DU) weapons used in Iraq (“The New ‘Forgotten’ War,” 3/10). But while it may seem many times worse to say that they “used more than 1,700 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq in the 2003 […]
On March 12, a front-page article in the New York Times warned that the value of the federal government’s debt, if Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security obligations are included, totals $79 trillion—yes, with a T. Less than three weeks later, another front-page Times article (3/30/10) alerted readers that states’ pension obligations to public employees tops […]
The fact that there was any doubt about Ben Bernanke’s reconfirmation as chair of the Federal Reserve drove corporate media into a state of high anxiety. “The battle over Bernanke’s confirmation has been a test of central bank independence, a crucial element if the Fed is to carry out unpopular but economically essential policies,” an […]
Healthcare’s Flawed Narratives When Michael Corcoran writes (“The Flawed Media Narrative of the Healthcare Debate,” Extra!, 4/10) that “pragmatic” is a curious way to describe letting the public option die, I’d like to agree with him. He would be correct if we really had a functioning democracy. Actually we have an oligarchy, which is only […]
Tea Parties Can’t Fail Describing the anti-tax Tea Party rallies on April 15, Washington Post writers Amy Gardner and Michael Ruane (4/16/10) wrote, “The showing, while smaller than the crowds that gathered in Washington on September 12, made clear that the ire and energy that have defined the tea party movement since it became a […]
As the United States examines the origins of the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, one factor that should not be overlooked is media coverage that served to cover up dangers rather than expose them. When President Barack Obama declared a new push for offshore drilling (3/31/10), asserting that “oil rigs today generally don’t […]
Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly has repeatedly singled out one reason to support Arizona’s draconian new immigration law: the state’s exploding crime rate. But there is no documented crime wave in Arizona, and O’Reilly’s attempt to link immigrants to crime is equally unfounded. O’Reilly’s record of overheated rhetoric is clear: —May 3: “Arizona had […]
