FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Yesterday’s AP “factcheck” (9/20/11) of Barack Obama’s speech about raising taxes on the super-wealthy cleverly debunked an argument that Obama didn’t make. No one is saying that all millionaires pay a lower rate than their secretaries–Warren Buffett drew attention because he said he did, and there are undoubtedly other multi-millionaires in the same boat. As […]
Fox Sports, covering a football game between the Chicago Bears and Atlanta Falcons (9/11/11), put up a bunch of headlines about Bears quarterback Jay Cutler’s knee problems: Cutler Leaves With Injury Cutler Lacks Courage Cutler’s No Leader “These are the actual headlines from the local papers in Chicago,” announcer Daryl Johnston declared. Wow, were the […]
Columnist Michael Barone, best known for editing The Almanac of American Politics, wrote a piece (Boston Herald, 9/20/11) declaring that Barack Obama’s “Sellout to Unions Staggers Economy.” After noting that “some pro-union moves have a certain ritual quality,” he got down to the really troubling behavior: Other steps are more important. Fully one-third of the […]
Yesterday, Barack Obama made a speech outlining his deficit reduction plan—focusing attention on a variety of spending cuts and tax increases. The Associated Press, as is their habit, issued a “factcheck” piece by Stephen Ohlemacher that managed to bungle the issues involved, making it sound as if Obama was wrong about the taxes that wealthy […]
A Washington Post story onSunday (9/18/11)argues that many recipients of Social Security aren’t really paying attention to what the GOP presidential front-runners are saying about Social Security. The real story, then, is what kind of narrative the candidates are trying to establish. As reporter Amy Gardner puts it: In many ways, it doesn’t matter to […]
Mark Halperin has a feature in Time magazine every week called “The Big Questions.” For a process-obsessed campaign reporter, this means a weekly who’s up, who’s down scorecard, in an easy to followQ-&-A format. This week’s questions: Is Sarah Palin in or out? What could hold her back? When does she have to decide? Part […]
There’s a category of media criticism we’ve often called “Seen and Not Heard.” It’s usually a protest that’s covered via a photo and caption, with no accompanying story to inform readers about what seems like an important issue. I came across this today in the Washington Post (9/16/11)–the caption headline (not pictured here) is “Nurses […]
The New York Times reported today (9/13/11) on the controversy, citing FAIR: But the CNN debate on Monday was the first event hosted jointly by a major news organization and a Tea Party group. And their partnership left some questioning whether the network had gone too far in reaching for centrist credibility. “Is there really […]
Over the course of the Iraq War, many U.S. media outlets have managed to misconstrue Iraqi public opinion about the presence of U.S. troops. As early as 2004, as FAIR (6/2/04) pointed out, research showed that the Iraqi public wanted U.S. troops out: According to a new poll from the Iraq Center for Research and […]
Al-Qaeda, bin Laden, never imagined that the 3,000 people who lost their lives that day would inspire 3 million to put on the uniform and harden the resolve of 300 million Americans. They never imagined the sleeping giant they were about to awaken. — Vice President Joe Biden at September 11 commemoration (9/11/11) Actually, that’s […]
The Washington Post today: Diplomatic Efforts Unable to Derail Palestinians’ UN Gambit “Gambit” is the kind of word that seems intended to send a certain message–as if there some kind of sneaky maneuver at work here. That’s especially true when it is contrasted with “diplomatic efforts.” In this case, the paper is referring to efforts […]
It seems like just yesterday that Michele Bachmann was in the “top tier,” thanks to her narrow victory in the mostly meaningless Iowa straw poll. She had “momentum.” Then came this week’s debate and, well, things are looking different. As the Washington Post described the scene at the debate: Meanwhile, any momentum that Rep. Michele […]
The New York Times has a story today (9/7/11) by Jeff Zeleny about how both sides are branding Obama: The White House is in the midst of rebranding the president as a pragmatic problem solver prepared to set aside ideology to address a compelling need (see last week’s concession on ozone regulations), a reasonable man […]
When Dick Cheney appeared on the Today show, at the conclusion of the interview a camera that shows the crowd outside the studio picked up this image: That sign probably represented the harshest take on Cheney’s record that TV viewers saw during the PR campaign for his book. Unsurprisingly, it caught someone’s attention over at […]
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (9/5/11) takes the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11 to say that he’s sorry: I went home on September 11 with my shoes dusted with the detritus of the World Trade Center. I felt a hate that was entirely new to me. Soon after, the anthrax attacks began, and […]
Documents discovered in Libya suggest a close relationship between the Libyan government and the CIA. The New York Times described it this way on September 3: TRIPOLI, Libya — Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the […]
(UPDATE: Today’s Times includes a story about the WikiLeaks Iraq cable, under the somewhat strange headline “Cable Implicates Americans in Deaths of Iraqi Civilians.” Still very little in the rest of the press— nothing on television, according to a search of the Nexis database). One of the main media tropes regarding WikiLeaks‘ release of […]
Recently on Fox Business (8/30/11; cite by Think Progress, 8/31/11), host Eric Bolling tried to discredit the Center for American Progress’s excellent new report on Islamophobia with this colossal falsehood: I need to point this out–I’m reading directly from this report: “The Obama-allied Center for American Progress has released a report that blames Islamophobia in […]
FAIR editor Jim Naureckas tweeted recently, “NATO’s installation of an Al Qaeda-friendly government in Libya is one of 2011’s most underreported stories.” He’s got a point. The Washington Post today published a pretty interesting look at how the Libyan government viewed the jihadist threat, thanks to some documents recovered in Tripoli: The documents were uncovered […]
New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley has a piece (8/31/11) about Al Sharpton’s debut as an MSNBC host. It seems his show, like others on the channel, could use more of a debate: On Monday Mr. Sharpton followed the patented formula, bringing in two experts who agreed with him that recent efforts in North […]
