FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote a rather apoplectic column about presidential candidate Michele Bachmann this week, lamenting the fact that other GOP candidates aren’t calling her out for being completely ill-prepared for the job: Bachmann does not deserve to be in the presidential race. Legislatively, she has done little, she knows next to nothing […]
Glenn Beck (7/25/11, via Mediaite, 7/25/11) explains on his radio show why the right-wing Norway terror suspect is what we call left-wing here in America: This was one of the episodes where I showed the railroad tracks that were different than America. In America, the left railroad track is gigantic government—it could be Communist or […]
Newsweek has a feature called “My Favorite Mistake,” where a famous person talks about something they’ve done wrong.https://fair.org/blog/wp-admin/edit.php This week (7/24/11) it’s former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The mistake she cited was when she wore the wrong pin to a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and then said something critical about his Chechnya […]
Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel maid who has accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is now speaking out publicly–weeks after press coverage took a turn against her, based on the notion that something about her made her allegations less credible. “Strauss-Kahn Prosecution Said to Be Near Collapse” was the July 1 New York Times headline. One of the strongest […]
Forget about “winning the future”–Barack Obama wants to win the center. That’s what the Washington Post is telling readers (7/25/11): Obama ‘Big Deal’ on Debt a Gamble to Win the Center Advisers think securing his plan would ensure general-election victory The Post‘s Zachary A. Goldfarb (who can’t be held responsible for the headline) explained that […]
Every so often you’re struck by something like this– a collection of covers for this week’s Time:
NBC (Nightly News, 7/19/11) did some polling to see what the public thinks about the Republican and Democratic positions on the budget and debt ceiling : CHUCK TODD: Now, look, any sort of deal is putting pressure on the bases of both parties. For Republicans, a large majority of the country is telling Republicans get […]
The first sentence of Mark Landler’s piece in the New York Times today (7/21/11): It is a truism of Middle East peacemaking that the United States is the pivotal player–the most credible broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians. If by “truism” he means “something most people don’t believe to be true,” then this makes […]
Glenn Beck’s temporary replacement in the 5 p.m. slot on Fox News, Eric Bolling, has started out with a bang. On the July 13 edition of his new show the Five, the host declared: “America was certainly safe between 2000 and 2008. I don’t remember any attacks on American soil during that period of time.” […]
The headline of Al Neuharth’s column in USA Today (7/15/11) summed up his case: “Murdoch Media Give You What You Want.” That sort of depends on who “you” is. Neuharth explains: Murdoch has an uncanny knack for figuring out what a sizable segment of readers and viewers want and giving it to them. Straight or […]
Media love the “middle” in politics–where leaders of the two major parties come together to find common ground, renew the national spirit and/or live up to the ideals of the Founders. Time magazine (7/14/11) has a soppy piece about Barack Obama and Republican leader John Boehner‘s attempt to reach a budget deal. Those efforts–some of […]
The convention in mainstream journalism is that the new stories give you the facts, and the columnists give you their opinions (hopefully backed by facts). But in the coverage over the debt ceiling and budget debates sometimes you’re better off heading straight to the columns. Today offers a good example. In the Washington Post (7/15/11), […]
The end of a Wall Street Journal article (7/14/11) on a new report on Afghan deaths highlights the peculiarity of their culture: Of civilian casualties, 2 percent were caused by night raids, slightly down from last year, with 30 fatalities, the report says. Night raids have been a contentious issue between Afghan President Hamid Karzai […]
The headline in today’s New York Times (7/13/11): Plenty of Action Before the Game, but No Immigration Law Protests The Paper of Record reported that the much-discussed protests against Arizona’s SB 1070 law fizzled: In the end, commerce trumped conscience. It was no mystery why the fervor over the immigration law was as flat as […]
A New York Times piece by C.J. Chivers (7/13/11) presents a scary picture of Libyan rebel behavior: Rebels in the mountains in Libya’s west have looted and damaged four towns seized since last month from the forces of Col. Muammar el-Gadhafi, part of a series of abuses and apparent reprisals against suspected loyalists that have […]
You may have heard about new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta‘s trip to Iraq–mainly because while in the country he told some U.S. soldiers that they were there because of 9/11. That led to coverage like this in the Washington Post: On Monday, in his first visit to Iraq as Pentagon chief, Panetta appeared to justify […]
I was struck by this headline in the Washington Post (7/10/11): Loss of Support for Nuclear Power Threatens Japan’s Economy There are probably a lot of things that are threatening the Japanese economy–a massive, deadly earthquake and tsunami, for instance. Or the massive nuclear disaster that resulted from that tsunami. The news here is that […]
Here’s the headline and subhead in a Newsweek piece (7/10/11) about the Egyptian presidential election: Egypt’s Rising Power Player Amr Moussa is on track to succeed Mubarak. And that spells danger for Israel. Reporter Dan Ephron characterizes Moussa like this: “long and vocal history of anti-Israel diatribes” “his anger against Israel” “one of Israel’s most […]
In the Washington Post (7/7/11), Fareed Zakaria tries to defend Barack Obama against the criticism that he needs a more consistent foreign policy. He writes: All American presidents have supported and should support the spread of democracy. The real question is: Should that support involve active measures to topple undemocratic regimes, especially military force? Since […]
Reporter Jose Antonio Vargas wrote a moving piece for the New York Times magazine about his status as an undocumented immigrant. One hope is that his story might improve the tone and substance of media coverage of immigration; Vargas has suggested as much, at one point tweeting this message: Undocumented Immigrant trending. So let’s drop […]
