FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
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 […]
The answer might depend on which media outlet you rely on. I read the headline at Democracy Now! on Friday: “Justice Dept Drops 99 of 101 Cases Against CIA for Abuse and Torture” The New York Times, on the other hand, offered a different sort of emphasis: “U.S. Widens Inquiries Into 2 Jail Deaths”
When I saw the July 3 New York Times headline “Setting Sail on Gaza’s Sea of Spin,” I expected the worst. Times reporter Ethan Bronner’s analysis piece on the Gaza humanitarian flotilla starts off predictably enough, saying there’s blame to spread all around: Almost everything about the flotilla stuck in Greece and waiting to challenge […]
The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza’s curious take on the Mark Halperin affair: The truth of the Halperin matter is that all reporters (or others) who go on television frequently are forever in a ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ situation…. We know of what we speak, having found ourselves tongue-tied or worse […]
“2 Republicans Open Door to Increases in Revenue” reads a headline in Monday‘s New York Times. The suggestion is that a few Republicans are walking away from the the party’s no-tax-hike orthodoxy. That much is clear from John Broder’s lead: Two senior Republicans said Sunday that they might be open to raising new government revenue […]
Time magazine’s Mark Halperin called Barack Obama a dick on MSNBC this morning. The video clip is posted all over the web today, and Halperin and MSNBC have both apologized. Forget about that for a second, and ponder why Halperin said it. The media line on Obama’s press conference is that he was unusually feisty, […]
You think Breitbart distorts facts because HE DOES. To suggest otherwise is to assert there’s no way to know the truth about anything.
An analysis in USA Today (6/23/11) by Richard Wolf claims: President Obama’s decision to remove 10,000 troops from Afghanistan this year and a total of 33,000 by next September was deemed a step in the right direction Wednesday by a growing, and bipartisan, anti-war movement. Really? I’m not aware of many people in the “anti-war […]
There is growing Congressional opposition to the Libya war. Two House votes this month sought to challenge the White House policy—one of which passed by a wide margin. On Saturday (6/18/11) Charlie Savage reported in the New York Times that the Office of Legal Counsel’s advice to Obama was that he needed to comply with […]
The Washington Post had a piece yesterday (6/9/11) on Mitt Romney’s views on global warming. It serves as a reminder that Republican political candidates are under enormous pressure from the right-wing base of the party on this issue–any politician who’s ever suggested that climate change is a problem, or backed efforts to address it, is […]
One of the most common criticisms of the PBS NewsHour is that it too often mimics the elite bias of the commercial media. A recent broadcast of the NewsHour (6/8/11) had two segments about the debate over the Afghan War–the first a news report covering the Senate nomination hearings for Ryan Crocker, Obama’s nominee to […]
One theme of the coverage of the NATO bombing of Libya is that the Libyan government is lousy at propaganda. It was somewhat jarring, though, to see all of these headlines in the space of two days this week. It’s worth pointing out– as some of these stories (and others) do– that the NATO bombing […]
“Connecticut is closing out its most activist, liberal legislative session in memory,” Peter Applebome reports in the New York Times (6/8/11), with “the largest tax increase in Connecticut history” as the centerpiece of his case. “They decided to tear up the antitax, budget-slashing, confront-the-unions script that has characterized state legislative sessions elsewhere,” Applebome writes, noting […]
“Senators, congressmen and even President Obama have misquoted the Founding Fathers in recent years,” writes Washington Post reporter David A. Fahrenthold in a June 7 piece suggesting that there is a bipartisan trend of misquotation and misrepresentation of historical events. After citing Sarah Palin’s recent botched account of Paul Revere’s revolutionary ride, Fahrenthold implies that […]
Bill Moyers appeared on Democracy Now! this morning (6/8/11) to discuss his new book about his days at PBS, The Conversation Continues. Interviewed for the hour by anchors Any Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Moyers said, “The consensual seduction of the mainstream media by and with the government is one of the most dangerous toxins at […]
“Fed Wants Priority Put on Deficit” was the New York Times‘ headline over Binyamin Appelbaum’s June 8 story on the front page of the business section. Summarizing a speech Fed chair Ben Bernanke gave the day before, Appelbaum wrote, “He said that growth remained slow and uneven, but he made no mention of the possibility […]
Two elections, different outcomes, different headlines at the Wall Street Journal (6/6/11). When the left loses: Portugal Decisively Ends Leftist Rule Portugal on Sunday voted decisively to end six years of leftist rule, electing the country’s main conservative party and boosting prospects for austerity measures tied to a $114 billion aid package from the EU […]
Last night (6/6/11), Fox News host Sean Hannity was talking with WorldNetDaily‘s Joe Farah: FARAH: Charles Rangel is still in the House. Barney Frank is still in the House. Bill Clinton is getting awards. Gerry Studds got a standing ovation from House Democrats. This is a guy who had sex with a congressional page, correct? […]
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen writes (6/7/11): I once worked for an editor who banned the word “oxymoron.” I don’t know why. It’s a good word, meaning a contradiction in terms. The dictionary offers some examples: “wise fool” and “legal murder.” I would like to cite another: Barack Obama. He sends contradictory messages. That sounds […]
In the New York Times corrections box (6/7/11): An article on Monday about Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, omitted the name of one of the other declared candidates, who number six, not five. Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas, is also running. One of the […]
