FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
On Sunday (2/13/11), the Washington Post had an odd piece about Obama’s budget proposal–starting with the odd headline, “Obama to Propose Spending Cuts in Budget Plan Aimed at Countering Conservatives.” Republicans have been stressing spending cuts, so Obama is “countering” that with… spending cuts? Huh. The piece tries to argue that these calls for austerity […]
The United States sent former ambassador Frank Wisner to Egypt to talk to Hosni Mubarak. Wisner garnered headlines when he declared support for Mubarak staying in power, causing the White House to try and argue that wasn’t the message the White House was trying to send. But Wisner’s background was worth more attention. As Pratap […]
Displaying the same allergy to actual democracy shown by Joe Klein (FAIR Blog, 2/3/11), Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer (2/4/11) calls, like Klein, for a military regime in Egypt to impose a “period of stability” for “guiding the country to free elections”–the kind of “free elections” in which the military will “guarantee” that the right […]
Washington Post columnist (and CNN host) Kathleen Parker turned in some thoughts (1/30/11) about what she didn’t hear Barack Obama’s State of the Union address: He didn’t say it. That word: “exceptional.” Barack Obama described an exceptional nation in his State of the Union address, but he studiously avoided using the word conservatives long to […]
Assange believes the government keeps important secrets? And that mainstream media play along? That is kooky.
Now this is a head scratcher.”As Arabs Protest, U.S. Speaks Up” is the headline today over a story by Scott Wilson and Joby Warrick in the Washington Post. The storyattempts to arguethat the Obama administration is backing protests in Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon–in the first two cases, regimes backed strongly by the United States (Egypt […]
There’s an emerging line in the corporate media that Obama’s recent bump in the polls is due to the perception that he’s shifting to the “center.” There’s a long record of media encouraging Democrats to move to the right; after the midterms, Wise Pundits were saying that Obama had to pull a Bill Clinton in […]
It is bizarre to see Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly denying that pundits from her network compare people to Nazis—contrasting this reticence to Rep. Steve Cohen (D.-Tenn.), who said calling healthcare reform a “government takeover of healthcare” was “a big lie. Just like Goebbels.” In fact, such comparisons are common currency on Fox News and […]
As Sam Husseini noted, one of the things we’ll miss about print newspapers is ironic juxtaposition of stories. The front page of yesterday’s New York Times (1/20/11) provided a classic example: There was a story about Chinese President Hu Jintao visiting the White House, headlined (in the late print edition) “Obama Raises Human Rights, Pressing […]
In addition to his repeated murder fantasies, Glenn Beck harbors apocalyptic fantasies of mass death–suggesting, for instance, that if the direction of the country doesn’t change, “God will wash this nation with blood.” (Barack Obama, are you listening?) But the Fox News host harbors many deranged obsessions. He has long obsessed over Frances Fox Piven, […]
Glenn Beck has expressed on-air desires to strangle Michael Moore with his own hands, beat Charles Rangel to death with a shovel, and once aired a sketch on his Fox News show that had him poisoning then–Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Appearing on the Today show this morning (1/19/11), responding to questions about his […]
In his new book, Ron Reagan says he saw early signs of Alzheimer’s disease in his father, Ronald Reagan, while the late president was still in the White House. When he said as much on ABC‘s 20/20 last Friday (1/14/11), he infuriated many on the right, including his older brother Michael Reagan. Over the weekend, […]
Four months ago, Steve Rendall wrote here (9/10/10) about the militarization of the State Department and its role in the continuing occupation of Iraq—developments that were getting little attention amidst all the talk of the “end” of the war. Now Aaron Davis of the Washington Post (1/14/11) fills in some of those details, writing that […]
Right-wing pundits have come out vociferously against the idea that they, their colleagues and the political movement they identify with have anything to answer for in the wake of the Tucson massacre. David Brooks (New York Times, 1/11/11) asserted that “the evidence before us suggests that [shooting suspect Jared] Loughner was locked in a world […]
A New York Times profile (1/8/11) of author/economist Robert Reich was headlined “Obama the Centrist Irks a Liberal Lion.” It’s hard not to see where reporter Michael Powell comes down in the debate over Democrats moving to the right: Mr. Reich sees a parallel with his former boss, Mr. Clinton, and draws no comfort from […]
Last night (O’Reilly Factor, 1/10/11), Bill O’Reilly talking to Brit Hume: O’REILLY: We have a network, an entire network that’s built around attacking Fox News and right-wing people. That’s all they do at MSNBC. They have nothing else. HUME: How’s that working out for them? O’REILLY: It’s not working out for them. But it does […]
Today in the New York Times Paul Krugman (1/10/11) suggests that we not pretend that “both sides” are responsible for toxic political rhetoric: Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: It’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to […]
Remember the toppling of that Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad (4/9/03) that signified the “end” of the Iraq War? At the time, there were critics who pointed out that the extensively televised images of a jubilant crowd of Iraqis were misleading.The sense of media excitement was unmistakable; as FAIR pointed out, the Los Angeles Times […]
At a press conference in 2009, Barack Obama said, “America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world toward peace and prosperity.” He also proclaimed that America has core values that make it exceptional. Based on those comments, right-wing pundits and politicians reached a conclusion: Barack Obama does not believe in “American exceptionalism.” And […]
Time‘s Mark Halperin (12/27/10) joins his punditry colleagues in cheering Barack Obama’s wealthy-friendly tax plan as a great way for the president to end a rough year: But by ending the year with a bipartisan-compromise tax deal, Obama showed he is capable of delivering the kind of change that was supposed to be the hallmark […]
