FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
I was struck by this New York Times headline on Saturday (10/23/10):”Effort to Rehabilitate Suharto’s Reputation Grows in Indonesia.” (The headline seems to have been changed somewhere along the way.) The piece led with this: JAKARTA, Indonesia— To millions, Suharto, the military strongman who ruled Indonesia for 32 years, was a tyrant, a thief and […]
One strand of conventional wisdom among elite D.C. reporters is that losing the midterm elections would be a good thing for the White House. Hence New York Times reporter Peter Baker (10/24/10): WASHINGTON — Let there be no mistake: President Obama wants the Democrats to win next week’s midterm elections. His voice has gone hoarse […]
It seems to me that debating Juan Williams’ firing from NPR in terms of the role of “opinion” and “objectivity” in journalism is missing the point. Williams has expressed his opinions on Fox News countless times. Other NPR employees frequently express opinions, too, as when Scott Simon wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal […]
Brian Stelter has a piece today in the New York Times (10/20/10) explaining the latest in the fight between Cablevision and NewsCorp. NewsCorp wants the cable company to pay them more money—a lot more—for airing Fox‘s broadcast signal (and a few, smaller cable channels). The two sides couldn’t reach a deal, and as of Saturday, […]
MSNBC personality Chris Matthews—who sometimes claims he was opposed to the Iraq War—worked behind the scenes to get anti-war colleague Phil Donahue fired.
You may remember James O’Keefe as the video hoaxter who fooled media into thinking ACORN gave tax advice to a man wearing a pimp costume (FAIR Action Alert, 3/11/10). Or as the miscreant whose attempts to interfere with Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office phones got him arrested (Extra!, 4/10). Now O’Keefe has a new claim […]
Longtime Hugo Chavez critic Jackson Diehl leads his Washington Post column today (9/27/10): Debate in Washington about Hugo Chavez —to the extent that it exists—generally centers on whether the Venezuelan strongman is a genuine threat to the United States or a buffoonish nuisance who is best ignored. This narrow debate over Chavez’s rule in Venezuela […]
The media accolades that have greeted the new documentary Waiting for Superman confirm what FAIR documented in the September issue of Extra!—that the corporate media debate over education “reform” is heavily tilted in the direction of those who bash teachers’ unions, cheer the White House’s Race to the Top grants and charter schools, and lionize […]
On Wednesday night’s broadcast of the PBS NewsHour (9/23/10), Gwen Ifill announced: “Now to the first of several conversations on whether or not to extend tax cuts that expire at the end of the year.” The first guest was Republican Glenn Hubbard, who Ifill told viewers “was the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers […]
Newsweek columnist Robert Samuelson (9/18/10) has had it with the way we discuss economics: With every election, we descend into soundbite economics. Rhetorical claims grow more partisan and self-serving…. These debates confirm the dreary state of economic discourse. He points his finger at both the right and the left, but then goes on to basically […]
French protesters took to the streets early this month in opposition to proposed austerity measures that would, among other things, delay the legal age for receiving retirement benefits. The passage of such a bill on September 15 by the lower house of France’s legislature, the National Assembly, occasioned further protests. (The bill hasn’t come before […]
“Aren’t there things Obama & Co. could have done differently?” Howard Fineman writes in the current issue of Newsweek (9/20/10). “Election Day is still seven weeks away—but it’s not too early for a ‘pre-mortem.’” No, never too early—especially since Fineman’s column offers the same advice corporate media pundits have been giving to Democratic politicians for […]
PBS ombud Michael Getler has thankfully expanded on his “I trust Nova” response to concerns that public TV’s leading science program might be influenced by its climate change-denying funders (FAIR Blog, 9/8/10). In a more extensive response to those who thought they detected the fingerprints of oil tycoon David Koch (and industry giant ExxonMobil) in […]
Daniel Hernandez wrote an article for Extra! last year (6/09) about the tendency of U.S. corporate media to treat Mexican violence as a phenomenon that threatens to “spill over” into the U.S.—as in New York Times headlines like “Drug Cartel Violence Spills Over From Mexico, Alarming U.S.” (3/23/09) and “Wave of Drug Violence Is Creeping […]
The New York Times‘ Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes today (8/31/10) about the possible steps Obama might take to bolster the economy: With voters angry about government spending, and economists divided about just what approach is the correct one, such aggressive steps are by now out of the question. “There’s a deep frustration among economists that […]
Some in the media just can’t let go of John McCain. David Broder’s column today is really headlined, “John McCain, Your Country Is Calling.” He explains that he wasn’t “bothered by the doctrinal compromises the senator made to convince Arizona voters that he was, in fact, a conservative. McCain has always been a realist, doing […]
The New York Times‘ Susan Dominus, writing an article (8/24/10) entirely about a congressional candidate’s footwear, makes an attempt at self-inoculation: I know. We, the news media, are not supposed to ask female candidates about their hairstyle or their choice of pantsuits over skirts or their shoes. It is irrelevant. It is trivializing. It is […]
In his New York Times column on Monday (8/9/10), headlined “The Flimflam Man,” Paul Krugman took aim at Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, who has emerged as the GOP’s big thinker on budgets: One depressing aspect of American politics is the susceptibility of the political and media establishment to charlatans. You might have thought, given past […]
Former Israeli soldier and current writer for the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg has a long cover story (9/10) on the “better than 50 percent chance” that Israel will launch air strikes against Iran by next July, with the aim of taking out the alleged nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic. Based on roughly 40 interviews with […]
Trying to explain why Need to Know, the PBS public affairs show that appeared in the Friday night timeslot vacated by Bill Moyers Journal and Now, has gotten such a cool reception from viewers, co-host Allison Stewart seems to blame nostalgia. “Obviously you can’t replace Bill Moyers,” says Stewart (Show Tracker, 8/5/10). “That’s just a […]
