FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Having your ethics challenged by a Rupert Murdoch-owned media outlet is like having your honesty challenged by Bernie Madoff. Take the recent story about CNN hiring former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned from the office in 2008 following revelations that he had patronized prostitutes. When rumors of the CNN hire began circulating weeks […]
Senate Democrats are having trouble passing a spending bill that would, among other things, extend unemployment benefits and deliver much-needed financial aid to cash-starved states. Today the New York Times (6/18/10) explained the legislative logjam this way: The spending and tax measure has become caught up in intensifying politics around deficit spending as members of […]
Today’s Los Angeles Times (6/16/10) has this headline: Debate Grows Over Afghanistan Withdrawal Plan The lead: Recent setbacks in Afghanistan have intensified debate over the wisdom of the Obama administration’s plan to begin withdrawing U.S. military forces next summer and highlighted reservations among military commanders over a rigid timeline. Debating the war—let’s have at it. […]
NPR‘s Brooke Gladstone (On the Media, 6/11/10) interviewed CNN‘s Ed Henry about the squirt-gun party at the vice president’s mansion that Henry giddily tweeted about: BROOKE GLADSTONE: If these events don’t influence coverage, why do you think the White House throws them? Do they just want to shoot you with a super-soaker? ED HENRY: Maybe […]
Seeing this headline at the Newsweek website—”Chávez Twists Twitter Into Tool of Repression“—means you’re likely to read the latest dispatch from the magazine’s Latin America correspondent Mac Margolis, who has amassed a stunning record of creating panic about the region’s leftist leaders. (See “Newsweek‘s Name-Calling Neoliberal,” from Extra!‘s January 2010 issue.) Margolis argues that when […]
On Tuesday (6/1/10), FAIR said this about the New York Times coverage of Gaza: Other news accounts presented misleading context about the circumstances leading to Israel’s blockade. [Isabel] Kershner (New York Times, 6/1/10) stressed that “Israel had vowed not to let the flotilla reach the shores of Gaza, where Hamas, an organization sworn to Israel’s […]
Last week the Washington Post informed us that voters are “up in arms over the mounting federal debt”—and thus politicians were being forced to scale back a new bill that would, among other things, extend unemployment benefits and send money to state governments facing serious budget shortfalls. This made little sense, since polls do not […]
Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt wrote a piece today (5/24/10) headlined, “In the Absence of Debate, Iraq and Afghanistan Go Unnoticed.” Hiatt laments the silence surrounding U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and ponders whether “the absence of debate reflects not full-bodied consensus but a wishful averting of eyes.” Fair enough. But what […]
It is commendable to hold misleading politicians to account. Our question is how universal this concern is at the New York Times.
Canada’s Globe and Mail decided to do a special issue on Africa this Monday, and who better to guest edit than Bono and Bob Geldof? There’s a piece about their day at the paper that’s truly absurd. Here’s the section on “Opinion Pages”: They move back to the meeting table to discuss more content […]
Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam writes of his first job in journalism, at “now-foundering Newsweek,” which he describes as being “like an upside-down journalism school, where I learned an astonishing number of bad habits.” But it clearly gave him some valuable insights into how corporate journalism works: I was an editorial assistant/fact-checker, with duties analogous […]
Glenn Beck says progressives are trying to “fundamentally transform the country” by rendering the Constitution “irrelevant” (“In 1920, they stopped studying the Constitution in law school and started studying case law!”), and by expunging from history the role “religion and morals” played in our founding. On his April 28 show, Beck announced the launch […]
It was a surprise to see Afghan feminist activist Malalai Joya on Time magazine’s “Top 100 Most Influential People in the World” list. Not as surprising, though, to see her views criticized. Joya is a fierce opponent of the US presence in her country, which does not sit well with some in the corporate media. […]
Ross Douthat has a New York Times column today (5/3/10) criticizing those who are “impugning the motives” of the new Arizona immigration law, which has been denounced as a “Nazi” or “near-fascist” law, a “police state” intervention, an imitation of “apartheid,” a “Juan Crow” regime that only a bigot could possibly support. Really, says Douthat, […]
The Obama Justice Department—or at least one of its top prosecutors—is cracking down on investigative reporting without regard for the First Amendment. The first disturbing development was the indictment of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, whose leaks to the Baltimore Sun helped expose how the NSA’s warrantless spying program deliberately failed to protect the privacy of […]
Fox host Glenn Beck has had it (4/27/10) with opponents of Arizona’s new immigration law making analogies to Nazi Germany: I hate to rain on the hate parade here, but can we please slow down for just a minute and, I don’t know, think? You are comparing the systematic, cold-blooded extermination of millions of Jews […]
Brian Williams introduced a report on NBC Nightly News (4/21/10) with this declaration: “Public schools from coast to coast in this country are looking at tens of thousands of layoffs, a lot of them teachers, because the money is not there.” Correspondent Ron Allen went on to report: In Springfield, Illinois, thousands of teachers turned […]
In a lengthy New Yorker piece (4/26/10) about the Amazon/Apple battle over e-books, Ken Auletta paints some familiar heroes and villains: The [publishing] industry’s great hope was that the iPad would bring electronic books to the masses—and help make them profitable. E-books are booming…. But publishers were concerned that lower prices would decimate their profits. […]
I find it very peculiar that the New York Times can publish an editorial observer piece about unheeded warnings–“Cassandra, the Ignored Prophet of Doom, Is a Woman for Our Times,” by Adam Cohen (4/19/10)–without once mentioning climate change. The piece cites various foretold disasters–Bernie Madoff, sexual abuse by priests, the financial meltdown, September 11, New […]
The New York Times’ Jackie Calmes has a report today (4/15/10) about the brewing fight over the Bush tax cuts, which were passed for limited time period and will phase out if Congress does not pass legislation to extend them. The Obama White House will ask lawmakers to renew most of the tax cuts, but […]
