FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
An enterprising Washington Post report by Joe Stephens (1/23/10) uses the Freedom Of Information Act to uncover the close and creepy relationship between folksy far-right broadcaster Paul Harvey and longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The documents Stephens uncovered show Harvey as just the kind of journalist that Hoover liked: sycophantic (“If the Republic has […]
Amy Wilentz has a strong critique of the media in her column in the new issue of the Nation (2/8/10). Starting with the New York Times‘ David Brooks (1/15/10; see FAIR Blog, 1/15/10), she demolishes his facile comparison of Haiti and Barbados (“Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery […]
It’s striking how the coverage of the Republicans’ gaining a 41st vote in the Senate accepts without question the idea that there is nothing unusual or objectionable about a majority party needing 60 votes to pass any legislation there. This normalization of the filibuster, as I wrote in the December 2009 issue of Extra!, amounts […]
While many are opening their hearts and purses to Haiti’s suffering, it’s important to note the corporate media’s high profile exceptions. Televangelist Pat Robertson, carried on Disney‘s Family Channel, suggested Haiti invited the disaster by making a deal with the devil 200 years ago (FAIR Blog, 1/14/09). Radio big Rush Limbaugh discouraged donating to Haiti […]
One of the frustrating things about corporate media coverage is that it’s so focused on horserace coverage—who’s likely to win or lose in voting that might be months or years away—and yet they’re so bad at it. Take the matter of Jonathan Tasini, running in the Democratic senatorial primary in New York against incumbent Kirsten […]
On Sunday (12/13/09), the New York Times Book Review offered a brief take on Malalai Joya’s A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice. Times reviewer Marc Tracy seemed to like the book OK, with a few notable caveats: Joya’s arguments, we’re told, “have earned the plaudits […]
Forbes.com has an article up called “The Fiction of Climate Science” (12/4/09). Thanks no doubt to a link from Drudge, it’s currently one of the website’s “top rated,” “most popular” and “most emailed” items. “Fiction” is a polite word for what the author, Gary Sutton, does with evidence. Sutton grinds the already well-worn denialist ax […]
The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank (12/6/09) thinks there’s something wrong with left-wing critics of Barack Obama. As his lead put it: Some parishioners in the Church of Obama discovered last week that their spiritual leader is a false prophet. Milbank starts with Michael Moore, who wrote an open letter urging Obama not to escalate the […]
Amanda Hess, a blogger for Washington City Paper, wrote a sharp deconstruction (11/30/09) of Chicago Tribune advice columnist Amy “Ask Amy” Dickinson’s victim-blaming response (11/27/09) to a woman who wanted to know whether she was a victim of rape: Were you a victim? Yes. First, you were a victim of your own awful judgment. Hess […]
Newsweek‘s editor apparently believes this is the way to make a “provocative” argument: I think we should be taking the possibility of a Dick Cheney bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 more seriously, for a run would be good for the Republicans and good for the country. (The sound you just heard in […]
The New York Times‘ reporter on the climate beat, Andrew Revkin, had a front-page story this weekend (11/20/09) detailing the contents of climate scientists’ private emails discussing global warming. Predictably, the emails are being taken out of context by climate change deniers—but more interesting to me is the fact that the focus is on the […]
The remarkable ability to engage in in-depth discussion of lawmakers’ opposition to healthcare reform efforts without ever mentioning the massive contributions such lawmakers tend to receive from the healthcare industry is not confined to the Washington Post—as Dan Ward noted in his Extra! piece (11/09). Another recent example of the phenomenon was provided by the […]
The Washington Post reports its latest polling on the Afghanistan war, and once again have managed to put together a baffling question that seems intended to muddy up the debate over a troop surge. The lead and headline (“Poll Finds Guarded Optimism on Obama’s Afghanistan Plan”) stress the idea that the public still seems to […]
In his New York Times column, David Brooks cheers the rise of suburban independent voters in this week’s midterms elections, crediting them with Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia. Brooks has made a career out of singing the praises of suburban Americans, all the while suggesting that they are somewhat ignored. While liberals and […]
On November 1, New York Times reporter Alissa Rubin has a look back at her experience as a war correspondent in Iraq. It’s mostly interesting, though when she gets to the part where she draws the big lessons, things turn for the worse: In my five years in Iraq, all that I wanted to believe […]
The Los Angeles Times (11/2/09) gives readers a mostly upbeat account about the use of unmanned drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan—weapons that have killed hundreds in Pakistan in recent years. But Times reporter Julian Barnes tells us their popularity with U.S. military officials has “changed the nature of the current policy debate in Washington.” The […]
Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt writes today (10/26/09) on the fear that the public option is a backdoor effort to bring a single-payer system to the United States: Private companies would have to raise their rates, so more people would choose the public plan, so private rates would rise further—and we could end […]
In a 2001 study, FAIR found that in its regular one-on-one interviews, Fox News‘ flagship news show Special Report With Brit Hume favored Republican guests over Democrats by a greater than 8-to-1 ratio. After the FAIR report, Hume told the New York Times (7/2/01) that if the data warranted, he would rectify the bias: “If […]
Disapproval and despair over the lost standards of journalistic objectivity are trotted out only for reporters whose opinions are at odds with official views.
