FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
In a column attacking Google and other “accused newspaper industry killers,” the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank (5/7/09) doesn’t present much of an argument for why newspapers are dying—but he provides an excellent example of why journalism like his deserves to die. [Marissa] Mayer, who oversees Google News, explained how “Google is doing its part” to […]
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen uses the Frank Ricci Supreme Court case to attack affirmative action: The justification for affirmative action gets weaker and weaker. Maybe once it was possible to argue that some innocent people had to suffer in the name of progress, but a glance at the White House strongly suggests that things […]
Reliable Sources host Howard Kurtz (5/3/09) seemed startled when the New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza argued that “just because Bush or some previous president didn’t garner as much coverage as Michelle and Barack Obama did doesn’t tell you anything about press bias one way or another.” “Are you kidding?” Kurtz exclaimed. He didn’t express any similar […]
The Washington Post editorial page regularly slams Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, so it was no surprise to see it do the same on April 30. Their real point, though, was to suggest that Barack Obama’s desire to change the tone of the U.S.-Venezuelan relationship wasn’t going to work: The administration’s strategy–to open up a constructive […]
Associated Press reporter Calvin Woodward has a history of straining to catch Barack Obama in factual errors. But today’s review of last night’s Obama press conference may have hit a new low in absurdity. In the piece, headlined “Fact Check: Obama Disowns Deficit He Helped Shape,” Woodward takes issue with Obama’s statement: “Number one, we […]
A couple of recent FAIR Blog posts have dealt with apologists for torture: Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen and former CIA interrogator John Kiriakou, who misled ABC News about the effectiveness of waterboarding. What’s striking is how they both offer the same insight into why torture is attractive—it met their post–September 11 psychological needs. Kiriakou […]
In his column today, Washington Post‘s Richard Cohen tells us that he is against torture, which itself is not remarkable. His real point is this: Yet the debate over torture has been infected with silly arguments about utility: whether it works or not. Of course it works—sometimes or rarely, but if a proverbial bomb is […]
A New York Times op-ed by Roger Cohen saying that, because post–September 11 “journalists did not meet the challenge of holding the executive branch accountable,” he is “wary of the clamor for retribution. Congress failed. The press failed. The judiciary failed,” has moved First-Draft.com blogger Athenae (4/24/09) to declare that “I really think I hate […]
Today the New York Times is reporting that waterboarding was used far more often than we have been told—almost 300 times on two prisoners, including Abu Zubaydah.This stands in rather stark contrast to what we heard about the instant, positive effects of waterboarding—as the Times notes: A former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News […]
Richard Cohen’s Washington Post column today (4/14/09) is about how the new George W. Bush Policy Institute should focus primarily on Bush’s managerial errors: Conventional wisdom holds that the bungling of the Iraq war was a consequence of ideology run amok. Maybe. But it was also an example of awful management. Whether you supported the […]
Single-payer healthcare has proven to work well in other countries. It has been proposed in a bill with considerable congressional support, it polls well with the public, and it’s supported by a majority of physicians. So why is it so rarely mentioned in corporate media? In the wake of a Frontline documentary that failed to examine […]
In a column on media treatment of Michelle Obama, Katha Pollitt (Nation, 4/20/09) points out this forehead-smacking quote from New York magazine’s David Samuels (3/15/09): There are clear limits to Michelle’s ambition. She went to excellent schools, got decent grades, stayed away from too much intellectual heavy lifting, and held a series of practical, modestly […]
It was surprising to see that critical scholar Mahmood Mamdani’s new book (which is largely about debunking Western notions about Darfur and genocide—something he discussed on CounterSpin) got a positive review in the New York Times (3/30/09). Today (4/3/09) the paper sort of apologizes, in an editor’s note (only in the print edition, so far): […]
Do you remember when Fox News Channel thought comparisons between the U.S. government and Nazi Germany were insane and reprehensible? This was the channel’s reaction when a couple of entries to a video contest sponsored by the progressive activist group MoveOn used Hitler analogies to criticize George W. Bush (FAIR Action Alert, 1/16/04): News Corp‘s […]
In his op-ed “Take the Limbaugh Challenge” (L.A. Times, 3/29/09), conservative writer Andrew Klavan states as a “certainty” that L.A. Times readers don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh’s show: If you are reading this newspaper, the likelihood is that you agree with the Obama administration’s recent attacks on conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh. That’s the likelihood; […]
The New York Times reported today (3/30/09) that New York State government had reached an agreement on a $131.8 billion budget. The third paragraph of the front-page story by Nicholas Confessore and Danny Hakim reads: And despite the enormous fiscal pressure the state faces, the budget contains $170 million in financing for pet projects—an amount […]
It’s to self-described “establishment” journalist Evan Thomas’ credit that he calls attention (Newsweek, 4/6/09) to economist Paul Krugman’s progressive criticism of the Obama administration’s financial bailout plan; corporate media generally pay much more attention to critics from the right. But the same shallowness that renders most media policy discussions virtually useless infects Thomas’ article, which […]
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald has an explanation (3/23/09, ad-viewing required) for why he thinks that Howard Kurtz’s belief that the image of corporate reporters as “just a bunch of cozy Washington insiders” is not “that big a deal”—because “there’s such a built-in adversarial relationship between the press and the pols”—constitutes “an extremely funny joke today, showing […]
The Washington Post editorial page produced a remarkable editorial on Saturday (3/21/09) headlined “Victory in El Salvador.” It’s not surprising that the Post would try to argue that the victory of left-wing FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes was not another sign that the region’s politics are shifting to the left. No, in fact it was […]
Many observers praised the Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart for his hard-hitting interview with CNBC‘s Jim Cramer. Columnist Richard Cohen (Washington Post, 3/17/09) begs to differ. Actually, Stewart was “wrong” to go after Cramer, Cohen wrote—it was a “cheap shot at business media.” His main argument is that Stewart charged that Cramer “knew all the time […]
