FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Extra! is FAIR’s hard-hitting newsletter of well-documented media criticism. The 4-page, ad-free, newsletter publishes ten times a year bringing you the media analysis and activism that you expect from FAIR. Extra! receives no money from advertisers or corporate underwriters, and depends on subscribers for its existence. Please subscribe and help make it possible for us to keep investigating and publishing.
As the presidential campaign marches on, certain media themes have become as stale and repetitious as the candidates’ stump speeches. Extra! looks at some of the more familiar frames, examining what reporters choose to highlight and what they ignore. Democratic Party ‘Captured by Special Interests’ In traditional political parlance, the term “special interests” referred to […]
CBS sportscaster professed shock and dismay last January when Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder made offensive remarks about black athletes. Shortly thereafter Snyder was fired by CBS, leaving his erstwhile colleagues to cover the National Football conference playoffs without the benefit of the Greek’s pre-game betting wisdom. Snyder’s racist comments were repudiated by CBS announcer Brent […]
Where has the apartheid story gone? Is it being covered less because less is happening? Has the international press packed up and moved on? Or has South Africa’s press ban been so successful that coverage has been effectively curtailed?
A key money-launderer for the Medellin cocaine cartel told Congress in February that he worked with the Central Intelligence Agency, but this information was not reported by the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the three major networks, even though all covered the hearings.
Addressing the American Society of Newspaper Editors (4/13/88), President Ronald Reagan asserted that criticism of Jesse Jackson had been muted because of concern that it “might be misinterpreted into some kind of racial attack.” The president seemed to be adding his voice to the popular media refrain: When will Jackson’s “free ride” with the press […]
It is ironic that as Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip are being beaten, arrested and killed, CBS TV chose to portray a Palestinian as a terrorist and not as a victim of terror. The recent CBS special (1/10/88) Terrorist on Trial: The United States vs. Salim Ajami perpetuates the media myth: […]
Rupert Murdoch has become a major American power in newspapers, magazines, films and books, thanks not to his crudities, but to a process created and supported by the most respectable newspaper and broadcast organizations in the country.
On Jan. 23, 1988, FAIR sent a questionnaire — excerpted below — to senior New York Times editors and correspondents covering Central America. It challenged Times coverage following the signing of the Esquipulas (“Arias”) regional peace accord, which required all Central American countries to respect human and political rights, and called for an end to […]
A curious phenomenon of the presidential campaign has been that the least popular Democratic candidate, Bruce Babbitt, has drawn the most favorable media treatment, while the most popular political demand has received the least favorable media treatment. The New York Times (1/20/88) noted raves for Babbitt in Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles […]
US media themes for the summit were established well before Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Washington. Despite the pretense of “objective reporting,” coverage of the arms race has often resembled “rooting for the home team.” This was all too evident in the summer of 1985, when Gorbachev declared a unilateral moratorium on nuclear weapons tests and […]
The following remarks are adapted from a speech by the late Mayor Harold Washington to the National Association of Black Journalists in Miami last August. In October 1983, after I had been in office about six months, I was invited to speak to the TV producers in Chicago. The theme of my speech was the […]
In May 1983, a remarkable event took place in Moscow. A courageous newscaster, Vladimir Danchev, denounced the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in five successive radio broadcasts extending over five days, calling upon the rebels to resist. This aroused great admiration in the West. The New York Times (8/6/83) commented accurately that this was a departure […]
The Red Scare of the 1950s gave birth to a fast-rising right-wing movement, the John Birch Society. Its rise was aborted when the society’s leader, Robert Welch, made a statement that was deemed so outrageous by the media establishment as to place the Birchers beyond the pale of respectable discourse: Welch called President Dwight Eisenhower […]
How is the world ruled and led into war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe those lies when they see them in print. –Austrian scholar Karl Kraus In March 1982, Congressman David Bonior (D.-Mich.) spoke fervently about Reagan’s Nicaragua policy on the House floor, warning of “a highly orchestrated propaganda effort by the administration, […]
Edgar Chamorro was a Contra leader and press spokesperson from 1982 until 1984, when he resigned. The following year he testified against the United States in Nicaragua’s case before the World Court. FAIR interviewed him in early October as he prepared to visit Nicaragua. Chamorro is the author of Packaging the Contras (Institute for Media […]
On July 17, 1984, the Washington Times broke a story alleging that leading Sandinista officials were involved in cocaine smuggling. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the major wire services and TV networks immediately gave the charges prominent coverage, invariably citing anonymous “senior administration officials.” These officials, according to Newsweek (10/12/87), were Office of […]
A previous issue of Extra! (8-9/87) noted, “It’s taboo in the media to question the motives of American foreign policy.” Case in point: “Nicaragua Over the Years,” a column by New York Times editorial writer Karl Meyer (8/24/87). Meyer reminisced about Major General Smedley Butler, describing him as the US Marine hero who tried to […]
Seemingly surprised when told that many readers consider his reporting sympathetic to the Contras, New York Times Managua correspondent Stephen Kinzer told Esquire (11/86): In Washington, they talk about putting pressure on the Sandinistas, and it sounds so antiseptic. But the reality of that pressure is babies with their arms blown off, the maiming and […]
On October 27, 1987, the president of El Salvador’s Human Rights Commission, Herbert Ananya, was assassinated in broad daylight on the streets of the capital. He was the seventh official of the group to be murdered or disappear in the 1980s. The story didn’t make the front page of The New York Times or the […]
Although rigged elections during the Somoza era raised hardly an eyebrow in Washington, Nicaragua’s November 1984 election was pilloried by the White House and the mainstream media. Pre-election reporting was hostile, coverage of the actual balloting was hijacked by hysteria over phantom Soviet MIG jets in Nicaragua, and a few months later many journalists seemed […]
