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.
“Reagan Reports New Latin Danger” was the headline of a front page New York Times article (1/25/85) in which the President defended his contra policy as “an act of self defense,” citing a Sandinista terrorist link. Juan Tamayo of the Miami Herald (3/3/85) further developed the theme of Nicaragua as a terrorist haven, while a […]
Executives of America’s leading broadcasting companies have made a startling admission: Free speech, widely cherished as an American value, has not been practiced on television. What has stifled freedom of expression? The media moguls pin the blame on the Fairness Doctrine, which required TV and radio stations to air opposing viewpoints on controversial issues. (In […]
In June, 2,700 members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees & Technicians (NABET)—one third of NBC’s workforce—went on strike against the network over the issue of job security. FAIR spoke with Calvin Siemer, Secretary-Treasurer of NABET Local 11 in New York, about the dispute with NBC and its corporate parent, General Electric. As Extra! […]
Coverage of Oliver North’s Iran/Contra testimony was marked by superficiality and an emphasis on style over substance.
The signing of the Central America peace accord in Guatemala City set off a U.S. media reaction that showed once again the extent to which White House assumptions are shared by the national press corps. While some reporters have questioned whether President Reagan sincerely supports the Arias plan, virtually all mainstream media accept the administration’s […]
The Washington Times, the right-wing daily that bills itself as an alternative to the Washington Post, is owned and influenced by Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. But most journalists seem unable or unwilling to consider the political implications of this fact — despite the role of Washington Times executives in the Koreagate scandal of […]
Argentine military officers feel they are victims of an ungrateful society, reports Shirley Christian in the New York Times (6/7/87). They feel their role in “putting down leftist subversion during the 1970s” is unappreciated—but not by Christian, who quoted unnamed army officers at length, with no comments from human rights activists or victims of the […]
An unbiased press would report events in both superpower blocs without fear or favor.
It was widely reported that the May 14 military coup in Fiji had one basic cause—ethnic rivalries between Melanesian Fijians and Indo-Fijians. A sampling of headlines: “Military Coup in Fiji Follows Racial Unrest” (Christian Science Monitor, 5/15/87); “Coup in Fiji: Rising Tide of Nationalism” (International Herald Tribune, 5/22/87); “A Bloodless Coup Reveals Ethnic Tensions in […]
On media coverage of the Iran/Contra hearings: “Those media that reported the government’s lies as facts are obliged to assign someone to scrutinize the conflicting evidence and correct their previous misstatements.”
UPI Washington staffer John Hanrahan subsequently expanded upon Norman Solomon’s report that the Nevada test site’s top official lied.
“Doing your job too well at the Plain Dealer, when it interferes with the business relations of the management, can be hazardous to your occupational health.”
A USA Today survey (6/26/87) of minorities in sports media reveals that of the 254 writers who cover the 26 Major League Baseball teams, there are only four blacks, one Hispanic and one Asian. (Only six are women.) Of baseball’s 141 TV broadcasters, only five are black, all ex-players. No minority announcers are on English-language […]
Award-winning filmmaker Antony Thomas was putting the final touches on his TV documentary about the religious right last April, just when the Jim and Tammy Bakker scandal broke. PBS Frontline had put up half the film’s $360,000 budget and was set to run it in two parts on May 12 and 19. It couldn’t have […]
An otherwise excellent New York Times Magazine article on Nazi fugitive Klaus Barbie failed to mention Barbie’s continuing role as a CIA asset.
Right-wing pressure played a major role in prompting PBS to review its programing policies. The heat came from extremist groups such as AIM and from the Reaganite-dominated Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which had threatened its own investigation of PBS program content. In support of independence for public television, FAIR executive director Jeff Cohen addressed the […]
Shouldn’t we demand that media disclose their financial ties when they produce news stories that could impact the profits of their corporate parent?
FAIR: How would you compare Watergate and Contragate, and the role of the media in each scandal? HERSH: If you consider Nixon’s first term, there’s an obvious analogy with the first six years of the Reagan administration. Nixon was able to bomb Cambodia relentlessly for 14 months. He wiretapped 17 American citizens, including Marvin Kalb, […]
Since 1985, reports linking Contra arms suppliers to cocaine smuggling have run in progressive publications and a few mainstream outlets. But CBS West 57th’s well-documented segment on the CIA/Contra drug connection (4/6/87) was the first serious network probe.
From Extra! June 1987 FAIR is a media watch organization offering constructive criticism in an effort to correct media imbalance. We advocate for media access on behalf of those constituencies in our society that do not have the wealth to purchase their own TV stations or daily newspapers. We scrutinize media practices that slight public […]
