FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
“It is a crisis of staggering proportions.” So says ABC News’ Ted Koppel at the beginning of a Nightline segment (8/27/97) on the most recent of a series of reports on the alarmingly high—and rising—numbers of African-Americans under the control of the criminal justice system. (See The Sentencing Project’s “Young Black Americans and the Criminal […]
When the Central Intelligence Agency celebrated its 50th anniversary in September, press coverage spoke of the uncertainty of the spy agency’s mission in the post Cold War world. Apparently the press finds itself equally confused; how else to explain the litany of stories venerating the highly controversial CIA as if it were no more than […]
Pennsylvania has abused the First Amendment in its efforts to keep journalists, particularly electronic journalists, away from Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Where does the man find the time to earn all that money? You can’t turn on the tube but there’s Peter G. Peterson, telling some awestruck talking head that Social Security and Medicare are gobbling up our kiddies’ porridge. Or he’s writing it on your favorite op-ed page, or in magazines, or relaying the message […]
The media have been duped by a clever campaign whose intention is to get rid of those nasty Social Security programs.
It’s easy to tell what makes folks in the establishment media nervous. When black men came together in Washington, D.C. for 1995’s Million Man March, most journalists scrutinized with healthy skepticism the political agenda fueling the Nation of Islam–led event. Many came down hard and heavy on the organizers’ exclusion of women and whites. Similarly, […]
There’s a new player among the global media moguls, and his name is Conrad Black. His company, Hollinger Inc., is now the third largest newspaper chain in the Western world, after Gannett and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (New York Times, 6/24/96), with a combined circulation exceeding 10 million (James Winter, Democracy’s Oxygen). Black owns 650 […]
Journalists are not psychics, and they should not be gamblers, betting that the outcome of a story will vindicate them; they should publish stories they can stand behind whether a suspect turns out to be guilty or not.
When Marlon Brando declared on Larry King Live (4/5/96) that “Hollywood is owned by Jews,” he only said what quite a few Americans believe. Since they don’t know who owns the media, millions think that it’s “the Jews.” It is an old canard. Having been codified in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (forged […]
When we started out, Heritage was routinely referred to as an “ultra-conservative,” “far right” or “extreme right wing” organization. Today our ideas—which are based on the same philosophical principles as they were two decades ago—are considered mainstream. —Heritage Foundation Annual Report, 1993 Paul Weyrich: Co-founder and first Heritage president, Weyrich was a long-time associate of […]
Major US media outlets, with few exceptions, continue to see Haiti through the prism established by racist Hollywood movies since the ’30s.
There’s a Latin phrase that people use—cui bono—that translates as “for whose good?” It means that you can figure out who is responsible for a situation by looking at who benefits from it. Sometimes, though, it’s easier to figure out who benefits by looking at who is responsible. This rule greatly simplifies the task of […]
In previous decades, American politicians and social scientists predicted waves of violence stemming from “impulsive” blacks, volatile Eastern European immigrants, “hot-blooded” Latin Americans, and other groups “scientifically” judged to harbor innately aggressive traits. In each case, the news media joined in vilifying whatever temporarily unpopular minority that politicians and pseudo-science had flocked to blame. And […]
New York Newsday had become the most enterprising and in many respects the best daily newspaper in New York City. In investigative reporting, liveliness, experimentation, in serving the New York City urban core, just as New York Newsday‘s advertisements said, it was “ahead of the Times.” But on July 14, 1995, the parent company of […]
After months of intense media hype about Colin Powell, pundit Joe Klein carried the prevalent spin to its dizzying conclusion. “The key to the race” for the presidency in 1996, Klein wrote (Newsweek, 11/13/95), is that “ideas are not important. Stature is everything.” He added: “But if ideas don’t matter, what does? Civility does.” Mesmerized […]
After attacks from police groups, National Public Radio quickly backed away from its plan to air commentaries by Pennsylvania death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal, an African-American journalist, received a death sentence after being convicted in the December 1981 shooting death of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner—in a trial marred by gross procedural errors. NPR […]
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s spectrum excludes “unvarnished progressives” while making sure that antisemites have someone to represent them.
“Above all it is about hypocrisy,” the Wall Street Journal editorial page explained (3/21/94) in one of its dozens of commentaries on the Whitewater scandal. Robert Bartley and his conservative editorial crew meant the “hypocrisy” of President Clinton who denounced the 1980s as “a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness” while himself trying to get […]
“Quotas Quashed,” crowed the front page of the June 13 New York Post. “High Court Sinks Most Affirmative Action Programs.” Inside, Post writers described the Adarand v. Pena ruling, in which the Supreme Court tightened criteria for some race-conscious federal programs, as a “bombshell decision” that “dealt a crippling blow to affirmative action.” All the […]
The strategy of Pennsylvania is designed to keep Mumia Abu-Jamal silent until he can be silenced permanently.
