Liddy’s Lethal Advice
“If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they’re wearing flak jackets and you’re better off shooting for the head.”
The Right Has a Dream
In the last years of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life, many mainstream journalists and conservative politicians treated him with fear and derision. In 1967, Life magazine (4/21/67) dubbed King’s prophetic anti-war address “demagogic slander” and “a script for Radio Hanoi.” Even years later, Ronald Reagan described King as a near-Communist. Today, however, a miracle is […]
Limbaugh Out to Lunch in Budget Debate
“Today, my friends, we’re going to do everything the media accuses us of doing, that we never have done, but we’re going to do it,” Rush Limbaugh announced on his March 10 radio show. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, today we’re going to give you marching orders, and today we will ask you to follow us […]
Public Enemy Number One?
In a bizarre column blaming TV talkshows, in part, for the “sexually irresponsible culture of poverty,” Newsweek‘s Joe Klein (2/6/95) provided telling insight into how some in mainstream media see their relationship to poor people: “Television is the only sustained communication our society has with the underclass,” Klein wrote. “It is the most powerful […]
The Rise of the Right-Wing Media Machine
This conservative media machine now rivals—and may well surpass—the power and the influence of the old-line press. It holds sway over much of the national agenda, deciding which ideas and individuals are accepted and which are marginalized.
AM Armies
Tired of easy listening? If you’re in Colorado Springs, you can tune into KVOR, where talkshow host Chuck Baker mimics the sound of a firing pin—”kching-kching”—as he raves against the government and talks to listeners about shooting members of Congress and forming guerilla cells. Baker’s three-hour talk show piggy-backs Rush Limbaugh, forming a solid bloc […]
All the Right Moves
Listening to the likes of new House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Sen. Larry Pressler, who have threatened to “zero out” funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), you would think that U.S. public television is promoting a “liberal agenda.” On the other hand, bureaucrats from CPB and from PBS, which gets its federal funding […]
‘Language: A Key Mechanism of Control’
Since winning control of Congress, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) has constantly complained about “destructive” and “negative” coverage from the “liberal elite media.” For example, when asked on Nightline (11/29/94) about his reference to the Clintons as “counter-culture McGoverniks,” he first insisted that he had been misquoted—”I used the term McGovernite, not McGovernik—it was one of […]
Trapped in the Pack: How US Reporters Cover the Haiti Story
An interview with New Channels Communications’ Ellen Braune and the Haiti Information Bureau’s Jane Regan.
Racism Resurgent:
How media let The Bell Curve's pseudo-science define the agenda on race
When the New Republic devoted almost an entire issue (10/31/94) to a debate with the authors of The Bell Curve, editor Andrew Sullivan justified the decision by writing, “The notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in intelligence is not, we believe, an inherently racist belief.” In fact, the idea that some races are […]
Haitian Women Are Out of Frame
When President Clinton sat down in front of U.S. television cameras to explain “why the U.S. is leading the international effort to restore democratic government in Haiti” (10/16/94), he emphasized the violation of Haitian women’s human rights. “International observers uncovered a terrifying pattern of soldiers and policemen raping the wives and daughters of suspected political […]
Haiti: The Crisis Is Not Over
The New Yorker magazine wrote an editorial (10/17/94) to mark President Aristide’s return to Port-au-Prince. “Political murders,” the liberal weekly stated, “have practically ended…. Haiti’s extreme human rights emergency — the reign of torture, terror and death…is for the moment over.” In fact, as the Weekly News Update on the Americas (published by the Nicaragua […]
Enemy Ally: The Demonization of John-Bertrand Aristide
Aristide has long been the target of a disinformation campaign, with CIA distortions disseminated through the media.
Wines’ World: The Tie-Dyed Clinton
The front page of the New York Times Week in Review section is a platform that both reflects and helps set the conventional wisdom. Michael Wines, one of the Times‘ top political reporters, used that space on September 11 to amplify the claims by “Mr. Clinton’s loyal critics in Congress and Democratic research circles…that only […]
FAIR’s Reply to Limbaugh’s Non-Response
Rush Limbaugh‘s long-touted “5,000 word response” to FAIR’s “Reign of Error” report has been released—after nearly three and a half months. Unfortunately for Limbaugh, it doesn’t rebut; mostly it changes the subject, dodges and wastes thousands of words on tangents and what-I-really-meant-to-say digressions. Whereas the FAIR report offered facts to specifically rebut Limbaugh’s claims, his […]
Battered Men? Battered Facts
Husbands are battered as much as wives in the U.S.? John Leo, syndicated U.S. News & World Report columnist, is sure of it. “There’s no doubt about this,” Leo said as a guest on CNN‘s Crossfire (7/2/94). “It was established in 1980 by a female researcher.” When co-host Michael Kinsley asked him if it seemed […]
Limbaugh’s Inaccurate Responses to Charges of Inaccuracy
Rush Limbaugh has tried to defend a few of the dozens of inaccuracies FAIR documented in “Limbaugh’s Reign of Error” (Extra!, 7-8/94). Unfortunately, his responses to charges of inaccuracy were filled with the same sorts of inaccuracies that our original report documented. Limbaugh’s most extended response was made on his July 5 radio show, where […]
Another Media Celebrity Charged With Murder
Paul Hill is no O.J. Simpson. His path to media stardom was not athletic greatness and a pleasing public persona. Hill became a media celebrity his own way: by advocating murder. America was shocked when Simpson became a murder suspect, but it wasn’t too surprising when Hill went to jail for killing a doctor and […]
The Way Things Aren’t
From dioxin to Whitewater, from Rodney King to Reaganomics, Rush Limbaugh has a finely honed ability to twist and distort reality.
Senate Crime Bill Unscrutinized by the Press
When the crime bill was being drafted, debated and passed by the Senate in 1993, most coverage focused on the political impact of the crime issue: “Trying to shed his party’s reputation as law-and-order wimps, President Clinton steps forward with a tough new plan to fight crime,” Time magazine declared (8/23/93) of the plan that became the blueprint for the Senate bill.
