FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
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, […]
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 […]
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.
