From Fringe to Mainstream—and Vice Versa
Press secretary Sean Spicer calls on a reporter
Michael Corcoran’s study (FAIR.org, 3/31/17) of White House press briefings for the first month of the Trump administration found that prominent news outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press had been called on one time apiece by press secretary Sean Spicer.
By comparison, the far-right website NewsMax was picked to ask three questions, and Breitbart, former platform for White House strategist Steve Bannon, got four questions. Meanwhile, journalists working under the Fox brand (Fox News, Fox Business, etc.) were allowed to ask a total of 16 questions during the study period.
Al Qaeda Conspiracy Theorist Unlikely Bulwark Against ‘Fake News’
New York Times media reporter Jim Rutenberg had a piece (3/26/17) praising Weekly Standard editor-in-chief Stephen Hayes for his self-proclaimed commitment to “basing our arguments on facts, logic and reason.” While some right-wing outlets have “no commitment to truth” and peddle “false or unsubstantiated content that provides affirmation at the expense of true information,” Rutenberg holds up Hayes and the Weekly Standard as adhering to a “universal sense of truth” and taking inspiration from William F. Buckley’s supposed belief in winning arguments through “logic and superior command of the subject.” The piece’s headline: “The Weekly Standard’s Arsenal to Fight Falsehoods: ‘Facts, Logic and Reason.’”
Hayes (like Buckley—see Extra!, 5–6/08) is an odd poster child for truth-based journalism; he’s perhaps most famous for using the Weekly Standard to promote recycled claims that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Al Qaeda—based on pieces of evidence FAIR’s Seth Ackerman (Extra!, 1–2/04) called “so painfully flimsy it’s hard to believe they found their way into an official memo or a national magazine article.” The New York Times’ review (9/19/04) of the book Hayes spun out of his Iraq/9-11 conspiracy theory concluded, “He tries to make the facts fit his theory, rather than his theory fit the facts.”
NYT’s One-Sided Debate on BDS
In columns like “The BDS Threat” (2/10/14), “The BDS Movement and Antisemitism on Campus”
(3/26/16) and “Why Israel Is Nothing Like Apartheid South Africa” (3/31/17), the New York Times op-ed page has given a platform for seven columns arguing that the movement to use boycotts, divestment and sanctions to push Israel to respect Palestinian rights should be rejected. What the page hasn’t had since January 31, 2014—when the Times featured dueling pro- and anti-BDS columns—is a piece that actually made an affirmative case for BDS.
North Korea’s Missiles: ‘Potential’ vs. Reality
“Potential Range” of North Korean missiles, according to a New York Times graphic (3/4/17): 7,200 miles
Longest successful North Korean missile test (New York Times, 3/5/17): 620 miles
‘Chill Out,’ Says USA Today—as Ice Shelf Crumbles
When a Delaware-sized piece threatened to break off the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica, USA Today‘s headline (4/4/17) urged readers to relax: “Chill Out: Antarctic Iceberg Still Holding On.” “Since they’re floating, when the berg finally breaks off, it won’t add to sea-level rise,” reporter Doyle Rice reassured—before noting that “when ice shelves collapse, the ice that had been trapped behind it plops into the ocean, where it then adds to sea-level rise.” USA Today didn’t mention that the ice released by this one ice shelf could move high-tide lines inland as much as 30 feet around the globe—information that would be less conducive to chillaxing.
‘Dapper’ Racist Murder Suspect, ‘Career Criminal’ Victim
New York Post images of an alleged white supremacist murderer and his victim. Guess which one the tabloid described as a “career criminal”?
After a Maryland white supremacist reportedly confessed to killing an African-American man in Manhattan, local papers zeroed in on the irrelevant details of minor criminal charges against victim Timothy Caughman: “He has 11 prior arrests, including for marijuana, assault, resisting arrest and menacing,” reported the Daily News (3/22/17).
The New York Post (3/21/15) called Caughman a “career criminal,” and complained that he was “refusing to talk to police about the incident and acting combative before his death.” Meanwhile, the Post referred to the racist murder suspect as a “deadly-but-dapper young man.”
Charges Against Cop Obfuscated as Headline Ends Up in Passive Voice
News reports often resort to convoluted language to put police misconduct in the best possible light—but a CBS Miami report (4/3/17) on an officer accused of domestic violence went above and beyond. “Miami-Dade Police Officer Arrested After Wife Ends Up in Hospital” was the headline—suggesting that the arrest and the hospital visit might be entirely unrelated. The story went on to describe a fight over a video:
Once back in the car with [Officer Alexander] Bradley, his wife confronted him about the video which led to a violent argument. The argument turned physical, according to the report, and Officer Bradley’s wife received serious injuries to her face area. Note that it’s the wife’s “confront[ing] him” that led to the “violent argument”—which “turned physical” seemingly of its own volition. How the woman’s “face area” received those serious injuries is left to the reader’s imagination.
US Airstrike Coincidentally Occurs at Site of Mass Death
“US Reviewing Airstrike That Corresponds to Site Where 200 Iraqi Civilians Allegedly Died”
—ABC News (3/25/17)
“US Acknowledges Airstrike in Mosul, Where More Than 200 Iraqi Civilians Died”
—LA Times (3/25/17)
“US Military Acknowledges Strike on Mosul Site Where More Than 100 Were Allegedly Killed”
—Washington Post (3/25/17)
