FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Competition has been fierce for the fifteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes. Many can plausibly lay claim to stinky media performances, but only a few can win a P.U.-litzer. As the judges for this un-coveted award, Jeff Cohen and I have deliberated with due care. (Jeff is the founder of the media watch group FAIR and author […]
When Colin Powell endorsed the Iraq Study Group report during his Dec. 17 appearance on Face the Nation, it was another curtain call for a tragic farce. Four years ago, “moderates” like Powell were making the invasion of Iraq possible. Now, in the guise of speaking truth to power, Powell and ISG co-chairs James Baker […]
Some things don’t seem to change. Five years after I wrote this column in the form of a news dispatch, it seems more relevant than ever: WASHINGTON — There were unconfirmed reports yesterday that the United States is not the center of the world. The White House had no immediate comment on the reports, which […]
The lead-up to the invasion of Iraq has become notorious in the annals of American journalism. Even many reporters, editors and commentators who fueled the drive to war in 2002 and early 2003 now acknowledge that major media routinely tossed real journalism out the window in favor of boosting war. But it’s happening again. The […]
The American media establishment has launched a major offensive against the option of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. In the latest media assault, right-wing outfits like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page are secondary. The heaviest firepower is now coming from the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the […]
Saddam Hussein has received a death sentence for crimes he committed more than a year before Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand in Baghdad. Let’s reach back into history and extract these facts: On Dec. 20, 1983, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld “visited Iraq in what U.S. officials said was an attempt to bolster the […]
Last week my column was a parody of how Thomas Friedman writes about the global economy. Since then, I’ve learned that I was in error on a matter that shines some light on the worldview of the syndicated New York Times columnist and best-selling author. “Let’s face it — at this point I’m a rich […]
Get ready for a special tour of a renowned outlook, conjured from the writings of syndicated New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. As the leading media advocate of “free trade” and “globalization,” he is expertly proficient at explaining the world to the world. If we could synthesize Friedman’s brain waves, the essential messages would go […]
No one knows exactly how many Iraqi civilians have died from the war’s violence since the invasion of their country. The new study from public health researchers at Johns Hopkins University estimates that the number of those deaths is around 601,000, while saying the actual total could be somewhere between 426,369 and 793,663. Such wartime […]
Moments after hearing about North Korea’s nuclear test, I thought of Albert Einstein’s statement that “there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world.” During the six decades since Einstein spoke, experience has shown that such […]
The uproar over Bob Woodward’s new book has intensified the media focus on a basic controversy that’s summed up this way: Is Iraq a quagmire? Like many other debates that flourish in American mass media, the standard answers on both sides are wrong — because the question bypasses human realities. Most obviously, Iraq is not […]
The Sept. 25 edition of Time magazine illustrates how the U.S. news media are gearing up for a military attack on Iran. The headline over the cover-story interview with Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is “A Date With a Dangerous Mind.” The big-type subhead calls him “the man whose swagger is stirring fears of war with […]
This is the time of year when media campaigns for the latest digital products are apt to go into overdrive. Schools are back in session, and the holiday sales blitz is getting underway. For the latest computerized gizmos, that means an escalating media drive — revving up news coverage, PR hype and advertisements. Often it’s […]
The USA’s mass media constantly tell us how Americans see the “war on terror.” But the same outlets rarely tell us much about how the rest of the world sees it. Five years after 9/11, the gap between perceptions is enormous. Countless polls confirm the overall chasm. Yet, day to day, the media messages that […]
September began with 140,000 American troops in Iraq — 13,000 more than in late July. Almost 30 months have passed since Time magazine’s mid-April 2004 cover story, “No Easy Options,” reported that “foreign policy luminaries from both parties say a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would cripple American credibility, doom reform in the Arab world and turn […]
When Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, invited President Bush to engage in a “direct television debate,” the White House predictably responded by calling the offer “a diversion.” But even though this debate will never happen, it’s worth contemplating. Both presidents are propaganda junkies — or, more precisely, propaganda pushers — so any such debate would overdose […]
Five years into the “war on terror,” it’s still at the core of American media and politics. Yeah, I’ve seen the recent polls showing a drop in public support for President Bush’s “war on terror” claims. And I’ve read a spate of commentaries about Bush’s current lack of political traction on the terrorism issue, like […]
Since the Soviet Union collapsed a decade and a half ago, nuclear weaponry has been mostly relegated to back pages and mental back burners in the United States. A big media uproar about nuclear weapons is apt to happen only when the man in the Oval Office has chosen to make an issue of them. […]
Syndicated columnist Richard Cohen declared in the Washington Post on July 25 that an-eye-for-an-eye would be a hopelessly wimpy policy for the Israeli government. “Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness,” he wrote. “For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched […]
After getting out of Lebanon, writer June Rugh told Reuters: “As an American, I’m embarrassed and ashamed. My administration is letting it happen [by giving] tacit permission for Israel to destroy a country.” The news service quoted another American evacuee, Andrew Muha, who had been in southern Lebanon. He said: “It’s a travesty. There’s a […]
