Posts
Jules Boykoff on World Cup and ‘Sportswashing’
Sports has always been a big part of news media, but typically segregated into its own section on stats and personalities, ignoring the economic, social and environmental impacts sports have always had.
Slashing Climate, Weather and Ocean Research to Pay for 32 Hours of Iran War
While cuts to NOAA would substantially harm the agency’s work, the proposed “savings” of $1.6 billion is equivalent to the costs of 1.3 days of the war on Iran.
‘It Was About Using the Levers of Government to Bully or Intimidate’: CounterSpin interview with Angelo Carusone on Media Matters v. FTC
“What we showed is that you don’t have to take this. You could go to court, and you can get these demands shut down before they even get a chance to start.”
The AI Mythos: If We Can Destroy the World, Imagine What We Can Do for Your Hedge Fund
You ever wonder why people who make AI talk about how AI might destroy humanity—but still keep making AI? Here’s a plausible explanation.
NYT on Met Gala: If You Don’t Like It, Shut Up
The New York Times had a hot take on the Met Gala: Criticism that it’s a tone-deaf celebration of wealth and celebrity is just resentment.
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CounterSpin, the weekly radio show of FAIR, provides a critical exposé of the corporate news. Produced and hosted by Janine Jackson it is heard on more than 135 noncommercial stations. The current show, back archives and transcripts are available online.
FAIR Studies
Media on Climate Crisis: Don’t Organize, Mourn
While US media have indeed ramped up their coverage of the climate crisis, they continue to give short shrift to what are arguably the most important factors for determining our future: what specific human practices are responsible for the changing climate, why carbon emissions continue to rise, and what we can and should be doing about it.
To Corporate Media, an Exercise Bike Ad Is More Newsworthy Than 3/4 of a Trillion for the Pentagon
Only the Washington Post covered the NDAA more than Peloton (10 articles versus 5), while every other outlet gave an ad for an exercise bike more coverage than a multi-billion-dollar grant to the military industrial complex.
With People in the Streets Worldwide, Media Focus Uniquely on Hong Kong
From the Yellow Vests in France to demonstrations in Lebanon, Gaza, Chile, Ecuador and Haiti, sustained movements all over the planet have taken to the street demanding change. Yet media have been disproportionately interested in only one: the Hong Kong protests.
In Ohio Debate, Media Stuck to an Increasingly Rigid Script
Election Focus 2020: This week’s Democratic presidential debate confirmed that media are stuck in a fairly rigid debate script that elevates questions about healthcare and the economy above all else, and leaves many pressing topics deeply underexplored.
Major Media Bury Groundbreaking Studies of Pentagon’s Massive Carbon Bootprint
Groundbreaking studies of the US military’s outsized contribution to the climate crisis received no coverage in virtually all the US’s biggest newspapers and TV news channels.
