FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
FAIR studies explore particular media issues or outlets in-depth, adding hard numbers to debates over media content and journalistic practices.
Democrats celebrated dual Georgia Senate race victories this week, which gives them, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaker vote, a bare majority in the Senate. But not all Democrats are created equal, and the one-vote margin makes the politics of each individual in that majority more consequential. In 2020, several states witnessed competitive Democratic […]
A FAIR analysis of the 2020 general election debates found stunning breaks from past practices combined with tried-and-true tropes of national US debates.
Despite the increase of young people planning to vote, corporate media have largely forgotten about them in the weeks leading up to the election.
Establishment media overwhelmingly turned to columnists, pundits and government officials for interpretation of the uprisings—rather than to the activists facing tear gas on the frontlines.
While one cannot describe China’s national security law as an act of “colonialism” or “imperialism,” since Hong Kong is part of China, FAIR conducted a study comparing media coverage of Hong Kong’s national security law and actual colonialism by the US in Puerto Rico, and by its ally Israel in Palestine.
On the networks’ Sunday morning political talk shows, which play an important role in setting agendas for national political debate, the voices asked to participate were overwhelmingly the usual narrow cast of Beltway actors, with independent public health experts playing a marginal role, and public interest voices almost entirely sidelined.
Because the US government is directly responsible for Iranian deaths, Washington’s role should be a central concern to US media. Yet that’s not the case, according to an examination of stories.
Media debate hosts use their platform less to inform voters in an even-handed way than to define which positions—and candidates—are acceptable, and which are not.
Election Focus 2020: The first half hour of the debate was almost entirely given over to non-policy sparring over electability (including the bogeyman of socialism) and experience.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Our elites are engaged in normal economic activity or else looking out for the betterment of humanity, while theirs are nefariously dominating politics.
Election Focus 2020: The fiscally conservative, risk-averse, largely-happy-with-the-status-quo voter—which, by the way, probably fits the profile of most of the corporate media questioners—would haunt much of NBC’s debates.
The study is the clearest evidence of the devastating impact US policy is having on the people of Venezuela.
While the resolution was a radical departure from politics as usual, most corporate media filtered coverage of the “Green New Deal” through the lens of conventional expectations.
A FAIR survey of US opinion journalism on Venezuela found no voices in elite corporate media that opposed regime change in that country. Over a three-month period, zero opinion pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post took an anti–regime change or pro-Maduro/Chavista position.
Election Focus 2020: Democratic hopefuls’ TV news mentions track fairly closely with the candidates’ positions in the polls.
