Some Things Considered, Mostly by White Men
A new FAIR study finds that NPR commentary is dominated by white men and almost never directly addresses political issues.
FAIR studies explore particular media issues or outlets in-depth, adding hard numbers to debates over media content and journalistic practices.
National Plutocrat Radio
A new FAIR study finds that NPR’s diversity problem also extends into the board of trustees of its most popular member stations: Two out of three board members are male, and nearly three out of four are non-Latino whites. Fully three out of every four trustees of the top NPR affiliates belong to the corporate elite.
As Drought Grips California, Networks Come Up Dry on Climate Science
When California’s drought was covered on network TV, global warming was rarely addressed, with just three mentions on ABC, two on NBC and one on CBS.
Who Rules Public TV?
The corporate and financial sectors have an overwhelming presence on the governing boards of major public television stations.
Who Gets to Speak on Cable News?
A survey of major cable news discussion programs shows a stunning lack of diversity among the guests.
Putin’s ‘Delusions’ and Double Standards
Media are suggesting that Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s defense of his actions in Ukraine suggests he is delusional. But what do they call it when US leaders appear unable to remember US invasions of other countries?
FAIR STUDY: Think Tank Spectrum 2012
Think tank researchers are often cited by news outlets to add context and analysis to a news story. They are often portrayed as objective or nonpartisan observers (Extra!, 5/98), and as Ken Silverstein recently explained in the Nation (5/21/13), that appearance can be quite valuable to corporate donors: Nowadays, many Washington think tanks effectively serve […]
It’s Only the Future of the Planet
Issues like oil spills, land use rights, groundwater pollution etc. are all complaints made by critics of the Keystone XL pipeline. And looming over all of them is the way that tapping the tar sands will exacerbate climate change. But the media doesn’t seem to care.
Media Not Concerned About the Very Poor
“All this talk today about poverty got us wondering just how many people in America live below the poverty line,” anchor Scott Pelley announced on the CBS Evening News (2/1/12). By “all this talk,” Pelley was referring to less than 200 words, in a report CBS had just aired on GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s missteps, […]
Missing Latino Voices
Since 1990, the Latino population in the United States has more than doubled to 16 percent, but English-language U.S. news media outlets are simply not keeping up. While people of color and women have always been underrepresented in U.S. media, Latinos consistently stand out—in the coverage as well as inside the newsroom—for their exceptionally paltry […]
Congress’s Missing Coverage
Citizens need thorough coverage from local media outlets of their potential representatives to make an informed decision about who will best serve their interests. It’s unfortunate that quality news on congressional elections is so hard to come by.
Think Tank Spectrum Revisited
THINK TANK MONITOR After a two-year hiatus, the FAIR think tank survey is back. In our last survey, using 2008 data (FAIR.org, 9/3/09), overall think tank citations were in decline, and that decline was most noticeable among conservative think tanks. The results for 2011 are the opposite: a good year for the top 25 think […]
Bored With Occupy—and Inequality
Occupy Wall Street is rightly credited with helping to shift the economic debate in America from a fixation on deficits to issues of income inequality, corporate greed and the centralization of wealth among the richest 1 percent. The movement has chalked up other victories as well, from altering New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s tax plan […]
Top Op-Ed Pages Offer Choice of Elites
While it would be naive to accept the newspaper business’s implication that it keeps its news entirely factual by segregating opinion to its own section, the op-ed pages do state opinion more explicitly and help make visible the range of opinions allowed in the rest of the paper. What kind of writers do the major […]
Right and Early
While you might expect to see a lot of Republican candidates and their surrogates in the thick of a Republican primary contest, the four Sunday morning talk shows—ABC’s This Week, NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday—have been extraordinarily friendly terrain for the right, as a new FAIR study documents.
Narrow Afghan Debate on Cable’s ‘Liberal’ Channel
Of the cable news channels, MSNBC has the most progressive image, based largely on the persona of now-fired anchor Keith Olbermann, but also reflecting the presence of hosts like Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and Olbermann’s replacement Lawrence O’Donnell. To test how much this left-leaning reputation actually reflects the content of MSNBC’s news, Extra! looked at […]
Does NewsHour ‘Help Us See America Whole’?
A new FAIR study of the PBS NewsHour finds that public television’s flagship news program continues to feature sources drawn largely from a narrow range of elite white male experts. The study, the third FAIR has conducted of the NewsHour since 1990, documents a pattern of failure by the PBS news show to fulfill the mission of public television to provide a broader, more inclusive alternative to commercial news programs.
Tea Party vs. U.S. Social Forum
When it comes to covering activist gatherings, corporate media have established clear standards: Numbers don’t count nearly as much as politics do. Last fall, when tens of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists and their allies marched on Washington in a grassroots rally for equality, media gave it far less coverage than the […]
Who Gets to Review and Be Reviewed?
When it comes to political books, the New York Times Book Review and the C-SPAN book show After Words share an exceedingly narrow view of whose books deserve review—and who is fit to discuss them. A FAIR study found that these important media venues for discussion of newly published books were overwhelmingly dominated by white […]
Don’t Ask Gays About Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
After months of pressure from activists to make good on his campaign promise, Barack Obama called for a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in his January 27 State of the Union address. Less than a week later, Adm. Mike Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate committee hearing on February […]
