In Iraq Crisis, Networks Are Megaphones for Official Views
Of all 393 sources, only three (less than 1 percent) were identified with organized protests or anti-war groups.
FAIR’s Action Alert network is a powerful activism tool that encourages the public to become critically engaged with media. FAIR distributes timely, focused reports via email, critiquing a particular instance of media inaccuracy or bias, and encourages members to communicate directly to journalists to demand more responsible reporting. This activism get results! With the help of our readers and podcast listeners, FAIR has forced rewrites of stories, propelled important but under-reported stories from the sidelines to the mainstream and succeeded in getting different perspectives into the news.
Do Media Know That War Kills?
Despite daily reports about the “showdown” with Iraq, Americans hear very little from mainstream media about the most basic fact of war: People will be killed and civilian infrastructure will be destroyed, with devastating consequences for public health long after the fighting stops. Since the beginning of the year, according to a search of the […]
New York Times, Networks Shun U.N. Spying Story
With media attention focused intensely on the U.N. Security Council debate over Iraq, the London-based Observer newspaper broke a major story on March 2: The United States is apparently engaged in a spying campaign against the diplomatic delegations from several Security Council nations. Despite the timeliness and relevance of the Observer’s scoop, some major news […]
Speak Out for Media Democracy
FAIR FACT SHEET: The FCC & Media Democracy SPEAK OUT FOR MEDIA DEMOCRACY What if you woke up tomorrow to find that Yosemite National Park had been turned over to Chevron? Or that the Everglades were now under the watchful eye of DuPont? Most people would agree: Giving corporations nearly unlimited control over a precious […]
MSNBC’s Double Standard on Free Speech
MSNBC‘s claim to be championing free speech by hiring hate-talk radio host Michael Savage is disingenuous in the extreme. Defending its decision to give a weekly program to a commentator who specializes in diatribes against various groups, the MSNBC cable network called hiring Savage—whose show will premiere on Saturday, March 8—”a legitimate attempt to expand […]
GE, Microsoft Bring Bigotry to Life
The latest hire by the cable news network MSNBC— co-owned by General Electric/NBC and Microsoft— is Michael Savage, a radio talkshow host noted for his unabashed bigotry. Savage is scheduled to have his own weekly one-hour show on MSNBC beginning in March. Savage routinely refers to non-white countries as “turd world nations” and charges that […]
Broadcast Networks File FCC Comments—But Not Stories
The review of media ownership rules underway at the Federal Communications Commission will have an enormous impact on the future of broadcasting and on media diversity. The FCC is considering repealing or altering a number of key rules that limit media consolidation. But you wouldn’t know any of this from watching network television news. Media […]
Media Missing New Evidence About Genoa Violence
Police in Genoa, Italy have admitted to fabricating evidence against globalization activists in an attempt to justify police brutality during protests at the July 2001 G8 Summit. In searches of the Nexis database, FAIR has been unable to find a single mention of this development in any major U.S. newspapers or magazines, national television news […]
HBO Adds Disclaimer to Gulf War Movie
Responding to a FAIR activism campaign, HBO recently added a message to the end of its movie Live From Baghdad, clarifying the scenes that seemingly endorsed the fraudulent stories about Iraqi soldiers removing Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The film, a fictionalized account of CNN‘s coverage of the Persian Gulf War, leaves viewers with the impression […]
A Call for Media Democracy
A range of media scholars and public interest, media and community groups from across the country have joined FAIR in issuing a Call for Media Democracy in response to the FCC’s current “review” of the rules that govern big media. FAIR encourages everyone concerned with this issue to act now. Some suggestions of how you […]
HBO Recycling Gulf War Hoax?
(NOTE: Please read the update to this alert.) The fraudulent story of Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990 is depicted as if it were true in Live from Baghdad, the HBO film premiering on the cable network this Saturday that purports to tell the story behind […]
Common Myths in Iraq Coverage
An issue as serious as the Iraq crisis deserves the highest possible degree of accuracy from the press. U.S. media coverage, however, is marked by frequent misstatements and distortions of reality– some of which have been made repeatedly, even after being pointed out by critics. Here are a few examples of commonly repeated errors: 1. […]
NBC Slams Universal Health Care
On Election Day, Oregon voters rejected a ballot proposition called Measure 23 that would have instituted universal healthcare in the state. Outspent more than 30 to 1 by a coalition of insurance companies that blanketed the airwaves with negative ads, the only hope for proponents of the measure was fair coverage in the media. Unfortunately, […]
NPR, New York Times Count Out Anti-War Activists
(NOTE: Please read the update to this alert.) National Public Radio and the New York Times arrived at the same conclusion about the anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. this weekend: The turnout was disappointing. But neither report matched reality. The Times account on October 27 was vague, reporting that “thousands of protesters marched through Washington’s […]
Connie Chung: Skeptical of Skepticism
On her October 7 broadcast, CNN‘s Connie Chung took a U.S. congressmember to task for doubting George W. Bush. After Rep. Mike Thompson (D.-Calif.) told Chung that there seemed to be no evidence that Iraq posed an immediate danger to the people of the United States or its allies, the anchor responded, “Well, let’s listen […]
Fox Hunting Trumps Peace Activism at Washington Post & NYT
(Note: Please read the recent update to this alert.) Last Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London to protest military action against Iraq, rallying in what the London Independent called “one of the biggest peace demonstrations seen in a generation” (9/29/02). Yet neither the Washington Post nor the New York […]
Spying in Iraq: From Fact to Allegation
Nothing makes a newspaper prouder than a juicy foreign-policy scoop. Except, it seems, when the scoop ends up raising awkward questions about a U.S. administration’s drive for war. Back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq for the U.S.’s own […]
PBS Fails to Hold Rumsfeld Accountable
Asking tough questions of those in power is one of a journalist’s most important jobs– especially when a country may be going to war. But PBS‘s Jim Lehrer failed to challenge Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a September 18 interview on the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer“– even when Rumsfeld made factually inaccurate assertions. For […]
Call of the Wild
9/3/02 10:00 PM ET ANNOUNCER: We are on an American journey. Go in search of America and you will find America looking back at you. Freedom, self-expression, reinterpreting the founding fathers’ ideas from generation to generation. This is an exceptional nation. America’s principles have been shaken, molded, adapted and assaulted. But they endure. If you […]
Peter Jennings Cries Wolf
The special was called “In Search of America,” but when ABC News and Peter Jennings addressed the issue of the reintroduction of wolves to Idaho (9/3/02), they gave the strong impression that they’d already decided what they would find before they started to look. ABC told a story about the federal government forcing Idahoans to […]
