FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
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.
Network news outlets have reported stories about civilian casualties in Afghanistan with caution, often noting that Taliban claims are nearly impossible to verify. But many outlets show no inclination to be equally careful when evaluating the Pentagon’s line on casualties. CNN, for example, has ordered reporters to frame reports of civilian deaths with reminders that […]
During the weeks following September’s terrorist attacks, two leading dailies used their op-ed pages as an echo chamber for the government’s official policy of military response, mostly ignoring dissenters and policy critics. A FAIR survey of the New York Times and the Washington Post op-ed pages for the three weeks following the attacks (9/12/01–10/2/01) found […]
According to the Washington Post (10/31/01), CNN Chair Walter Isaacson “has ordered his staff to balance images of civilian devastation in Afghan cities with reminders that the Taliban harbors murderous terrorists, saying it ‘seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan.’” Post media reporter Howard Kurtz quotes a memo from […]
Just two days after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FCC began to eliminate the last remaining shreds of regulation on media concentration. With all eyes elsewhere, the FCC voted unanimously to “review” laws that prohibit the same company from owning both a newspaper and a TV station […]
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the New York Times has downplayed and distorted peace rallies and demonstrations against a military response. After thousands of anti-war activists gathered in Washington, D.C. on September 29, the Times responded with a 10-sentence story, under the headline “Protesters in Washington Urge Peace with Terrorists.” Given that a call […]
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Congress is considering anti-terrorism legislation that could seriously weaken civil liberties in the U.S. Yet the three major networks’ nightly news shows have done little reporting on the issue. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warns that the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 includes provisions that could […]
As the news media prepare for war, some prominent journalists have been advocating military strategies that violate the laws of war and mirror the strategies of terrorists. Fox News Channel‘s Bill O’Reilly, the channel’s most popular host, declared on his September 17 broadcast that if the Afghan government did not extradite Osama bin Laden to […]
In an August 9 alert (www.fair.org/activism/yahoo-opinions.html), FAIR noted that Yahoo!News Opinion/Editorial columnists are 67 percent male, 90 percent white, and only 24 percent liberal. Additionally, not one female artist is included among the 25 Yahoo!News Op/Ed contributing cartoonists. Scores of media activists, responding to FAIR’s alert, asked Yahoo! News to broaden their range of editorial […]
Early this month, new CNN chairman Walter Isaacson met with top Republican lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to discuss how to improve relations between the cable news network and conservative Republicans. According to a report in Roll Call magazine (8/6/01), Isaacson met with Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Rep. J.C. […]
In a report about the August 9 terrorist bombing in west Jerusalem, National Public Radio correspondent Linda Gradstein openly advised the Israeli government to retaliate against the Palestinians (NPR Morning Edition,8/9/01): NPR HOST RENEE MONTAIGNE: “Is Israel likely to retaliate?” LINDA GRADSTEIN: “I think Israel has to retaliate. Israel has been saying from now on […]
This morning, the Pacifica Radio Network refused to distribute the regularly scheduled broadcast of Amy Goodman’s award-winning news show, Democracy Now! Instead, most listeners heard an old show with no explanation for the irregularity. For over a year, Goodman has faced continuing harassment– including racist and sexist slurs and physical intimidation– at WBAI, the New […]
Note: Please read the latest update to this alert. While the Internet has revolutionized how some people get their news– for example, through alternative sites such as IndyMedia.org, AlterNet.org and CommonDreams.org–corporate media still wield great influence over the range of journalistic debate online. Many Web surfers rely on for-profit search engines and web directories to […]
The tens of thousands of people who gathered last weekend to protest the G8summit in Genoa were greeted by a “ring of steel” manned by police, military and paramilitary forces; one protester, Carlo Giuliani, was shot in the head, run over and killed by police. U.S. media ran sensationalistic reports on the drama “in the […]
John Stossel plays by a different set of rules than other journalists, as demonstrated most recently by “Tampering with Nature,” a one-hour special that aired on ABC on June 29. Taking advantage of the unusual leeway the network gives him, ABC’s favorite free-market zealot used the special to attack environmentalists, who are caricatured as “preachers […]
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently fined a community radio station for airing a political rap song that attacks sexual exploitation and degrading lyrics in popular music. On May 17, the FCC issued a $7,000 fine to Portland, Oregon’s KBOO, a listener-sponsored station, charging that Sarah Jones’ “Your Revolution” violated the Commission’s decency standards, which […]
When a high-level government official calls for drastic changes in U.S. law, it ought to be big news. But in an interview reported by the Financial Times’ Amity Shlaes (5/19/01 & 5/22/01), treasury secretary Paul O’Neill called for sweeping changes in U.S. tax and social policy, and some three weeks later, those statements have made […]
In his June 11 column, Boston Globe ombudsman Jack Thomas distorted the concerns of hundreds of letter-writers, and failed in his responsibility to his readers by relying solely on his own paper’s version of disputed events. Thomas was responding to the many complaints he received about the paper’s rejection of an ad from the environmental […]
A May 21 FAIR Action Alert addressed the stories of White House “vandalism” during the transition in January. According to anonymous Bush administration sources, Clinton staffers had looted Air Force One and vandalized the White House on their way out of office. The rumors exploded after earlier, more light-hearted stories about minor pranks, such as […]
FAIR sent out an action alert on April 9 asking readers to contact the Boston Globe about the paper’s apparent hypocrisy. The Globe had written an editorial (3/20/01) upholding the free-speech right of right-wing activist David Horowitz to place a racist ad in campus newspapers attacking the idea of slavery reparations. The paper told student […]
FAIR activists came to the aid of Democracy Now!– one of the best examples of investigative journalism in U.S. broadcasting– when its award-winninghost Amy Goodman was facing pressure from the Pacifica radio network whereshe works. Thousands of emails helped persuade Pacifica management to backdown. Now Democracy Now! needs your help again, as the show has […]
