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.
Forty-seven civilians die when the bus they’re riding on is hit by a missile and incinerated. Fifty-eight people are murdered in an attack on their village. The two killings, occurring in the same region, comparable in scale, must be equally worthy of investigation and condemnation, right? Not at the New York Times. “Survivor Tells of […]
Howard Stern, a radio host whose program is syndicated by a CBS subsidiary, responded to the massacre in Littleton, Colorado by suggesting that female victims should have been raped as well as murdered. Here are Stern’s comments, as reported by the Rocky Mountain News (4/24/99): “There were some really good-looking girls running out with their […]
FAIR’s Action Alert on April 8 encouraged media activists to contact CNN in response to a report by Bill Schneider that there was “no action out there on the streets or on campuses — no marches, no demonstrations, no teach-ins.” On April 9, FAIR associate Norman Solomon appeared on CNN‘s “TalkBack Live” to discuss media […]
It might as well. Throughout April, the PBS program National Desk is presenting a three-part series on “the gender wars,” in which they aim to address “whether the advancement of women in virtually all areas of society can be achieved without a retreat, in some way, on the part of men.” This manipulative framing of […]
A shattered apartment block, a gutted passenger train, a devastated refugee convoy–scenes of destruction caused by U.S. bombing are becoming more and more common as the war with Yugoslavia drags on. Whether you hold Slobodan Milosevic or Bill Clinton more to blame for the consequences of NATO bombing, one group of people has so far […]
On April 1, ABC‘s Nightline did a segment that criticized the one-sided coverage of the war—on Serbian TV. Reviewing supposedly absurd claims, ABC aired what it described as “this astonishing claim” from a Belgrade news account: They even use radioactive weapons…which are forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Astonishing, perhaps—but is it true? The fact is, […]
(NOTE: Read the update to this alert.) On April 7, CNN‘s Bill Schneider offered this analysis of the anti-war sentiment in the country: “What’s missing from the Kosovo story is anti-war protest, at least on the left.” Schneider continued by saying that there was “no action out there on the streets or on campuses — […]
(NOTE: Please see the Expanded version of this article.) There is always intense pressure in wartime for media outlets to serve as propagandists rather than journalists. While the role of the journalist is to present the world in all its complexity, so that people can make up their own minds, the propagandist simplifies the world […]
Any time a broadcast outlet adds new programming, it’s an opportunity for new perspectives and opinions to be aired. So it’s disappointing when “new” offerings turn out to be the same old thing. A case in point is MSNBC, which has recently added two new shows to its political lineup, and reformatted another. And what […]
Following a series of FAIR press releases and syndicated columnists covering Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s associations with the CCC (Council of Conservative Citizens), CNN‘s Inside Politics presented a thorough summary of the scandal on January 13. The very next day, the New York Times‘ John Kifner focuses considerable attention on Lott’s lies about his […]
On August 14, FAIR asked media activists to write to ABC News producer Harry Phillips concerning a special segment Phillips was preparing about death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. Noting FAIR’s criticism of biased coverage of Abu-Jamal’s case over the years, media activists wrote to Phillips to express their hopes for a fair, balanced account of […]
The recently de-classified second volume of the CIA’s internal investigation of Contra-drug connections was released last week (still censored in parts), and found the CIA had knowledge of allegations linking many Contras or Contra associates with drug trafficking. But how did the major media cover the story? It’s a good question to put to the […]
The permissible spectrum of opinion in major newspapers seems to be narrowing. In July 1995, USA Today fired its only progressive columnist, Barbara Reynolds. Now the Washington Post has unceremoniously dumped its one consistent voice for peace and justice, Colman McCarthy, who has written for the paper since the late ’60s. Like Reynolds, McCarthy represented […]
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s spectrum excludes “unvarnished progressives” while making sure that antisemites have someone to represent them.
