Turning Their Back on Bradley Manning
Bradley Manning is accused of leaking incredibly vital information that made headlines around the world. But the developments at his trial last week were evidently not newsworthy.
When Is a Mandate Not a Mandate?
When it comes to explaining election results, there’s no precise way to determine whether voters gave the winner a “mandate”–defined by Oxford as “the authority to carry out a policy, regarded as given by the electorate to a party or candidate that wins an election.” That makes it interesting to see how media use the expression–and which presidents they think earned one.
The Moderators’ Agendas
The establishment media figures who moderated the 2012 major-party candidate debates confined the discussion to a remarkably narrow range of topics, a FAIR analysis of debate questions finds. A wide variety of topics were never brought up in questions during the six total hours of debate. Among economic subjects, no questions were asked about poverty, […]
Factchecking Libya
The September 11, 2012, attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, became a contentious issue in the October 16 presidential debate (FAIR Blog, 10/17/12). The discussion didn’t do much to illuminate U.S. foreign policy, but it exposed the essential uselessness in what corporate media offer as political “factchecking.”
Moderate Debates and Debate Moderators
Jim Lehrer is hopping mad. The New York Times (10/2/12) reports that the PBS anchor “has been seething. He said he was outraged by suggestions that he was a ‘safe’ and uninspired choice to moderate the first of four debates.” The focus of the Times piece is the fact that people have more ways to express their opinions about the presidential […]
Paul Ryan’s ‘Self-Reliance’
As corporate media tell and retell Republican vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan’s life story, one theme emerges above all others: His “self-reliance. “David Fahrenthold and Paul Kane in the Washington Post (8/11/12) asserted that Ryan’s big ideas bear the stamp of his own story: They stress independence and self-reliance, the qualities that took him from the mailroom […]
The Media’s Favorite ‘Wonk’
Mitt Romney’s choice of Rep. Paul Ryan as his Republican running mate has unleashed yet another torrent of fawning coverage touting Ryan’s intelligence and bravery for advocating a fiscal plan of massive government spending cuts and massive tax breaks for the wealthy.
You Didn’t Build That—or Say It
Sometimes the problem with corporate media’s coverage of elections is the absence of factchecking. And then there are times when the problem is more fundamental than that–when reporters suspend a minimal level of critical judgment in order to allow a political campaign to set a preferred storyline. Recent campaign coverage has focused on a supposed Barack Obama “gaffe” that was made to appear to be an attack on small business owners.
Small Business Baloney
Barack Obama’s July 9 announcement that he would extend the Bush tax cuts for income below $250,000 prompted the expected response from Republican politicians and presidential candidate Mitt Romney: This is a tax increase on “small businesses.” That is false. But most news reports won’t say so. The New York Times (7/10/12) told readers that […]
Not So Fast on Fast & Furious
If you’ve paid much attention to media reports about the “Fast and Furious” scandal, you may be under the impression that government agencies inexplicably allowed guns to be purchased in the United States and shipped across the border to drug lords in Mexico, where they ended up being connected to the December 2010 death of […]
Drone Kill List: Not News?
The New York Times‘ lengthy report (5/29/12) on Barack Obama’s drone “kill list” should provoke serious questions: Is such a program legal? How does it square with Obama’s criticism of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” policies? Is the White House covering up the killing of civilians by labeling them “militants”? Why is the United […]
After Afghan Massacre, War Gets Victim Status
The news that a U.S. Army sergeant killed 16 civilians, most of them children, in southern Afghanistan early Sunday morning was treated by many media outlets primarily as a PR challenge for continued war and occupation of that country. “Afghanistan, once the must-fight war for America, is becoming a public relations headache for the nation’s […]
Occupy the P.U.-litzers!
This year has given us simply too many worthy contenders for FAIR’s annual P.U.-litzers—recognizing the stinkiest journalism of the year. A big part of the problem was that so many outlets were striving to distinguish themselves with especially awful coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. So to note those lowlights, we bring you a […]
2011 P.U.-litzers: Journalism That Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test
It’s that time of year again–when FAIR goes through the year’s archives to collect a sampling of the worst moments of corporate media spin and malfeasance. The competition was, as always, fierce. And in special recognition of the media’s befuddled approach to the Occupy Wall Street movement, next week will see the release of a […]
Iran, Nukes and the Failure of Skepticism
Much of the corporate media coverage of a new UN report on Iran strongly asserts that Iran is close to building nuclear weapons. But the International Atomic Energy Agency report does not actually arrive at that conclusion, and many critics contend that the speculations that are in the report are misguided. A USA Today piece […]
Have Corporate Media Warmed to Occupy Wall Street?
Media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests started out exactly as one might expect. There was little coverage at first (FAIR Action Alert, 9/23/11), and as it expanded, much of it consisted of snide dismissals of demonstrators” ignorance, hygiene and so on. But then something happened. Following incidents of police abuse, including the […]
Bill Moyers Is Back
According to a report in the New York Times (8/22/11), public television icon Bill Moyers will be back on the public airwaves next year–but not on PBS. The new show, Moyers & Company, will be distributed to stations for free by American Public Television. The Times reports that “PBS told Moyers it couldn’t find an […]
Libyan Deaths, Media Silence
Allegations of Libyan civilian deaths as a result of NATO bombing have often been covered in the corporate media as an opportunity to scoff at the Gadhafi regime’s unconvincing propaganda (FAIR Blog, 6/9/11). But dramatic new allegations that dozens of civilians were killed in Majer after NATO airstrikes on August 8 have been met with […]
Media Malpractice on Debt Ceiling
There are specific patterns in corporate media coverage of political debates: Progressive ideas are generally marginalized. “Compromise” between the major parties is encouraged. Democrats should “move to the center,” which in practical terms actually means moving to the right. All of these tendencies have driven the discussion over the federal debt and the debt ceiling. […]
Seeing ‘Islamic Terror’ in Norway
Right-wing terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik reportedly killed 76 people in Norway on Friday, by all accounts driven by far-right anti-immigrant politics and fervent Islamophobia. But many early media accounts assumed that the perpetrator of the attacks was Muslim. On news of the first round of attacks—the bombs in Oslo—CNN‘s Tom Lister (7/22/11) didn’t know […]
