FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Barack Obama’s June 22 announcement of a phased troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was often portrayed as a major step towards ending the war, with many outlets neglecting to accurately explain the pace of escalation that has happened under his watch. When Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. had about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan. Obama […]
Media debates over the U.S./NATO war in Libya have often amounted to proponents arguing for “humanitarian” intervention while conservative critics worry about Barack Obama’s management of the war. But the question of the war’s legality should be a front and center concern. Obama’s decided to wage war on Libya without seeking congressional approval. Under some […]
PBS NewsHour anchor Jim Lehrer announced on Thursday that he would step down as anchor of the nightly newscast early next month. Will the change lead to improvements at the program? As FAIR has documented in several major studies, the NewsHour falls well short of fulfilling the mission that should guide public broadcasting: the promotion […]
Donald Trump’s efforts to delegitimize Barack Obama by suggesting he’s not a native-born citizen, and questioning his qualifications for admissions to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, have drawn fire from prominent media figures like MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell (FAIR Blog, 4/29/11), CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer (CBS Evening News, 4/27/11) and even David Letterman […]
To hear some tell it, the intelligence clues that ultimately led to Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan were generated by the use of torture. But the evidence available so far does not bear this out. Torture advocates on the right are claiming vindication. On Fox News Channel‘s O’Reilly Factor (5/2/11), Rep. Peter King (R.-N.Y.) […]
The budget proposal released last week by Rep. Paul Ryan (R.-Wisc.) includes tax cuts for the wealthy, tax hikes for the middle class, drastic cuts in spending and a radical restructuring of Medicare that would shift most of the cost of healthcare to seniors. Its dubious claims of deficit reduction rely on fatally flawed assumptions […]
Washington Post columnist and political reporter David Broder died on Wednesday, March 9. Broder was an enormously influential figure in Beltway media circles–“the best political reporter of his generations,” wrote his Post colleague Dan Balz (3/10/11). ABC‘s George Stephanopoulos declared (3/9/11) that “for generations of policy makers, journalists and political junkies, Broder was the gold […]
The number of Afghan boys gathering firewood killed by a March 1 U.S./NATO helicopter attack in Kunar Province: Nine. The number of stories about the killing of the nine children on ABC, CBS or NBC morning or evening news shows (as of March 6): Two. One was an 80-word report on NBC Nightly News (3/2/11), […]
It is as predictable as can be: Invigorated Republican politicians announce their intention to kill public broadcasting, which they claim is a bastion of liberal bias. Defenders of NPR and PBS step in to defend the system. The Republicans, who were unlikely to win a vote on their plan, retreat for the moment. Public broadcasting […]
It was certainly surprising to see former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier return to the country on January 16. To say he has blood on his hands is an understatement: The Duvalier regimes were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and widespread torture (Human Rights Watch, 1/17/11), and stole half a billion dollars from the […]
The political context of the current Egyptian uprising is clear: The United States has steadfastly supported dictator Hosni Mubarak, whose rule has been marked by sham elections and the jailing and torture of dissidents, propping up his regime since 1981 with some $60 billion in aid, most of it military. But since U.S. corporate media […]
With increasing vehemence since the midterm elections, pundits and journalists have recommended Barack Obama move to the right–and now are citing recent polling to suggest that the president has benefited from following their advice. But there is little evidence that Obama’s current approval ratings have anything to do with a rightward shift, and the entire […]
Whether the abrupt termination of MSNBC host Keith Olbermann’s contract on January 21 was connected to Olbermann’s left-of-center politics or the recent purchase of NBC by Comcast from General Electric, the host’s departure provides an opportunity to reflect on the bigger picture. MSNBC‘s current liberal identity is generally attributed to Olbermann, whose success offered compelling […]
The discussion of violent and paranoid rhetoric in the media is long overdue, whether or not it is ever determined that accused Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner was somehow influenced or motivated by such rhetoric. Before the shooting, there had been a remarkable surge of politically motivated violence (FAIR Blog, 1/12/11). Despite media efforts to […]
At the end of every year FAIR rounds up some of the stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance. This year brought no shortage of contenders; indeed, the hardest part of the P.U.-litzers is narrowing down the list. Readers who think we missed one can share their nominations at the FAIR Blog (fair.org/blog). And without further […]
In U.S. elite media, the main revelation of the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables is that the U.S. government conducts its foreign policy in a largely admirable fashion.
With the Democrats suffering substantial losses in Tuesday’s midterms, many journalists and pundits were offering a familiar diagnosis (Extra!, 7-8/06; FAIR Media Advisory, 2/3/09): The Democrats had misread their mandate and governed too far to the left. The solution, as always, is for Democrats to move to the right and reclaim “the center.” But this […]
The PBS ombud and representatives of the public television programs studied in FAIR’s new report, “Taking the Public Out of Public TV,” have responded (
This week, as the Afghan War entered its 10th year, there were the usual retrospectives in the media, as well as calls to rethink the war. What’s striking, though, is how little thinking media did about the war in the first place. —Some pundits were calling for indiscriminate attacks before the Afghanistan War even started, […]
Thanks to the efforts of independent media outlets like Free Speech TV (10/2/10), GritTV (10/4/10) and Democracy Now! (10/4/10), you may have been able to follow the happenings at last weekend’s One Nation Working Together rally. Organized and endorsed by hundreds of progressive citizens’ groups, labor unions and grassroots activists, the gathering drew tens of […]
