FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Kudos to Paul Farhi of the Washington Post (3/2/12) for talking about the obvious deceptions and inaccuracies in right-wing publisher Andrew Breitbart’s work: News organizations found, for example, that the ACORN videos–which purported to show a young Mr. Breitbart ally named James O’Keefe posing as a pimp seeking advice from the organization about how to […]
There’s a popular verb in headlines about climate researcher Peter Gleick’s admission that he used trickery to get damning documents out of the climate change–denialist group the Heartland Institute: “Activist Says He Lied to Obtain Climate Papers” (New York Times, 2/21/12); “Scientist Peter Gleick Admits He Lied to Get Climate Documents” (L.A. Times, 2/21/12); “Climate […]
USA Today‘s Rick Hampson has a piece today (12/7/11) on Occupy Wall Street’s Occupy Our Homes actions, which include efforts to move families into vacant housing. This coverage is a good sign if you think there is still something happening with this movement after the evictions in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. But why […]
You think Breitbart distorts facts because HE DOES. To suggest otherwise is to assert there’s no way to know the truth about anything.
From Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News (3/9/11), courtesy of reporter Lisa Myers: We last saw O’Keefe wearing a fur coat and playing a pimp when he managed to take down the liberal group ACORN. No we didn’t. As should be well-known by now, O’Keefe used footage of himself wearing a “pimp” costume in his ACORN videos–but […]
After his fraudulent ACORN videos, the lesson media should have learned about right-wing “citizen journalist” James O’Keefe is not to trust him. But they didn’t, so here we are with his NPR stunt, which allegedly shows NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller saying mean things about the Tea Party in a meeting with phony Muslim Brotherhood-connected donors. […]
In late 2009 and early 2010, right-wing activist James O’Keefe concocted a story that got widespread media coverage. The tall tale went like this: O’Keefe and his associate went to offices affiliated with the community organizing group ACORN in order to solicit advice on running a brothel and evading taxes. The problem was that nothing […]
Sometimes it almost seems like one of the requirements for a high-placed job in corporate media is an inability to learn from experience. Take the front page of USA Today (7/22/10)–the “cover story” is about Shirley Sherrod (FAIR Blog, 7/21/10), whose ordeal is blamed in part on “conservative blogger” Andrew Breitbart taking advantage of “a […]
The lesson of Shirley Sherrod’s disgraceful treatment by right-wing and not-so-right-wing media (followed by her equally squalid dismissal by an administration that took that media at face value) boils down to a single question: When will journalists see Andrew Breitbart as the serial promoter of journalistic frauds that he is, rather than as a legitimate […]
Andrew Breitbart is the right-wing Internet provocateur behind the ACORN video hoaxes, which purported to show a pretend pimp-and-prostitute duo getting criminal advice from the community organizing group ACORN. That’s not what happened, but Breitbart’s inaccurate presentation was taken at face value. Yet some in the media are still treating Breitbart seriously. Washington Post ombud […]
A short New York Times piece by Ian Urbina (4/2/10) serves as an update of sorts on the future of community organizing group ACORN, which says it will continue to have a national presence. Urbina includes this description of the now-infamous right-wing video hoax that did much of the damage to the group: ACORN has […]
FAIR’s Jim Naureckas appeared on GritTV yesterday to discuss media coverage of ACORN:
FAIR has a new Action Alert out pointing out that the New York Times has repeatedly published accounts of the right-wing anti-ACORN videos that credulously accepted assertions that have turned out to be false–for example, that one of the video-makers, James O’Keefe, went into ACORN offices dressed as a cartoon pimp. See the alert here […]
Living up to the ridiculous notion that every right-wing slam on ACORN demands coverage in the “liberal media,” the Washington Post (“Duo Release Another Video of Their Meeting With ACORN Worker,” 10/22/09) runs a storyon the latest from the right-wing activists whose undercover videos shot at local ACORN offices got all the attention in the […]
Politico (10/14/09) published a list of top topics on Glenn Beck’s Fox News show, based on a search of Nexis transcripts since the show’s January 2009 debut. It’s instructive to look at the placement of some individuals, groups and places in the news as an indication of Beck’s sense of whom and what his audience […]
If you want a lesson in how right-wing pressure on corporate media works, look no further than the ACORN story. Right-wing talkshow hosts have targeted the community organizing group for years, primarily on charges of vote fraud. Then two conservative activists produced some embarrassing videos of ACORN workers at some local offices giving tax advice […]
Gawker blogger The Cajun Boy (6/24/09) is agog at “How Fox News Educates Its Viewers”: Last night Glenn Beck made crude drawings on a chalkboard, and tonight he and Bill O’Reilly used Barbie dolls to explain ACORN. In the course of explaining how Nancy Pelosi is trying to stop noble Republicans from stopping ACORN from […]
While David Croteau’s study demonstrates that Washington journalists are to the right of the general public on many economic issues, it needs to be stressed that the personal views of news reporters do not translate directly into the slant of news coverage. Reporters have editors or producers who play a key role in how the […]
