FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
On Tuesday (6/5/12), ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer introduced a news segment: Michelle Obama appeared today with the CEO of our parent company, Disney, because Disney decided to do something historic to help fight childhood obesity and called in the big guns to do it, including a very, very famous mouse. The “historic” […]
PBS ombud Michael Getler (4/27/12) agrees that the Dow Chemical Corporation’s sponsorship of a PBS series violates PBS underwriting guidelines. PBS, unfortunately, stands by its show. A FAIR Action Alert (4/23/12) pointed out that the decision to allow Dow to sponsor the series America Revealed, which deals with issues that closely track Dow’s business interests, […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin042712 Mark Weisbrot and Justin Elliott @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin042712.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Argentina’s move to re-nationalize its oil company, taking it back from the Spanish company Repsol, is not getting good reviews in the corporate press overseas or here at home. The move will hurt and further isolate Argentina, say the critics. We’ll […]
The four-part series America Revealed, airing on PBS stations this month, looks at big-picture economic issues, from agriculture to transportation to manufacturing. The series underwriter? The Dow Chemical Company, whose commercial interests closely track the subjects covered in the PBS series. The first episode (4/11/12) focused on large-scale agriculture, which is one of the industries […]
Forget the polls and the horserace for a second. In this election season, the big winners will be big media. As most people should know–but media don’t tell you very often–much of the money that flows into and around the campaigns is used to buy advertising. Which means that television and radio stations make a […]
Conservative talker Rush Limbaugh used to tell his listeners that the government was trying to silence him, based on a completely bogus tale about what the Fairness Doctrine would do. This time around, it’s an ad campaign by the liberal group Media Matters for America directed at some of the stations that air Limbaugh’s show. […]
Arianna Huffington had an announcement (1/19/12) about a new section in her Huffington Post: I’m delighted to announce the launch of Global Motherhood, a new section within HuffPost Impact dedicated to the health and well being of mothers and babies around the world, and sponsored by Johnson & Johnson. It goes without saying that it’s […]
The national hardware chain Lowe’s pulled its advertising from the TLC reality show All-American Muslim—explaining that the question of whether Muslims can be presented as regular human beings is a “hotly contested debate.” All-American Muslim is a reality show described by TLC, the cable channel that airs it, as “a look at life in Dearborn, […]
PBS has a website called MediaShift, billed as “Your Guide to the Digital Media Revolution.” Based on an alarming post this week headlined “Tear Down the Wall Between Business and Editorial!” (12/7/11), the revolution looks rather revolting. The piece is written by Dorian Benkoil, who “handles marketing and sales strategies for MediaShift, and is the […]
Huffington Post reporter Jon Ward did what reporters should do when covering political campaign ads. He told readers, at the top of his story, that the new Mitt Romney ad was based on a lie: The 60-second Romney ad quoted Obama as saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” It […]
The public broadcasting newspaper Current (5/18/11) reports that public television—you know, the non-commercial outlet—will start airing more commercials: The move could be controversial for the network, which has traditionally prided itself on offering uninterrupted programming over its 40-year history. PBS will begin breaking into programs with underwriting and promo spots four times per hour on […]
Labor journalist Mike Elk (In These Times, 5/16/11) made an excellent point after watching NBC host David Gregory interview Newt Gingrich on Sunday’s Meet the Press (5/15/11). Elk wrote: Speaking yesterday on Meet the Press, Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said that “the Obama system of the National […]
A condensed version of an AP story (3/23/11) about USA Today‘s new business plan: The nation’s second-largest newspaper is expanding its coverage of advertising-friendly topics, designing content for smartphones and tablet computers and refreshing the look of its print edition, whose circulation has fallen by 20 percent over the past three years…. For readers, it […]
U.S. media consumers are used to magazines where ads outnumber stories, to on-air hosts who contractually consume brand-name drinks, to “consideration provided by” this and “brought to you by” that. But when it comes to the news, many still maintain at least the kernel of expectation that reports in the paper or on TV have […]
The Hub, a new cable TV channel co-owned by a toy company whose toys star in its shows, and Zevo-3, a new TV show with characters based on a shoe company’s ad campaign, are signs of the cost of leaving the creation of cultural and educational content mainly to profiteers. The makers of this programming […]
This is an excerpt from the book Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV (Da Capo Press). Former VH1 programmer and Flavor of Love creator Michael Hirschorn has said of reality TV, “If women didn’t want these shows, they wouldn’t get made.” This gender-specific variant on Fox programmer (and Joe Millionaire mastermind) […]
Public television host Charlie Rose enjoys a reputation for highbrow talk. “A Larry King for Mensa members,” he “conducts a conversation, not an interview,” according to the New York Times (4/25/07). The paper added that Rose is “a facilitator, creating a comfortable ambiance where important people and opinion-makers can speak at length and make more […]
On air and on its website, the PBS NewsHour acknowledges its funders. Along with PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the show gets money from some usual-suspect corporations, like Chevron and Bank of America, and a dozen or more foundations—in various amounts and arrangements worthy of examination in themselves. But who owns public TV’s […]
The L.A. Times has an interesting piece (10/22/10) about KCET, the local PBS affiliate that is bolting from PBS because it says it can’t afford to pay the fees PBS wants to charge them. What happened is that KCET, for a little while at least, was very good at raising corporate money; the PBS fee […]
In response to hundreds of letters from FAIR activists, PBS ombud Michael Getler (7/16/10) agreed with FAIR’s criticism (Action Alert, 7/12/10) of the 3-hour PBS documentary Turmoil and Triumph, a tribute to former Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz funded in part by institutions and individuals with close ties to Shultz. Getler found Turmoil to […]
