FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
In his introduction (TomDispatch, 5/12/09) to Pepe Escobar analyzing the current politics of the Aghanistan/Pakistan region, Tom Engelhardt describes how “there, the skies are filled with planes and unmanned aerial drones, and civilians as well as combatants die every day in increasing numbers as ever more frequent attacks and expanding conflicts make daily headlines.” But […]
Pointing to a May 9 Boston Globe editorial saying that Barack “Obama conveyed the right message last week by hosting Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari” to emphasize “the close link between Pakistan and the anti-Taliban struggle in Afghanistan,” before admitting that “U.S. military strikes against militants in both countries inevitably […]
FAIR has a new Action Alert on 60 Minutes‘ May 10 broadcast extolling the virtues of unmanned drones, with no perspectives at all from critics of the weapons–who might have pointed out that they kill 50 innocent civilians for every Al-Qaeda leader they assassinate. Please copy your letters to 60 Minutes to the comments thread […]
In the wake of the release of the U.S. military’s own figures showing a record number of bombs were dropped by U.S. warplanes in Afghanistan during April, newspapers are reporting today on a particularly deadly bombing attack on Monday that killed over 100 civilians, according to Afghan officials and witnesses. Anonymous U.S. military officials of […]
During coverage of the Obama administration’s 100-day mark, MSNBC had war reporter Richard Engel and anchor Tamron Hall interview MSNBC analyst Barry McCaffrey, who CJR.org‘s Clint Hendler (4/29/09) calls “the retired army general whose many conflicts of interest have been analyzed by David Barstow’s now-Pulitzer Prize winning reporting for the New York Times.” When asked […]
Having covered the U.S. war on Afghanistan at his TomDispatch website from the outset, Tom Engelhardt marvels (4/23/09) at how, “almost like clockwork, the reports float up to us from thousands of miles away” of “so many lives snuffed out so regularly for more than seven years now.” But at this point, “unfortunately, those news […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin040309 Mark Weisbrot and Gareth Porter @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin040309.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Barack Obama’s military surge in Afghanistan has caught very little flack in the media, even though experts on the region say it doesn’t make sense and distorts realities on the ground in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. We’ll talk to journalist Gareth […]
NPR watchdog Mytwords (NPR Check, 3/28/09) would just “love to know what it costs NPR to station Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson in Afghanistan,” from where she dispatches to U.S. public radio such “news” as U.S.-installed Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai telling reporters “that he welcomes the increased American focus on Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan,” that […]
Considering the fact that, “while the Obama administration says that the problems of the region cannot be solved by military means, the basic approach is reliance on heightened military means,” FAIR associate Norman Solomon (Huffington Post, 3/24/09) thinks that “we desperately need a substantive national debate on U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Solomon […]
The lead of an article in the New York Times today (3/23/09): KABUL, Afghanistan – A predawn raid by United States Special Forces that killed five people on Sunday has produced sharply conflicting accounts from the American military and local Afghan officials as to whether the dead were civilians or militants, resurrecting a sore point […]
People dislike the Afghan war more than ever, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll; 42 percent of Americans now think invading that country was a mistake. For some reason,the paper’sfrontpage write-up of the poll (3/17/09) quotes two experts: John Naglof the Center for a New American Security and Thomas Donnellyofthe American Enterprise Institute. Both […]
Media reporter DeWayne Wickham sees (USA Today, 3/3/09) the new Pentagon rules allowing photography of U.S. casualty coffins as “just the silver lining” around the dark cloud of a fact that “our free press is still being stage-managed by those who run the wars.” That the new regulations permit photos only “if the family of […]
Apparently the New York Times hasmoved Elisabeth Bumiller over to the Pentagon beat. Her record as Bush White House correspondent produced some memorable missteps (“You can’t just say the president is lying,” for example), so it wasn’t a surprise to see her byline under the story, “From a Carrier, Another View of America’s Air War […]
“A rather major problem with nearly all of NPR‘s reporting” has been identified by NPR Check blogger Mytwords (2/18/09) and named the “history scrub.” The definition: “If the essential background history to a story reflects poorly on the actions of the U.S. government–that history will be deleted, scrubbed, sanitized–sent down the memory hole.” The key […]
USA Today‘s “Obama’s War” cover story today (2/18/09) is long by that paper’s usual standards, but can’t seem to find any space for critics of the plan to send 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Quoted in the piece: –Barack Obama —Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution –political scientist Richard Eichenberg of Tufts University –White House […]
CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric (1/27/09) introduced a segment on civilian casualties in Afghanistan by saying, “Our Elizabeth Palmer spoke with the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who says the Taliban have become masters of manipulating public opinion.” That commander, Gen. David McKiernan, was CBS’s sole on-camera source for the segment, making assertions like […]
Recalling that “during the mid-1960s, the conventional wisdom was what everyone with a modicum of smarts kept saying: higher U.S. troop levels in Vietnam were absolutely necessary,” FAIR associate Norman Solomon is distressed to find (AntiWar.com, 12/9/08) that “today, the conventional wisdom is that higher U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan are absolutely necessary.” Responding to […]
The New York Times‘ Week in Review section yesterday (11/23/08) gathered a group of op-eds under the heading “Transitions,” which they described as “a series of Op-Ed articles by experts on the most formidable issues facing the new president.” The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the topics under examination; we’ve examined who gets to […]
New reports of civilian casualties in Afghanistan (37 dead) were covered in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. The story provides a decent sense of thedeath toll, but near the end makes a rather bizarre point (see bold): Afghan weddings are traditionally large, drawn-out affairs, and wedding parties several times have been the target of […]
Given the common media rhetoric of “supporting the troops,” to ignore these same troops when they speak out about the horrors of the war is unconscionable.
