FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
When they’re discussed at all by corporate media, civilian deaths in Afghanistan are often presented as a tactical or public relations problem for U.S. military and political officials, or labeled as “accidental” or “errant.” The civilian deaths are not accidents, however; they are the predictable result of a deliberate decision to protect American troops by […]
Mainstream US media rarely quoted international law or challenged the administration’s designation of detainees as “unlawful combatants.”
On December 30, U.S. airstrikes hit the village of Niazi Kala (also called Qalaye Niaze) in eastern Afghanistan, killing dozens of civilians. The attack was major news in several British newspapers, with the Guardian and the Independent running front-page stories. The headlines were straightforward: “U.S. Accused of Killing Over 100 Villagers in Airstrike” (Guardian, 1/1/02); […]
EXTRA! Update NEW YORK CITY—If the first casualty of war is the truth, any dispatch from Afghanistan was likely to slay it in its very first word. The dateline says: We are there, we saw it happen. But they weren’t. They didn’t. Poor Geraldo Rivera got slugged for pretending otherwise. A crossover from MSNBC to […]
There was a moment in the war against Afghanistan when the Bush administration appeared to care about nothing so much as women’s liberation. Out came first lady Laura Bush to talk to the nation about the matter. On November 16, she became what her publicists cheered was “the first first lady to deliver an entire […]
How many civilians have been killed in Afghanistan since the start of U.S.-led bombing? It’s an admittedly difficult question to answer, but many U.S. media outlets don’t even seem to be trying. None of the major networks’ nightly newscasts are offering even rough estimates of the overall number of civilians killed. It may be some […]
The current war in Afghanistan is increasingly presented as a war for the human rights of the Afghan people, to liberate them from their oppressive Taliban rulers. The Taliban’s severely regressive policies toward women have received particular attention, with even First Lady Laura Bush issuing condemnations of this repression. And the press has overwhelmingly followed […]
Both Fox and CNN try to marginalize or minimize civilian deaths in Afghanistan, and self-censorship is taking place at smaller outlets.
Days after their son Greg died in the World Trade Center terror, Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez wrote a letter to the New York Times that counseled against violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us. It is not the way to go. […]
The September 11 attacks were supposed to have changed everything—but you can’t tell it from reading the newspapers.
Despite mainstream journalists’ claim of strict objectivity in covering the news, they make exceptions: Some stories are covered without even the pretense of neutrality. Dan Rather and CBS News, for example, adopted a cause throughout the 1980s–that of the Afghan mujahedeen. Sloppiness in the advocacy of that cause created a recent scandal for the network. […]
