FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Think Progress‘s Matthew Yglesias (2/22/10) points to a rather bizarre Economist editorial (2/18/10) blaming President Barack Obama’s problems on his failure to move to the right: It is not so much that America is ungovernable, as that Mr. Obama has done a lousy job of winning over Republicans and independents to the causes he favors. […]
The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank (12/6/09) thinks there’s something wrong with left-wing critics of Barack Obama. As his lead put it: Some parishioners in the Church of Obama discovered last week that their spiritual leader is a false prophet. Milbank starts with Michael Moore, who wrote an open letter urging Obama not to escalate the […]
Time columnist Joe Klein (12/3/09) was not altogether impressed by Obama’s announcement of a 30,000 troop escalation in Afghanistan (an “iffy proposition,” as Klein put it). But Klein’s main point was that Obama should have justified the war differently: “Once you have made the decision to go, or to redouble your efforts, you must lead […]
In this world, it’s the public that’s skeptical of an endless pursuit of victory, with a majority of respondents in recent polling saying they oppose the war.
A meeting of the minds between NBC host Chris Matthews and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius (Chris Matthews Show, 11/29/09): IGNATIUS: The long period of analysis, very deliberative, robs this of passion. This is–he was going to be a wartime president now, and he has to sell the country on the idea that our young […]
Remember back in 2007/2008 when Democratic candidate Barack Obama was being called an elitist? Well, if you miss that kind of media coverage, the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank has got you covered (9/18/09) here, writing up Michelle Obama’s visitto aD.C. farmers market: The promotion of organic and locally grown food, though an admirable cause, is […]
Former President Jimmy Carter’s statement (NBC, 9/15/09) that “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American,” has generated widespread discussion in the corporate media. But few of the many analyses of Carter’s remarks give you […]
The New York Times (9/13/09) attempted to fact check a Barack Obama speech on healthcare. By all appearances, this is in the regular, non-satirical edition of the paper: Mr. Obama opened his 40-minute speech with what he called “disturbing news”: a report from the Treasury Department that, he said, “found that nearly half of all […]
“It is difficult to overstate President Obama’s unpopularity in most of Louisiana,” writes Campbell Robertson in a front-page New York Times article (9/11/09). Yet Robertson managed to pull it off. Robertson continues: “He lost handily to Senator John McCain here, picking up only 14 percent of the white vote. (The state is roughly two-thirds white.)” […]
What “surprises” Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik (8/30/09) more than this summer’s news full of “baroque conspiracy theories” and “weepy hysteria” is “the idea that these are somehow unprecedented.” Hiltzik looks back to an earlier era of supposed presidential “socialism” in the U.S. to see such current claims as “merely the latest examples of […]
Printing a letter to the editor from Leila McDowell (8/26/09), the New York Times has “Another Look at Obama’s Speech to the NAACP”–from the group’s on vice president of communications. McDowell starts with the fact that the “Times distinguished itself from most major media by virtually ignoring the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, which was […]
In his Time column this week, Klein writes: So what should Obama do about Afghanistan? His dilemma isn’t as stark as has been posed in recent press accounts, with screamers on the right demanding slavish devotion to the military’s wish list and screamers on the left demanding a withdrawal. The U.S. military has become far […]
Longtime friend of FAIR Sam Husseini (Husseini.org, 8/21/09) has a new blog post responding to Robert Kuttner’s recent Washington Post column, in which the American Prospect magazine editor “asks ‘Where are the liberal protesters?’”: It seems like a good question. Until one considers the source of the complaint–and that rather helps answer the question. Maybe […]
WashingtonMonthly.com blogger Steve Benen (Political Animal, 8/12/09) has words for corporate pundits lambasting Barack Obama’s “Attention to Detail” as “going “into the weeds”: A few weeks ago, MSNBC‘s First Read had an item questioning whether President Obama “knows too much” about healthcare policy. The piece complained that the president is willing to offer Americans details […]
Glenn Greenwald has responded via his regular Salon feature (8/6/09, ad-viewing required) to Rush Limbaugh, “speaking to his audience of 15 million, compar[ing] Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler and Nancy Pelosi to Nazi leaders,” by asking you to instead compare (a) the way that a single anonymous person’s comparison of Bush and Hitler swamped our […]
Reporting for Associated Press (7/3/09), David Bauder has an update on CNN‘s insistence on “standing behind” Lou Dobbs, who has “become a publicity nightmare for CNN, embarrassed his boss and…on top of all that, his ratings are slipping.” Bauder asks outright: “How does Lou Dobbs keep his job” while plugging the conspiracy theory that Barack […]
FAIR associate Sam Husseini has blogged his reaction (Husseini.org, 7/4/09) to a Barack “Obama Photo Op with Helen Thomas” in which the president “came with cupcakes to wish Helen Thomas a happy birthday”: “Now, if only he’d take her questions.” Obama claimed they have a “common birthday wish”–for a “real healthcare reform bill”–but Thomas is […]
AlterNet‘s Liliana Segura has traced (7/28/09) the “nasty little rumor” that “Barack Hussein Obama is not a legitimate president because he is not really an American citizen” from “the early days of the presidential race” to its current status as “a full-blown conspiracy theory” that does “nonetheless enjoy increasingly high-profile political support, and media coverage […]
The anti-racism Color of Change organization has sent out an email blast (8/30/09) warning that “more and more, right-wing talkshow hosts are bringing race-based fear mongering into the mainstream.” Still, they claim that “Fox‘s Glenn Beck just took it to another level” with his July 28 statement that “this president has exposed himself as a […]
David Swanson (OpEd News, 7/22/09) has “another name for ‘what’s called a single-payer system’”–namely: “healthcare as a human right, not a commodity to be purchased. Many humans have this right. They just aren’t Americans.” Of Barack Obama’s July 22 news conference “mention of single-payer in passing, as something that would be better than anything else, […]
