FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
There are some pretty intense factchecking fights over what is true and not true about the Obama campaign’s claims about Romney’s record at Bain Capital. Media outlets are struggling with how to render a verdict; most seem to think Obama has exaggerated. But one outlet has found a voice willing to deliver a judgment. CNN […]
In the if-you-like-sausage category, the New York Times‘ Jeremy Peters has a piece today (7/16/12) about a new trend in journalism: Political sources demanding—and receiving—final control over what they are quoted as saying in news stories. Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all midlevel aides […]
Paul Krugman writes today (New York Times, 7/16/12) on media’s failure to factcheck campaign claims: Perhaps in a better world we could count on the news media to sort through the conflicting claims. In this world, however, most voters get their news from short snippets on TV, which almost never contain substantive policy analysis. The […]
The New York Times has a piece today (7/10/12) that pairs Obama’s tax announcement with Republican attempts to kill Obamacare, presenting both as “politically charged proposals.” It’s hard to see how the two are at all similar, but the Times attempts to make the connection, noting that “lawmakers worry about alienating people who like expanded […]
Factchecking ought to be an everyday part of each journalist’s job, but instead it’s relegated to a specialty feature. Maybe lack of regular practice explains why those side efforts are so disappointing. Take Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post‘s piece (6/21/12) on Barack Obama’s latest ad critical of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Kessler gives […]
New York Times reporter Helene Cooper wants to know: Does Barack Obama seem like, you know, a crybaby? Cooper’s piece (6/14/12) about the campaign’s economic messaging dwells on Obama’s tendency to pin the blame elsewhere—namely on his Republican predecessor and others in the party who adhere to favor similar policies. She writes that as the […]
Campaign coverage often gets bogged down in trivia—inconsequential polling data, the latest “off message” comment by an associate, and so on. But then there are the “gaffes,” when politicians say something that we’re told means a lot more than it might seem. Barack Obama’s 2008 comment about small-town voters clinging to their guns and religion […]
If you tuned in to ABC‘s This Week (5/27/12) to hear the panel of pundits discussing the economy, you may have George Will say this about Barack Obama: He’s made clear what the choice is this fall, and it really became clear, I think, this week. The president wants capitalism without casualties. He wants dynamism […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin060112 Scott Horton and Yousaf Butt @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin060112.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The New York Times story on how the White House chooses targets and executes assassinations provided a lot of new information, but it also left some pressing questions unanswered. We’ll be joined by Scott Horton, attorney and Harpers web columnist, to […]
New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters (5/22/12) covers the new attack ad being released by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS group. Under the (somewhat funny) headline “Subtler Entry From Masters of Attack Ads,” Peters makes it sound like this is something of a scoop, and certainly a pretty big deal: When it makes its debut Wednesday […]
Dan Balz, the Washington Post‘s chief White House correspondent (5/20/12), complains that President Barack Obama hasn’t solved America’s fiscal problems: Obama has drawn criticism for failing to offer more forceful leadership. He established the Simpson-Bowles commission but declined opportunities at key moments to push and prod for its consideration and enactment. There’s an odd syntax […]
On Wednesday (5/2/12), MSNBC host Chris Matthews played a long clip from the Daily Show, where Jon Stewart mocked Republicans who are complaining about Barack Obama’s celebration of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Stewart naturally recalls George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” photo op stunt from 2003. Stewart points out that if Republicans are angry […]
In corporate media, some political arguments are treated as indisputable fact. One of the most important: Democrats win by moving to the right. In the New York Times (5/3/12), Peter Baker offers the latest example: Mr. Obama, who campaigned on Sunday with Mr. Clinton, seems to be following his Democratic predecessor’s playbook. After a generation […]
Last week Barack Obama declared some sort of class war on Mitt Romney–at least that’s what Fox, the New York Post and a few other outlets would have you believe. On April 18, Obama gave a speech at a community college touting, among other things, a rather common only-in-America underdog spirit: Somebody gave me an […]
There seems to be a lot of attention to a new study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) study that finds Barack Obama to be much more harshly covered than the Republicans competing to run against him this fall. “Obama Has Received Least Favorable News Coverage So Far During 2012 Election Cycle” reads […]
Richard Cohen says he envies people who are persuasive liars. He really ought to envy people who are persuasive writers. His column today (4/17/12) is ostensibly about how Mitt Romney is a big liar. It goes almost its entire length, though, before citing any compelling examples of Romney lying. (Cohen does say call Romney’s claim […]
Nobody loves centrism, writes Bill Keller in the New York Times (4/16/12), but they should. “Centrism is easily mocked and not much fun to defend,” writes, noting that critiques of centrism from the left and right have a certain appeal: The politics of the center–including the professional centrists and trans-partisans of groups like Third Way […]
Today the New York Times (4/3/12) has a long report detailing how the Obama White House has politicized the regulatory process, apparently partly out of a fear of being portrayed by Republicans as “an overzealous and job-killing regulator.” It’s an interesting piece, covering an array of regulatory decisions. One of the more interesting media anecdotes […]
The big New York Times story on the Afghan War today (3/27/12) focuses on public opinion in the United States, which is now dramatically anti-war: 69 percent think we shouldn’t be there. An interesting point argument is raised later in the piece, when two sources make the argument that the war wouldn’t be so unpopular […]
Jeremy Scahill’s piece at the Nation website (“Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen?,” 3/13/12) about imprisoned Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye is riveting and deeply reported. But to Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum, the story doesn’t quite add up…because Barack Obama seems like a decent guy. As Scahill reports, Shaye […]
