FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
A front-page lead New York Times story is mainly valuable for the insight it provides into what the Times considers to be a healthy economy–and who that economy is supposed to benefit.
Pundits say opposing Keystone is foolish because they’re going to get that oil out of the ground no matter what. But is that true?
Trying to figure out why people who are struggling don’t give Obama credit for the economic boom? It doesn’t seem so mysterious.
Anything that hurts labor unions, workers and moves Democrats to the right must be something to cheer about.
The New York Times and PBS NewsHour present very different looks at fracking. What’s missing from both? Climate change.
Are “economic experts” really gratified by French President Francois Hollande’s economic policy ideas? The New York Times cites one, but it’s not hard to find other economists who offer a very different take.
After reporting that “the government has trouble determining exactly which Americans are deceased,” the Washington Post notes, almost as an afterthought, that the “vast majority” of deaths are recorded without incident.
The Washington Post’s Howard Schneider asks, “In Europe’s grand battle over growth vs. austerity, has Ireland proved that austerity works?” If so, keeping unemployment more than 10 percentage points above pre-recession levels is an odd sort of “working.”
CNN.com had an odd piece of analysis of the Italian election results, arguing that austerity “is necessary by any calculation to actually start moving Italy out of the recession.” That’s not the calculation of Paul Krugman, who for what its worth is a Nobel Prize-winning economist.
Why do we need “serious spending cuts”? Milbank assumes the answer is so obvious that it need not be explained–everyone knows the more cuts, the better. All the serious people, anyway.
Don’t expect much help from corporate media on understanding the “Chained CPI,” because selling the “grand bargain” requires citizens not really knowing what this part of the deal entails.
Are John Boehner’s ideas about tax cuts evidence of his “philosophy”? Or are they just misleading?
As Dean Baker noted (Beat the Press, 9/7/12), corporate media mostly missed one of the major pieces of news in President Barack Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention. Talking about the federal budget deficit, Obama said, “Now, I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission.” Then, […]
Niall Ferguson’s Newsweek cover story “Hit the Road, Barack” has attracted lots of the wrong kind of attention. As Dean Baker put it: It’s hard to believe that progressive bloggers didn’t get together to pay Newsweek to run Niall Ferguson’s piece on Obama. The thing is so shot full of easily identifiable errors no serious […]
CNN host and Time columnist Fareed Zakaria is no doubt a wealthy guy. He reportedly gets paid $75,000 for one hour speeches. Who has that kind of money? As CJR recently noted: Over the years, he has been retained for speeches by numerous financial firms, including Baker Capital, Catterton Partners, Driehaus Capital Management, ING, Merrill […]
Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson really doesn’t like Social Security and Medicare. And he’ll go a long way to argue that they’re wasteful, inefficient forms of welfare. (See Extra!, 10/11.) But his arguments rarely hold up. His most recent column (4/9/12) is no exception; in fact, it recycles a totally misleading factoid from a column […]
Last year Republican Rep. Paul Ryan presented a budget plan that was, according to one analysis, full of “dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures.” But Ryan’s brand of budget austerity makes the media swoon–hence we saw coverage (FAIR Media Advisory, 4/12/11) of Ryan’s “piercing blue eyes” that dubbed him “a PowerPoint fanatic with an […]
The fact that Time magazine named “The Protester” its Person of the Year was maybe a little surprising. Totally unsurprising, though, was the choice of a runners-up: Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, a hero to many in the corporate media for his bold calls to slash government spending on the poor. It’s hard to know where […]
Dean Baker (12/9/11) flagged this NPR Morning Edition report today (12/9/11), and it’s well worth a positivity. In the debate over the payroll tax cut, Democrats want to pay for extending the tax break with a surtax on the wealthy. Republicans claim–usually without being challenged by reporters–that a surtax on millionaires would be an attack […]
News that Newt Gingrich was receiving millions of dollars to advise Freddie Mac has to be a little unsettling for at least some conservative voters, who are accustomed to demonizing the government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for causing the housing bubble, and hence the recession. But it’s not just right-wing pundits like Bill […]
