FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Will interest payments take up the entire federal budget? A Wall Street Journal column by Greg Ip (3/28/18) gave us another rendition of this old scare story. The argument is that the interest paid on US government debt will soon impose an enormous burden on the federal government, choking off spending on important government programs. […]
NPR warns listeners that “the federal government is still adding to its overall debt”–even though the economy could actually benefit from increased deficit spending.
CBS Evening News has decided the best experts on the “fiscal cliff” are corporate CEOs who want to cut Social Security and Medicare. Let’s tell them what we think about that.
Today the New York Times reports its new poll (3/1/11): As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, […]
In journalistic parlance, a “beat sweetener” is a story that lavishes praise on a powerful figure the reporter is assigned to cover on a regular basis–a great way for that reporter to get in good with an important source. That may have been what was happening with Lori Montgomery‘s February 26 Washington Post piece touting […]
This is how ABC This Week host Christiane Amanpourintroduced the roundtable pundit line-up on Sunday’s show: With pitched battles going on right now here in Washington and in statehouses from Florida to Wisconsin to California, with me now, our roundtable: George Will, Congressman Steve Southerland, a Republican freshman from Florida– he was elected to public […]
On Sunday (2/13/11), the Washington Post had an odd piece about Obama’s budget proposal–starting with the odd headline, “Obama to Propose Spending Cuts in Budget Plan Aimed at Countering Conservatives.” Republicans have been stressing spending cuts, so Obama is “countering” that with… spending cuts? Huh. The piece tries to argue that these calls for austerity […]
New York Times reporter Matt Bai has tried to argue that the public is really worried about the budget deficit. He’s tried to find polling evidence to show the public favors some form of budget-cutting austerity,which usually leads him to focus on numbers that support his argument while ignoring those that run counter to his […]
As you may have heard, the White House-backed deficit commission failed to gain a supermajority vote to support a proposal from co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Their suggestions came under sharp criticism from liberal and progressive critics. Butthe December 3 broadcast of the PBS NewsHour, a short report on that failure was tilted heavily […]
In today’s Washington Post (12/2/10), in the news article “Deficit Commission Sets Ideology Aside,” reporters Lori Montgomery and Brady Dennis explain why the commission is not ideological: Confronted with a deficit-reduction plan loaded with political dynamite, members from both parties set aside ideological orthodoxy at least briefly, sparking hope that their work could ignite a […]
New York Times reporter Matt Bai apparently really, really cares about the budget deficit– so much so that he’s done reporting suggesting that the rest of us care about it as much as he does. He’s also demonstrated his concern by writing an outrageously misleading article about Social Security and the deficit (the Times had […]
Counting tonight’s episode, Charlie Rose has had five guests discussing the Simpson/Bowles deficit reduction plan, and all five have been right-leaning proponents of the plan’s austerity measures. To call for a broader discussion, see FAIR’s latest Action Alert. Please leave copies of your messages–or comments on the alert–in the comments thread here.
You got a sense from some of the coverage of the Simpson/Bowles deficit commission report that their right-leaning prescription was exactly the kind of solution the corporate media could get behind. Charlie Rose could apparently only find two panelists who wished the commission had gone further with its spending cuts. On NBC‘s Meet the Press […]
The New York Times (9/16/10) points out in a write-up of its new poll : The economy and jobs are increasingly and overwhelmingly cited by Americans as the most important problems facing the country, while the deficit barely registers as a topic of concern when survey respondents were asked to volunteer their worries. Huh. The […]
