FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald (7/9/09, ad-viewing required) is extolling “The Significance of McClatchy‘s Act of Journalism” when reporting that recently released six-year Guantanamo prisoner Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil–one of many who supposedly “returned to or are suspected of returning to terrorism after their release”–“far from being in hiding, operates openly among officials of Afghanistan’s U.S.-allied government.” […]
Do they still teach the First Amendment in law school? That’s what you have to wonder when you see a lawyer for the Obama administration’s Justice Department arguing that statements made by former Vice President Dick Cheney in the Scooter Libby probe ought to be kept secret because a future vice president might refuse to […]
Pratap Chatterjee‘s new TomDispatch essay (5/31/09) explores how Dick Cheney’s mercenary corporation Halliburton recently has managed to largely “Stay Out of Sight While Profiting From the War in Iraq” despite what Tom Engelhardt’s introduction calls “hatfuls of charges against the company for a laundry list of alleged misdeeds“: There were no protesters outside the [annual […]
“Dick Cheney seems to be everywhere,” declared ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl (World News, 5/13/09), calling the formerly reclusive former vice president “the most visible Republican in the country these days.” Cheney has been hard to miss. Since leaving office in January, in addition to broad coverage of his May 21 speech at the American […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: When the media talks foreign affairs, there’s generally an assumption that countries have identifiable interests and rationally pursue them as best they can. All that’s thrown out the window when it comes to North Korea. That country’s apparent decision to conduct an underground nuclear test and test-fire several missiles […]
Noticing how “in the past week, Republican politicians and pundits have been striving mightily to invoke fear in the hearts of the American people,” News Corpse blogger Mark Howard has collected (5/25/09) some choice quotes from GOP members “blanketing the airwaves with assertions that President Obama’s policies on national security (Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, torture, etc.) […]
Wondering “why NPR decided it was appropriate to present Cheney’s blatantly self-serving propaganda as anything remotely relevant to current policy,” NPR Check contributor Brian (5/23/09) blogs about current president Barack Obama and former vice president Dick Cheney recently “attacking the policies of the other administration and defending their own positions in speeches.” Even though each […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Climate change legislation is making its way through Congress, but weirdly, that might not be good news. Some environmentalists are saying that in this case, no law might be better than this bill–that started out as a call to reduce carbon emissions but seems to be turning into something […]
CBS anchor Bob Schieffer was profiled byMarketwatch, where we learn: But don’t get the false impression that Schieffer is a pushover for his important guests. When I asked him how he feels when subjects lie to him on the air or try to mislead the audience, he got right to the point. “I want to […]
Quoting Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter’s strong words on the Keith Olbermann show about how “it’s important, historically, to look at the context of” the “effort in these OLC memos to try to dress [torture] up as something else,” Hullabaloo blogger digby takes issue (4/24/09) with his statement that “Dick Cheney stands almost alone” in still […]
Newsweek‘s cover story (1/19/09) is a look at the Cheney/Bush national security policies that will Barack Obama will soon inherit. In his editor’s note, Jon Meacham advises that the piece is definitely NOT a look backwards: .. to rehash the case against Cheney at this late hour in the life of the Bush administration would […]
Under the ironic headline “God Damn The God Damn Liberal Media” (A Tiny Revolution, 11/20/08), Jonathan Schwarz points out an astonishing quote from Scott Horton‘s new article in Harper‘s on creating some kind of accountability for the torture conducted by the Bush administration (subscription required): [I]n a 2006 radio interview, Dick Cheney said simply that […]
Given the common media rhetoric of “supporting the troops,” to ignore these same troops when they speak out about the horrors of the war is unconscionable.
Ocean Beach in San Francisco was abuzz with 1,500 people who showed up to spell out a giant “Impeach Now” with their bodies on April 28, all in the home district of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi made a splash prior to the November 2006 election by saying that a Bush impeachment was “off […]
Critical journalists and analysts raised serious questions at the time about what the White House was saying. Often, however, their warnings were ignored by the bulk of the corporate press.
Journalist Robert Dreyfuss discusses his new article for the American Prospect on Dick Cheney and his staff. Also on the program: Patrick O’Connor from Palestine Media Watch discusses coverage of Israel-Palestine.
When Dick Cheney surfaced on Feb. 15 long enough for an interview with Fox News eminence Brit Hume — an event that CNN’s Jack Cafferty promptly likened to “Bonnie interviewing Clyde” — the vice presidential spin emerged from a timeworn bag of political tricks. Cheney took responsibility. Whatever that means. The New York Times website […]
At the end of November, newspapers across the United States and beyond told readers about sensational new statements by a former top assistant to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state. After interviewing Lawrence Wilkerson, the Associated Press reported he “said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose […]
The first quarter of 2005 brought significant media dividends for the Bush-Cheney limited liability corporation. Stakeholders received windfalls as mainstream news outlets deferred to consolidation of power from the November election. A rollout of new “democracy” branding — kicked off by the State of the Union product relaunch — yielded at least temporary gains in […]
Media have a funny way of rewriting the history of presidential debates. After the first debate in 2000, all five network polls that night showed most viewers agreeing that Vice President Al Gore had beaten George W. Bush (Daily Howler, 8/19/04). But as the debate worked its way through the media echo chamber, the outcome […]
