FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
while it’s important to lay primary blame for the Muslim travel ban at the feet of the man who signed it, years of Islamophobic coverage in corporate media—right-wing, centrist and “liberal”—laid the propaganda groundwork to get us here.
Some media accounts are describing the first raid on Trump’s watch as “botched,” but that’s not the same as questioning it, much less putting it in a broader context of what’s happening in Yemen and what the US is doing there.
In “How to Build an Autocracy,” David Frum leaves out the first step, which is to create an oligarchy that chooses to serve an economic elite rather than improving the lives of the majority–leaving the public ready to listen to a demagogue who promises to look out for them.
Saying that the president is breaking the law feels like taking sides, whereas asserting that “the president has broad legal authority to restrict immigration” seems like the kind of thing a “neutral” journalist would say.
The rise of “fake news” has led many to return to the idea of objectivity, blaming partisanship rather than sloppiness (or malice) for the spread of disinformation. Yet it has seemed many times since Trump’s election that the norms and practices of objective media are uniquely unsuited to covering the news in unreal times.
“The US government gives tens of billions of dollars a year to the fossil fuel industry by way of subsidies, tax breaks, handouts from the American people to an industry that has been in existence for over a hundred years and is doing the work to destroy our planet. “
“It is not a crime to be in proximity to other people who break the law in conjunction with First Amendment activities. It is not a crime to be reporting on protests going on, even if portions of those protests become violent.”
Please contact CNN and tell the network to stop adopting the Trump administration’s “terror-prone” label as its own description of the countries targeted by Trump’s immigration order.
The spectrum of opinions on Betsy DeVos presented in corporate media range from skepticism to enthusiasm, but school choice itself is unquestioned.
The New York Times seems intent on exaggerating the ideological space between Donald Trump and traditional Republican Party policies. The latest example is a piece that expresses amazement that Republicans in Congress seem to accept Trump’s ideas—most of which are longstanding GOP policies.
Every day of the Trump administration brings new reasons to protest. But the mass arrest of hundreds of people protesting the inauguration, along with legal observers and journalists, tells us that the right to speak up still needs protection.
In the age of Trump and his unprecedentedly loose relationship with reality, NPR’s strict adherence to “both sides” journalism does a great disservice to their listeners—to say nothing of the truth.
The New York Times minimizes Keystone’s impact on the climate, in the service of false balance and downplaying the impact of Trump’s anti-environmental moves.
The New York Times asserted after Trump’s inauguration, “It remains an open question whether he will continue to be the relentless populist who was on display on Friday.” But looking at Trump’s nominations and appointments, it’s hard to discern any signs of populism whatsoever.
Why is it so important to corporate media commentators that presidential legitimacy not be questioned? By and large, they are part of and identify with an establishment whose fragility is all too evident.
Donald Trump keeps on saying this thing about, well, I’m the president, so I can’t have conflicts of interest, and that’s just not true. You may legally not be subject to the conflict of interest law, but the conflict is still there.
Beck’s hire signaled to the network’s base and the country at large the direction Fox would take as a reaction to Obama’s election. Eight years later, after a very different election result, at a different moment for the country and the network, Fox is once again signaling its priorities to an incoming administration
Given that the report’s allegations were driving criminal investigations, affecting inter- and intra-party battles and were claimed to have the potential to “affect national security,” it’s hard to argue that the public was better off left in the dark until the powers that be get to the bottom of it.
The question for the press corps is whether they will keep both feet in reality, or allow the perceived requirement to “include” the Trump camp’s spin “redefine” previous understandings beyond recognition
“What we see as a result of McCarthyism is a much narrower range of political ideas that impoverished the American political scene.”
