FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Barack Obama’s July 9 announcement that he would extend the Bush tax cuts for income below $250,000 prompted the expected response from Republican politicians and presidential candidate Mitt Romney: This is a tax increase on “small businesses.” That is false. But most news reports won’t say so. The New York Times (7/10/12) told readers that […]
When reality fails to confirm the “truths” held by the international financial establishment, the corporate media can be relied on to concoct more cooperative scenarios. In the real world, Argentina’s economy has been one of the most robust in the world for the past decade. But in the world of corporate journalism, Argentina is an […]
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 […]
Parliamentary elections in Greece saw the conservative-leaning New Democracy party win a narrow victory over the left-wing anti-austerity Syriza coalition. This was good news for an array of major players who prefer Greece to stick to the current punishing bailout plan arranged by European countries. ABC World News showed which angle mattered most when anchor […]
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 […]
When the Conservative-led government in Britain announced a budget plan in 2010 based on dramatic austerity measures designed to lower that country’s budget deficit, the news was greeted by many U.S.-based pundits with enthusiasm: Finally, a major economy was going to apply the sort of medicine that Very Serious People agreed was needed. The New […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The story of DEA involvement in the killing of four civilians in Honduras on May 11, provides a compelling opportunity to look at the broader U.S. role in a country that is being torn apart by an escalating drug war. We’ll talk with historian and Honduras-watcher Dana Frank, about […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin051112 Gareth Porter and Pamela Brown @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin051112.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The one year anniversary of the NAVY Seal raid that killed Osama bin Laden brought us a prime time behind the scenes at the White House account on NBC, leaks from bin Laden intelligence files about his new terror schemes and […]
The election results in Greece and France sent a clearer message about austerity: Voters don’t like it. That sentiment isn’t hard to fathom; massive spending cuts and pay cuts aren’t fixing the problems in their economies–they’re making things worse. Media coverage seems to be clearer these days about what the public thinks of austerity. But […]
FAIR’s recent study of the Sunday morning network shows documented a distinct right-wing bias in the guestlists. Republicans and conservatives were everywhere; progressives and people of color, not so much. Since the study was released, there left-leaning commentator/TV host Tavis Smiley has been on two shows, CBS‘s Face the Nation (4/22/12) and ABC‘s This Week […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin050412 Jonathan Chait and Brentin Mock @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin050412.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, we’re told over and over again, is a serious budget wonk on a mission to reduce the deficit. Not quite, says New York magazine reporter Jonathan Chait. He argues that Paul Ryan’s political history doesn’t really resemble […]
Occupy Wall Street is rightly credited with helping to shift the economic debate in America from a fixation on deficits to issues of income inequality, corporate greed and the centralization of wealth among the richest 1 percent. The movement has chalked up other victories as well, from altering New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s tax plan […]
More Democrats are starting to shift towards supporting the controversial Keystone pipeline, reports Jennifer Steinhauer in the New York Times (4/20/12). The media discussion has leaned heavily in favor of the project, so perhaps this is no surprise. And this report is no exception. The political fight over Keystone has a lot to do with […]
The “Buffett rule”—as in Warren Buffett—suggests that super-rich should pay a tax rate comparable to middle-income earners. In Buffett’s case, this grew out of his observation that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Seems straightforward enough—and the public thinks so. But the Washington Post seemed to feel otherwise on April 12. A […]
Here’s something you don’t see very often—a progressive person of color on a Sunday morning chat show. There was Van Jones on ABC‘s This Week on April 1. Also there? Right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter. Huh. But it was something that Jones said that caught my attention. Well, you know, I think that probably the majority […]
There’s this notion in the elite press that Mitt Romney’s flip flops are a good thing–we’ve written about it here and here. In the latter post, I pointed to Nicholas Kristof’s take: I’d much rather have a cynical chameleon than a far-right ideologue who doesn’t require contortions to appeal to Republican primary voters, who says […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin021712 Ruth Flower and John Nichols @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin021712.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Much reporting on the White House’s new budget proposal focuses on tax increases, military cuts, and how it will affect the national debt. But what’s the whole story on the White House budget? We’ll hear from Ruth Flower from the Friends […]
Last year New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (7/8/11) wrote a sharp critique of those who argue that the federal government’s budget should be compared to a family. He called it one of the “right’s favorite economic fallacies,” pointing out: No, the government shouldn’t budget the way families do; on the contrary, trying to balance […]
