FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
CNN anchors Carol Costello and Ali Velshi today (9/26/11) provided some rare TV coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest in Lower Manhattan: VELSHI: A group of people protesting Wall Street greed are now screaming abuse after they were arrested over the weekend. The incident happened Saturday in Lower Manhattan. The protesters say they […]
The PBS NewsHour did a pretty strong piece last month (8/16/11) on inequality in America. So perhaps it was a sense of “balance” that drove them to do a follow-up segment on September 21 that argued that things aren’t so bad after all. As anchor Jeffrey Brown put it: NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman has […]
The same corporate media that will rush to cover the latest burp from Tea Party protesters seem strikingly uninterested in demonstrators camped out in Manhattan’s financial district, protesting the corporate takeover of U.S. politics. Please see FAIR’s latest Action Alert (9/22/11) to call on the broadcast TV networks to pay attention to this activism. You […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin092711 Neil deMouse and Phyllis Bennis @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin092711.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Census Bureau data showing one in six Americans live in poverty was received soberly by the press corps, but should it have surprised them? And what about next week, when the government doesn’t release a report and people are still poor? […]
In an action called Occupy Wall Street, thousands of activists took to the streets of Lower Manhattan on September 17. The protests are continuing, with demonstrators camped out on the Financial District’s Liberty Street in support of U.S. democratization and against corporate domination of politics (Adbusters, 9/19/11). But you wouldn’t know much about any of […]
In the L.A. Times today (9/21/11), media reporter James Rainey asks a very important question: In a week that saw the number of people in poverty hit a half-century high and President Obama propose a tax increase on those with million-dollar incomes, will America and the American media finally dig in for a serious conversation […]
Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC (9/19/11): Or, if you prefer reading: But last week when Wolf Blitzer and CNN had that debate, the CNN/Tea Party Express debate, and Wolf sat there and called them his partners–I just thought, this was amazing, because would you ever see the CNN nurses union debate […]
Politicians beware: Thomas Friedman is still threatening to launch a third party. In his New York Times column today (9/21/11), Friedman moans: One would hope that our politicians would rise to the challenge by putting forth fair and credible recovery proposals that match the scale of our debt problem and contain the three elements that […]
The front page of USA Today (9/19/11) tells us that Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is taking “the heat,” but not to worry–he says he can handle it. That’s especially true with reporters like Susan Page on his side: He’s not worried, he said, because only one issue really matters to Americans in this election. […]
Al-Qaeda, bin Laden, never imagined that the 3,000 people who lost their lives that day would inspire 3 million to put on the uniform and harden the resolve of 300 million Americans. They never imagined the sleeping giant they were about to awaken. — Vice President Joe Biden at September 11 commemoration (9/11/11) Actually, that’s […]
As progressive criticism of the Obama administration has intensified, the critics of the critics have stepped forward to defend the White House. Much of the case comes down to saying that Obama’s lefty critics don’t know how the game is played in Washington. Jonathan Chait from the New Republic had a New York Times Magazine […]
The Obama White House made (yet another) move bound to disappoint progressive activists. But good luck trying to get corporate media to explain the impact. Here’s how the September 3 New York Times piece by John Broder started off: WASHINGTON — President Obama abandoned a contentious new air pollution rule on Friday, buoying business interests […]
At a time when the federal budget deficit is so prominently featured in the news, with pundits and “experts” (falsely) touting it as a leading concern of the U.S. public (FAIR Blog, 1/21/11), you might think corporate journalists would be well-practiced in explaining the chief causes of the deficit. Unfortunately, if you rely on network […]
James Galbraith is a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin, author most recently of The Predator State and chair of Economists for Peace and Security. Speaking to FAIR’s radio show CounterSpin (7/15/11), Galbraith pointed out that there could be real effects from defaulting on our debt, which is why it’s unconstitutional. […]
Economics has traditionally been the media’s favorite academic discipline. In normal times, the “consensus” of the economics profession (or at least what passes for consensus) tends to weigh heavily in the way reporters and editors cover political subjects—assuming that less-regulated trade is always beneficial, for example. But since the onset of the economic crisis, journalists […]
ProPublica‘s factcheck of seven economic myths facing the country makes some good points: Taxes aren’t going up, for instance. Some of the “myths” are a bit muddled: “The stimulus has been full of/free of fraud, waste and abuse.” Is someone really saying the latter? But overall the piece tries vainly to balance myths that will […]
On NBC Nightly News (8/16/11): ANDREA MITCHELL: Perry’s Texas swagger is his calling card, bred of a hardscrabble boyhood on the family farm and Aggie roots at Texas A&M. Perry’s chief claim to challenging President Obama is the Texas jobs record. Perry says his state produced 40 percent of all the jobs created across America […]
Today New York Times reporter Helene Cooper (8/10/11) surveys the bad economic situation and asks of Barack Obama: Is he willing to try to administer the disagreeable medicine that could help the economy mend over the long term, even if that means damaging his chances for re-election? What’s that mean, exactly? The first person she […]
Radio hosts author/social activists Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are on anti-poverty tour, trying to draw attention to issues that are neglected in most political discussions–and all but absent in corporate media. The good news, in theory, is that they’re getting some national TV attention. But this is one of those cases where you start […]
Fox host Bill O’Reilly laughs off any calls for increasing government spending to help create jobs. Last week he derided Paul Krugman for demanding more stimulus spending. And this guy teaches economics at Princeton University? Unbelievable. People like Bill O’Reilly don’t pay any mind to the fancy pants Nobel Prize committee that gave Krugman one […]
