FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 6/14/09) has caught “Fox on 15th (a.k.a. ‘The Washington Post‘)” once again “departing from normal news practice” with “another editorial complaining about President Obama’s deficits on the front page.” The piece‘s subhead–“Concern Mounts in White House as 2010 Elections Loom”–prompts some hard questions from Baker: “Who is concerned? The story […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Barack Obama has either been currying favor with Muslims or extending an olive branch in the Middle East depending on which media you consume. We’ll talk with Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies about Obama’s major speech in Cairo, and the size of the gap between words […]
Looking at last week’s “whole series of bad reports on the state of the economy,” Dean Baker of Beat the Press and the Center for Economic and Policy Research tells readers of London’s Guardian (6/1/09) if they think “these reports might have led to gloomy news stories,” such assessments are to be found “not in […]
This Associated Press story (“Debate Over Who Sotomayor Is a Sensitive One,” 5/29/09) sure is confused. Luckilyreporter Sharon Thiemermakes at least that much clear from the very start: There are two sides to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor: a Latina from a blue-collar family and a wealthy member of America’s power elite. The White House […]
Blogging (Beat the Press, 5/26/09) about how the “New York Times Cooks the Books on Europe’s Auto Industry,” economist Dean Baker catches the paper “touting the layoffs in the U.S. auto industry as a virtue”–since “it notes that auto industry employment in Europe is remaining steady at around 2.3 million, while it is falling to […]
Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post, 5/25/09) is offering, as “a particularly egregious example” of corporate media as “enabler of the transformation of real reform into D.C. ‘reform,’” a May 23 L.A. Times editorial she thinks “might as well have been written by industry lobbyists (the way many ‘reform’ bills are).” After her initial reaction to the […]
The Washington Post editorial (5/14/09) on the Social Security and Medicare trustees’ report didn’t break much new ground, other than perhaps a uptick in the sarcasm quotient. (“Oh, please,” is their retort to critics who point out the paper’s demonstrable hostility to the Social Security program.) But this line jumped out at me as noteworthy: […]
Current Anti-Advertising Agency CEO Steve Lambert and founder Jordan Selier have posted (AntiAdvertisingAgency.com, 5/12/09) their letter to the New York Times responding to a May 11 piece that cites one NYC advertising executive asking, “All you have to do is walk out the door for lunch and notice the number of vacant storefronts… so why […]
Hearing “the whining retreat of a whipped pup instead of the toothy growl of a watchdog,” the Colorado Independent‘s John Tomasic (5/11/09) quotes Washington Post reporter Paul Kane answering an online question with a new excuse for refusing to “call waterboarding people and slamming them into walls torture”–“because [the Post] fears a lawsuit for libel”: […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: There are many legitimate concerns about Pakistan, but our guest, historian Manan Ahmed, says the U.S. media discussion of recent developments there, portraying Pakistan as a country “on the brink,” border on hysteria. We’ll talk to Manan Ahmed about the hype, and about what he thinks the media should […]
When Oprah Winfrey addressed Duke’s 2009 graduating class at a May 10 commencement, she talked about the pleasures of being wealthy: “It’s great to have nice homes!… It’s great to have a private jet. Anyone that tells you that having your own private jet isnâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t great is lying to you.” “But,” said Oprah, “you haven’t […]
Free Press‘ new report suggesting “how the government should respond to the current crisis in journalism”–“Saving the News: Toward a National Journalism Strategy” (5/12/09)–addresses both “short- and long-term strategies.” Among their transformative ideas: New Ownership Structures. Encouraging the establishment of nonprofit and low-profit news organizations through tax-exempt and low-profit limited liability company (L3C) models. New […]
Eyeing a new poll that “revealed that one in four Americans now believe that the ‘faux’ news delivered by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is replacing ‘real’ news sources as viable outlets,” Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher, 5/5/09) has to wonder “if the remaining (if relatively low) public respect for the press is gone for […]
While asserting the extremely simple journalistic principle that “Past Records Should Matter In Assessing Views on the Economy,” Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 5/2/09) is willing to admit that everyone makes mistakes, but the odds are that anyone who couldn’t see an $8 trillion housing bubble is not a really good person to rely upon […]
Critiquing the April 24 edition of NPR‘s “increasingly vacuous and self-indulgent” Planet Money show, blogger Brian (NPR Check, 4/24/09) notices that the “five long minutes” spent discussing “how long it would take to count to 165 million (the AIG executive bonuses), 45 billion (Bank of America’s bailout so far), and 1.2 trillion (total estimated federal […]
Associated Press reporter Calvin Woodward has a history of straining to catch Barack Obama in factual errors. But today’s review of last night’s Obama press conference may have hit a new low in absurdity. In the piece, headlined “Fact Check: Obama Disowns Deficit He Helped Shape,” Woodward takes issue with Obama’s statement: “Number one, we […]
Today the Washington Post devoted front-page real estate to an examination of how some wealthy people who don’t think of themselves as wealthy will suffer under Obama’s proposed tax plans. Their primary example is Gail Johnson, who, along with her husband, earns about $515,000 in a typical year from the chain of preschools and after-school […]
Describing his previous “ill-starred tenure at New York magazine” as having been “a crash course in the staggering unselfawareness of Manhattan class privilege,” Chris Lehmann (The Awl, 4/21/09) now applies his insight to the magazine’s recent “Rage of the Rich” issue, in which Gabriel Sherman “spells out with admirable, if analytically bankrupt, clarity” what Lehmann […]
Asking a simple question about a large issue–“How Do Trillion Dollar Bank Bailouts Fit With ‘Free-Market Fundamentalism?’”–Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 4/19/09) tells his readers that “the obvious answer is, they don’t”–since, “if you are a free-market fundamentalist, then you are absolutely opposed to bank bailouts” that “involve taking taxpayer dollars and handing them to […]
Political Animal blogger Steve Benen (4/8/09) asks if maybe it’s “Already Too Late for the Truth” in cable news coverage of U.S. military spending, considering that directly “after Defense Secretary Robert Gates unveiled his recommendations for restructuring military spending–and boosting the Pentagon budget by $21 billion (4 percent)–the response was immediate: The Obama administration is […]
