FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Reading Wall Street Journal reporter Gary Fields’ “point that a family making slightly over $250,000 doesn’t necessarily feel all that ‘rich’ when it comes to facing a tax hike from Barack Obama,” Matthew Yglesias (Think Progress, 4/17/09) dubs his story “The Not-So-Compelling Plight of the Somewhat Rich” and notes that “what the story doesn’t do […]
Washington Post/Newsweek economics columnist Robert Samuelson was recently out plugging his new book at an event recorded by C-SPAN. Samuelson began his remarks (watch the video here, at the 4:20 mark) by saying: I am not an economist. I’m a journalist. And so that anything I say that seems contradictory to what a freshman in […]
With all the fuss about tea parties today, it’s worth noting again that the original Boston tea party was not, as is often claimed, a protest against the British imposing a tax on tea. What the colonists were actually objecting to was the British lowering the tax on tea in order to favor the East […]
Jim Cramer, CNBC: “I think Goldman is a great firm…. The good guys are in charge. [Lloyd] Blankfein is a fabulous guy. Do people want him in jail? Does Paul Krugman want him in jail? Where do they want these guys?” Mike Barnicle, Boston Herald: “Paul Krugman wants anyone who makes over $75,000 a year […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin040309 Mark Weisbrot and Gareth Porter @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin040309.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Barack Obama’s military surge in Afghanistan has caught very little flack in the media, even though experts on the region say it doesn’t make sense and distorts realities on the ground in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. We’ll talk to journalist Gareth […]
ABC World News did a segment on March 31 with a bunch of short reports on how the global recession was hitting around the world. Most of them were like this: CLARISSA WARD (ABC NEWS): I’m Clarissa Ward in Tokyo. Japan is the second-largest economy in the world. And lifetime employment has always been the […]
Long a critic of the Washington Post‘s habit of pushing of “its editorial position in the news section” when operating as “a strong proponent of reducing Social Security benefits,” Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 3/31/09) has a new example of what he dubs the Post‘s “Jihad Against Social Security”: In keeping with this practice, it […]
Despite the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism’s new “State of the Media” report likening the current U.S. media condition to “someone about to begin physical therapy following a stroke suddenly contracting a debilitating secondary illness,” Eric Alterman and Danielle Ivory spot (Center for American Progress, 3/26/09) “one sunny area in the news business, according […]
News reports on a March 25 F-22 crash in Mojave, Calif., that “contained some strange assertions about the cost of the F-22” have budget myth-buster Winslow Wheeler (Military.com, 3/28/09) decrying the “utter hogwash” that reporters printed “possibly based on the price asserted in the Air Force’s ‘fact‘ sheet on the F-22 that was linked to […]
Looking back over how corporate “media abandoned any pretense of objectivity in pushing the original TARP back in the fall,” when “they eagerly pushed the story that the economy would collapse if the TARP did not pass,” Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 3/28/09) recalls how “media never told the public that the Fed had the […]
Jonathan Schwarz has a quick post (3/27/09) over on his A Tiny Revolution blog asking readers, “Have I Lost My Mind?” or “is it really true that the New Republic published a 6,000-word profile of Larry Summers” that wondered if “Summers might appear to have less to contribute on the bank and credit-market front” since […]
It’s to self-described “establishment” journalist Evan Thomas’ credit that he calls attention (Newsweek, 4/6/09) to economist Paul Krugman’s progressive criticism of the Obama administration’s financial bailout plan; corporate media generally pay much more attention to critics from the right. But the same shallowness that renders most media policy discussions virtually useless infects Thomas’ article, which […]
Want to know if “the media did a great job” covering Barack Obama’s second major presidential press conference? Jason Linkins says (Huffington Post, 3/25/09) you can “just ask the media! Because they’ll tell you!” But “at the same time, the media is also quick to point out that the press conference was ‘totally boring!’” Among […]
The New York Times editorial page’s lending of space to former AIG financial vice president Jake DeSantis’ plea for “us all to reconsider our anger toward the poor overworked employees of his unit” has incurred some of Matt Taibbi’s trademark wrath (Alternet, 3/26/09): He acts like he’s a victim because he didn’t get to keep […]
Responding to a Washington Post op-ed in which one Martin Feldstein “explains how Obama’s proposed limitation on the deductibility of charitable contributions by upper-income taxpayers is a horrible idea,” Jonathan Schwarz (A Tiny Revolution, 3/25/09) asks What does Feldstein have to say about the tax code change? Well: In effect, the change would be a […]
Listening to “budget hawk” media figures who urge President Obama “to commit to spending cuts and/or tax increases” because they are “upset that the deficits projected for 2013 or 2019 are too large,” Dean Baker (TPM Café, 3/25/09) finds it especially annoying to hear the whining from this group of deficit hawks since their whining […]
Wondering at the “remarkable class solidarity” displayed by U.S. elitists, Robert Parry (Consortium News, 3/22/09) hypothesizes that “this may help explain why the Washington Post‘s editorial writers penned three editorials last week decrying the populist outrage over the AIG bonuses“: The first editorial on March 17, entitled “Bonus Blowback,” purported to share the public’s outrage […]
If you look at the front page of the New York Post today (3/23/09), you see a big headline about New York State’s “Secret Deal to Tax ‘Rich.’” The scare quotes are there to indicate, presumably, that the taxpayers in question–whom the Post refers to as “anyone making more than $500,000 a year”–are not really […]
You can accuse some in the media of paying too much attention to the bonuses at AIG, but on ABC‘s newscast they’ve been doing the opposite–trying to tell people to stop talking down “our” company. ABC‘s World News With Charles Gibson, March 17: CHARLES GIBSON: Let me turn to Betsy Stark. There is an awful […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin052009 Robert Johnson and Laura Carlsen @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin052009.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The AIG executive bonuses account for less than one percent of the money taxpayers are turning over to the insurance giant in the largest of the corporate bailouts. But it’s the bonus story that has riveted the public attention and outrage. […]
