FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The corporate media has more or less been on the same page in applauding Obama’s cabinet picks so far–“He’s been pragmatic in choosing pragmatists,” as the Washington Post editorial page cheered on November 28. There’s been occasional criticism of Obama’s choices as being too progressive, as when the L.A. Times (12/5/08) attacked the idea of […]
FAIR has a new Action Alert up about ABC‘s gross exaggeration of auto worker compensation. Feel free to post messages sent to ABC here–or any responses you get from the network.
Noticing how “the U.S. press slowly accepted that this wasn’t an attack on Westerners, that Indians weren’t merely collateral damage” in the Mumbai attacks, Alexander Cockburn is reminded (Nation, 12/3/08) of Victorian novelists’ “scores of selfless characters” for whom “the only thing was to protect the guests.” Other aspects of colonial attitudes have changed–though not […]
The media trope that presidents-elect ought to break progressive campaign promises really displays the anti-democratic and pro-corporate biases of the press at their most glaring. Who cares what you told the voters? Here’s what the interests that really matter want you to do. The latest instance in this sad series is a USA Today editorial […]
Today’s column by Robert Samuelson (Washington Post, 12/1/08) is a classic of the “why the president-elect must break progressive campaign promises” genre. Usually, of course, the new president should keep such promises: Obama won the election, and in normal times, his campaign agenda ought to be front and center. But these are not normal times, […]
Two weekends ago the New York Times‘ Week In Review section launched an op-ed series called “Transitions,” in which it promised to provide “a series of Op-Ed articles by experts on the most formidable issues facing the new president.” The first installment (11/23/08), on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, featured seven op-eds. FAIR’s Peter […]
A People’s History of Poverty in America author Stephen Pimpare answers Amy Goodman’s question (Democracy Now!, 11/25/08) of “what about the way the media conveys” poverty in the U.S.?: Well, when there is any attention to poor Americans at all, it tends to be fairly predictable. There was a study done in late 2007 by […]
Time magazine tells us about Obama’s chief economic adviser: His controversial comments about women’s aptitude for math and science were a reminder that he operates best when he is working behind the scenes. Oh, so that was the lesson. I had been under the misapprehension that the lesson had something to do with Larry Summers’ […]
Is the total frenzy over post-Thanksgiving shopping a recent creation? That’s what David Carr writes in the New York Times today: Media and retail outfits are economic peas in a pod. Part of the reason that the Thanksgiving newspaper and local morning television show are stuffed with soft features about shopping frenzies is that they […]
Noam Chomsky points out that a Boston Globe analysis (11/9/08) of the Obama victory claims that the president-elect owes nothing to “traditional Democratic constituencies” like labor, women, ethnic minorities and the peace movement, because a “grassroots army of millions”—seemingly unconnected to such constituencies—”propelled” Obama’s win. It’s worth noting, however, that this idea of a Democratic […]
The New York Times may have revealed more than intended with a September 22 piece headlined “Amid Market Turmoil, Some Journalists Try to Tone Down Emotion.” The article, by Richard Pérez-Peña, said that reporters are being very careful in choosing words to describe the ongoing meltdown in financial markets—not because reporters should always choose their […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin112808 Mark Brenner and Steve Rendall @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin112808.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Bailing out the Big Three. GM, Ford and Chrysler are on the brink of total failure, we’re told. In a season of corporate bailouts of all sorts, this one is meeting more resistance—in part because union autoworkers, we’re told, are making […]
In looking at “How Our Gutless Media Helped Trigger the Credit Crisis,” Trudy Lieberman examines (Columbia Journalism Review, 11/20/08) “just one piece of evidence of the decline of the consumer movement, the rise of consumerism to replace it and the media’s role in both trends.” Lieberman recalls then-New York State Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s veto of […]
CounterPunch editor Alexander Cockburn confesses (Nation, 11/19/08) to being moved to violent thoughts “while listening to the McLaughlin Group, all of whom presumably haul home at least $200,000 a year, as they deplored the unconscionable wages of line workers in Detroit”: The same urge flares up when reading the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page. As […]
Via Beat the Press: Saying he “might expect it from right-leaning commentators like Will Wilkinson” but not “from someone like Mark Perry, who lives in Flint, Michigan,” Felix Salmon of Portfolio notes (11/18/04) that “all of them are perpetuating the meme that the average GM worker costs more than $70 an hour, once you include […]
In “Clout Has Plunged for Automakers and Union, Too,” the New York Times‘ Micheline Maynard makes this curious observation: [GM CEO Rick ]Wagoner and Ron Gettelfinger, head of the UAW, appeared on local TV in Detroit this week, but no Detroit representatives landed spots on the Sunday morning talk shows out of Washington. Senator Levin […]
Via A Tiny Revolution, a reminder from Vanity Fair website contributor Peter Newcomb (11/14/08) of the unspoken motivations of a bazillionaire pundit writing an enormously influential column on economics: It would be easy to dismiss today’s rant… by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as yet another ideological tirade against the U.S. automobile industry. But […]
Dean Baker makes a particularly sharp point (Beat the Press, 11/18/08) when trying to “imagine that the economy in Venezuela gets really bad in the next few years.” He asks if the Washington Post would then “write about how Hugo Chávez had to cope with enormous economic turmoil?” but decides “that’s unlikely. The Post would […]
The New York Times‘ Jonathan Hicks (11/17/08), writing about newly elected Staten Island Rep. Michael McMahon: Mr. McMahon…stresses his working-class roots, telling voters of his Irish fatherâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s lifelong job as an insurance underwriter. That must be the same working class that Bill O’Reilly comes from.
Today’s Washington Post (11/14/08) explains that Obama’s economic advisers “span the policy spectrum:” They include free traders and “fair traders,” deficit hawks, Wall Street executives, corporate moguls and labor advocates. Why the different typographical treatment of free trade and fair trade? The implication is that “free trade” really is free, whereas “fair trade” is just […]
