FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
It is routine to present the stock market’s performance as a measure of the economy’s health: When it goes up, this is routinely reported as good news, whereas a drop is presumed to be grounds for concern about the strength of the economy. “Here at home some good news from Wall Street today,” Tom Brokaw […]
If it’s “spin” to back up your arguments with bogus facts and statistics, and to dismiss numbers that don’t fit in with your preconceptions, then Bill O’Reilly‘s Fox News Channel show isn’t, as he repeatedly claims, a “no-spin zone”—it’s Spin City. During an interview with National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy (O’Reilly Factor, 2/5/02), […]
Attending the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre, in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, was like seeing the world upside down—or perhaps right-side up. From portrayals in U.S. mainstream media, it’s easy to see those who protest corporate globalization and “free trade” dogma as a small minority, as uninformed, as elitists. […]
In the latest example of PBS‘s inconsistently applied underwriting guidelines, the network is premiering a six-hour series about the global economy which was sponsored by major corporations– including Enron– that have a clear interest in the show’s content. Titled Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, the series is based on the eponymous book […]
A number of pundits and politicians offered Americans a simple solution to the helplessness and anxiety they were feeling in the wake of the September 11 attacks: Go shopping! Vice President Dick Cheney (L.A. Times, 9/17/01) described it as a way for ordinary citizens to “stick their thumbs in the eye of the terrorists and […]
On June 28, 1995, FBI agents swarmed the headquarters of Archer Daniels Midland, “Supermarket to the World,” in Decatur, Illinois. So began the sensational unraveling of the biggest price-fixing scandal ever, involving a secret FBI informant, a suicide attempt, top ADM officials being sentenced to prison and the largest criminal anti-trust fine in history. Throughout […]
“I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel.”—Rupert Murdoch (Salon, 3/1/01) Years ago, Republican party chair Rich Bond explained that conservatives’ frequent denunciations of “liberal bias” in the media were part of “a strategy” (Washington Post, 8/20/92). Comparing journalists to referees in a sports match, Bond explained: “If you […]
In coverage of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the tens of thousands of people who rallied outside the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City this April to oppose it, U.S. media went to remarkable lengths to promote corporate and government spin on the liberating powers of trade. The FTAA […]
Ever since George W. Bush proposed a $1.6 trillion tax cut, his critics have charged that the plan is a giveaway to the wealthy, while the Bush camp has insisted the plan is fair. So far, the media have covered the debate with surprising deference to the administration’s spin. U.S. News & World Report‘s February […]
U.S. News & World Report‘s February 19 cover story on the Bush administration tax-cut plan featured the usual presidential-honeymoon puffery, marveling at Bush’s “derring-do” in facing down critics who “didn’t fully appreciate” how deeply he believed in his tax-cutting agenda. When the piece finally ventured into the tax plan’s specifics, it fell straight into the […]
“In a time of peace and prosperity, Al Gore is betting that Americans want to go to war.” That was the lead of a Los Angeles Times article by political reporter Ronald Brownstein (8/18/00) the day after Al Gore’s speech to the Democratic Convention in August. Brownstein was referring to Gore’s pledge to take the […]
Mothers work because they’re selfish. That’s the conclusion viewers might have drawn after watching ABC and NBC news broadcasts about a recently released Census Bureau report (“Fertility of American Women,” 9/00) that showed that more mothers, especially mothers of infants, were in the work force in 1998 than ever before (73 percent and 59 percent, […]
In a presidential election campaign allegedly focusing on meaty debates over public policy, the king of all policy questions is how to use the $4.6 trillion in projected government budget surpluses. Despite the daunting complexity the media like to attribute to fiscal issues, the budget question basically comes down to three choices: Expected surplus tax […]
Isn’t the two-party system wonderful? It really works! Every day, we hear plenty of opinions. Top Democrats and Republicans stay “on message,” and usually the nation’s major news outlets are in sync. The media landscape remains largely uncluttered, so most people won’t get distracted by other perspectives and choices. The symmetry is dependable and perhaps […]
A good place to begin a discussion of media bias on economics is with the price of wine. In 1997, this is how the New York Times wine columnist discussed the issue: “The $100-a-bottle wine, once an example of vulgar excess, is now an everyday occurrence.” What’s now an everyday occurrence is celebratory and ignorant […]
U.S. policy toward Russia has contributed to that country’s sorry conditions—with the Harvard Institute for International Development’s Russia project (HIID) playing a major role.
As a poverty specialist for the conservative Heritage Foundation, Robert Rector is one of the right-wing media machine’s most prolific pundits. In 1996, the year of the welfare reform debate, he was cited in media outlets an average of more than 15 times a month. Rector also feeds a vast network of right-wing talkshow hosts […]
In an article this summer celebrating good economic news (7/31/98), the New York Times’ Sylvia Nasar paused to caution readers that even amid what she has called “the best economy since the 1960s” (8/2/98), a specter lurked: “Ever since the unemployment rate first slipped below the level that most economists regard as consistent with steady […]
In mainstream media accounts, the relationship between higher wages for workers (“wage pressure” or “labor costs”) and inflation is simple and certain—as when the New York Times flatly reports (6/5/98) the “concern among investors” that “inflation could increase this year because of rising wage pressures.” A typical story (Boston Globe, 4/5/98) explains that “businesses react […]
Either the press corps does not have a leftist bias against big business—or the public has an anti-corporate bias even more extreme than that of journalists.
