FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The New York Times has a piece today (7/10/12) that pairs Obama’s tax announcement with Republican attempts to kill Obamacare, presenting both as “politically charged proposals.” It’s hard to see how the two are at all similar, but the Times attempts to make the connection, noting that “lawmakers worry about alienating people who like expanded […]
Independent media outlets have basically owned the ALEC story over the past few years. The American Legislative Exchange Council is a corporate-sponsored “bill mill” that works with state legislatures to pass the kinds of laws corporations want. Thanks to investigations in Mother Jones, the Nation, Extra! and continued attention from the likes of AlterNet and […]
Factchecking ought to be an everyday part of each journalist’s job, but instead it’s relegated to a specialty feature. Maybe lack of regular practice explains why those side efforts are so disappointing. Take Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post‘s piece (6/21/12) on Barack Obama’s latest ad critical of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Kessler gives […]
New York Times reporter Helene Cooper wants to know: Does Barack Obama seem like, you know, a crybaby? Cooper’s piece (6/14/12) about the campaign’s economic messaging dwells on Obama’s tendency to pin the blame elsewhere—namely on his Republican predecessor and others in the party who adhere to favor similar policies. She writes that as the […]
Campaign coverage often gets bogged down in trivia—inconsequential polling data, the latest “off message” comment by an associate, and so on. But then there are the “gaffes,” when politicians say something that we’re told means a lot more than it might seem. Barack Obama’s 2008 comment about small-town voters clinging to their guns and religion […]
One would hope that by now that the press would debunk the fuzzy budget math Gov. Scott Walker (R.-Wisc.) was using to justify his attack on collective bargaining rights of public sector workers. Nope. The New York Times (6/6/12): The political war in Wisconsin began in February 2011 when Governor Walker, only weeks into his […]
The Washington Post (5/13/12) ran a piece by Ed O’Keefe under this headline: Ryan Budget Still an Issue in Congressional Races Still? You mean candidates keep talking about Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposal to replace Medicare with an entirely inadequate privatized health insurance program–even though the upcoming elections are the first chance voters will have to […]
In corporate media, some political arguments are treated as indisputable fact. One of the most important: Democrats win by moving to the right. In the New York Times (5/3/12), Peter Baker offers the latest example: Mr. Obama, who campaigned on Sunday with Mr. Clinton, seems to be following his Democratic predecessor’s playbook. After a generation […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin050412 Jonathan Chait and Brentin Mock @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin050412.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, we’re told over and over again, is a serious budget wonk on a mission to reduce the deficit. Not quite, says New York magazine reporter Jonathan Chait. He argues that Paul Ryan’s political history doesn’t really resemble […]
Stories about new state voter ID laws should, at a minimum, explain that the problem the laws supposedly address–voter fraud–doesn’t really exist. On that count, a New York Times report (4/30/12) by Michael Shear failed, since it presented the issue as a partisan dispute. On the one hand, Democrats complain: Many of the laws in […]
As we’ve written before, some political flipflops are better than others. The ones that Mitt Romney commits, or might commit in the future, are often seen as being the good kind. That argument was advanced once more this Sunday (4/29/12) on the Chris Matthews Show, by Time editor Rick Stengel and the host himself, who […]
Sometimes it’s the little moments that tell you something–like this from a Meet the Press panel discussion (4/22/12) about potential running mates for Mitt Romney: DAVID GREGORY: E.J., the point though also about Paul Ryan is that if you want to send a message you’re serious about the budget you could do that with Paul […]
Last week Barack Obama declared some sort of class war on Mitt Romney–at least that’s what Fox, the New York Post and a few other outlets would have you believe. On April 18, Obama gave a speech at a community college touting, among other things, a rather common only-in-America underdog spirit: Somebody gave me an […]
There seems to be a lot of attention to a new study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) study that finds Barack Obama to be much more harshly covered than the Republicans competing to run against him this fall. “Obama Has Received Least Favorable News Coverage So Far During 2012 Election Cycle” reads […]
Richard Cohen says he envies people who are persuasive liars. He really ought to envy people who are persuasive writers. His column today (4/17/12) is ostensibly about how Mitt Romney is a big liar. It goes almost its entire length, though, before citing any compelling examples of Romney lying. (Cohen does say call Romney’s claim […]
Fareed Zakaria wrote in Time magazine (4/16/12) that “the Arab Spring is looking less appealing by the week.” The problem is a “messier reality,” and he zeroes in on Egypt: And now, as Egypt’s presidential election approaches, we see the rise of two candidates from Islamic parties, Khairat al-Shater and Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. The […]
Forget the polls and the horserace for a second. In this election season, the big winners will be big media. As most people should know–but media don’t tell you very often–much of the money that flows into and around the campaigns is used to buy advertising. Which means that television and radio stations make a […]
I was struck by an election night panel I saw on CNN last night (3/6/12). “Contributors here on the left and the right,” as host Anderson Cooper told viewers. On the right: former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer and right-wing blogger Erick Erickson. On the left? Frequent TV pundit and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and… Hilary […]
In Defense of Exposing Lies The complaint (printed in the February 2012 issue) against FAIR for using “the demonizing technique to whip up support for its cause” sounds like yet another disguised way of saying—if you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all. A worthless policy for exposing lies. That […]
There’s this notion in the elite press that Mitt Romney’s flip flops are a good thing–we’ve written about it here and here. In the latter post, I pointed to Nicholas Kristof’s take: I’d much rather have a cynical chameleon than a far-right ideologue who doesn’t require contortions to appeal to Republican primary voters, who says […]
