FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The right is apparently up in arms over this photo of Michele Bachmann that appears on the cover of this week’s Newsweek: If someone wants to say this is an unflattering picture, fine. But Bachmann’s supporters are unlikely to find much in Lois Romano’s article to complain about. On the campaign trail, Bachmann’s “simple, black-and-white […]
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote a rather apoplectic column about presidential candidate Michele Bachmann this week, lamenting the fact that other GOP candidates aren’t calling her out for being completely ill-prepared for the job: Bachmann does not deserve to be in the presidential race. Legislatively, she has done little, she knows next to nothing […]
The speculation about whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry will jump into the Republican presidential race boils down to one word: Jobs. Perry’s state has been generating jobs at an impressive rate–which Perry likes to think is due to low taxes and lax regulations. Some of the coverage points to important caveats–the booming oil economy, for […]
“Make Way for the Radical Center” is exactly the sort of headline that suggests a story one might want to skip. But this is a Tom Friedman column (7/24/11), so you know it’s going to be good for…something. This time around, the jet-setting third party advocate is writing about something called Americans Elect, which Friedman […]
Will the outrages ever stop? Newsweek‘s “I Can Win” cover story about Sarah Palin is awful. But Palin fans will have a hard time trying to figure out how to square this puff piece with the notion that the mainstream media is out to get Palin. The premise is that Palin could run for president–and […]
I stumbled upon this ABC report not too long ago, and it seems especially timely given Huntsman’s announcement today. It’s not to say that ABC was uniquely off the mark. The point is that much of what passes for political coverage– the handicapping, the horserace, the insider chatter– is useless. ABC News Transcript WORLD NEWS […]
The story of Michele Bachmann‘s surging campaign momentum continues, this time courtesy of Beltway reporter Mark Halperin of Time magazine: Why has Michele Bachmann suddenly become the It candidate? With her impressive New Hampshire debate performance, Bachmann has gone from a conservative Sarah Palin-lite curiosity to a potential game changer. For two hours onstage with […]
The emerging storyline after the Republican presidential debate this week was that far-right Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann is for real, mostly because she managed to sound, well, a little less crazy than she’s sounded before. (No, they didn’t quite put it like that.) There are stories about Bachmann’s new Bach-mentum in the New York Times […]
I noticed a few stories in today’s USA Today (6/13/11) about supposed Republican front-runner Mitt Romney. There will be plenty more of this to come–horserace commentary based on polling that’s being done in order to give journalists a reason to talk about one candidate more than another, which candidate has “momentum” and so on. It’s […]
The Washington Post had a piece yesterday (6/9/11) on Mitt Romney’s views on global warming. It serves as a reminder that Republican political candidates are under enormous pressure from the right-wing base of the party on this issue–any politician who’s ever suggested that climate change is a problem, or backed efforts to address it, is […]
Two elections, different outcomes, different headlines at the Wall Street Journal (6/6/11). When the left loses: Portugal Decisively Ends Leftist Rule Portugal on Sunday voted decisively to end six years of leftist rule, electing the country’s main conservative party and boosting prospects for austerity measures tied to a $114 billion aid package from the EU […]
In the New York Times corrections box (6/7/11): An article on Monday about Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, omitted the name of one of the other declared candidates, who number six, not five. Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas, is also running. One of the […]
The Sarah Palin hostage drama continues. In case you haven’t heard, Palin is taking a bus tour up the East Coast, visiting various sites of historic interest. Which naturally means that every media outlet is forced to follow along, covering this series of non-events as if they are of tremendous importance, asking the pertinent questions: […]
On the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, conservative pundit Shelby Steele lays out the argument that Barack Obama’s blackness is a unique asset that makes him difficult to beat in 2012. The argument–which, on some level, is worth taking seriously–is that “his presidency flatters America to a degree that no white Republican can hope to […]
The New York Times (5/25/11) is reporting, perhaps accurately, that Newt Gingrich may have trouble living down his $500,000 credit line at Tiffany’s. But this sentence by Sheryl Gay Stolberg is so Timesian: The way some voters out in the rest of America might see it, he’s a guy who paid more for jewelry than […]
Frank Bruni has been named the new Sunday op-ed columnist at the New York Times. Bruni has been writing restaurant reviews for the past few years, but came to a lot of people’s attention as the reporter covering the 2000 campaign of George W. Bush. Bruni went on to write a book about that experience, […]
Gabriel Sherman’s new piece in New York magazine (5/22/11) about Roger Ailes and Fox News Channel offers more indications that whatgoes on behind the scenesat Fox is more or less what you’d expect, given the channel’s obvious on-air slant. The person hired to run the news division has some peculiar ideas about news: Bill Sammon, […]
The New York Times’ Michael Shear has a piece today (5/19/11) reminding readers that presidential candidates often have early stumbles of the sort that Newt Gingrich has been having. He recalls several examples, most of which don’t really offer much hope for Gingrich. One is Wesley Clark’s brief 2004 campaign: In 2004, General Clark’s campaign […]
Last week, Washington Post reporter Dan Balz explained that Newt Gingrich was “an idea-spewing machine” and a “one-man think tank”–even warning that “a keen intellect can also translate into the appearance of intellectual superiority.” Well OK. A few days in Balz’s paper, readers learned that in a recent speech Gingrich called Barack Obama a “food […]
Writing about Newt Gingrich‘s presidential bid on the New York Times‘ Caucus blog (5/10/11), Matt Bai seems to confuse GOP rhetoric for fact as he suggest that, when it comes to marriage vows, Republicans are generally known for walking the line: Mr. Gingrich, a bit of a rogue in his personal life, has never been […]
