FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney has a long piece (10/29/10) about California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, the Republican candidate for Senate. Both are expected to lose on Tuesday, which leaves Nagourney wondering why women aren’t more eager to support female politicians. The piece poses a lot of big questions–the fact […]
On today’s front page, under the headline “Deficit Divisions Likely to Grow After Election,” New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes writes this lead: WASHINGTON — A midterm campaign that has turned heavily on the issue of the mounting federal debt is likely to yield a government even more split over what to do about it, […]
One strand of conventional wisdom among elite D.C. reporters is that losing the midterm elections would be a good thing for the White House. Hence New York Times reporter Peter Baker (10/24/10): WASHINGTON — Let there be no mistake: President Obama wants the Democrats to win next week’s midterm elections. His voice has gone hoarse […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Reporters can always find many themes in election season, but some are saying this time around there’s really only one and that’s money. A new study from the Center for Public Integrity examines the fundraising going into the midterm elections; what impact is the Supreme Court’s Citizen United ruling […]
Sunday’s Washington Post (10/10/10) featured a story by Jon Cohen and Dan Balz that led with this claim: If there is an overarching theme of election 2010, it is the question of how big the government should be and how far it should reach into people’s lives. The piece is actually an explanation of the […]
Thispast Sunday’s edition of NBC‘sMeet the Press (10/10/10) featuredtwo gueststalking about the midterms, the economy and public sentiment: conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan and Time magazine’s Joe Klein. Klein has been on a road trip through the middle of the country to assess how Americans are feeling (that is, Americans who don’t live […]
Jodi Jacobson from RH Reality Check joins CounterSpin this week to talk about the media’s decision to let Tea Party activists define their movement as one that doesn’t focus on red meat “social issues.” As Jacobson argues, that distinction doesn’t really square with the far-right views espoused by leading Tea Party Republican candidates. The New […]
In the New York Times today (9/20/10), Michael Shear writes: But as the first full week of the 2010 general election season opens across the country on Monday, Washington is scheduled once again to debate immigration and gay men, lesbians and bisexuals in the military, two deeply divisive social issues that threaten to polarize the […]
An AP piece published across the Web today (9/16/10) carries this headline: AP-GfK Poll: Nearly Half Oppose Tax Hikes for Rich. Well, that’s one way of looking at it–just like you could report the results of the 1988 election by saying that Michael Dukakis got “nearly half” of the popular vote. The more logical way […]
“Aren’t there things Obama & Co. could have done differently?” Howard Fineman writes in the current issue of Newsweek (9/20/10). “Election Day is still seven weeks away—but it’s not too early for a ‘pre-mortem.’” No, never too early—especially since Fineman’s column offers the same advice corporate media pundits have been giving to Democratic politicians for […]
The New York Times‘ Susan Dominus, writing an article (8/24/10) entirely about a congressional candidate’s footwear, makes an attempt at self-inoculation: I know. We, the news media, are not supposed to ask female candidates about their hairstyle or their choice of pantsuits over skirts or their shoes. It is irrelevant. It is trivializing. It is […]
Sometimes it almost seems like one of the requirements for a high-placed job in corporate media is an inability to learn from experience. Take the front page of USA Today (7/22/10)–the “cover story” is about Shirley Sherrod (FAIR Blog, 7/21/10), whose ordeal is blamed in part on “conservative blogger” Andrew Breitbart taking advantage of “a […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Have you heard the one about how the Obama Justice department refused to prosecute voter intimidation of white people by black people? A few days ago you could’ve missed the story just by avoiding Rush Limbaugh but now even the Washington Post is giving ink to the “political bombshell.” […]
The New York Times (6/18/10) reports from Brussels that “the mood here was upbeat” as Estonia adopted the euro as its official currency. Despite the debt crisis, reporter James Kanter writes, “the euro remains among the strongest currencies in the world, and membership opens the door to a club with global influence. For small and […]
One of the most prevalent (and wrong-headed) interpretations of the recent elections is that both parties are dumping their respectable members in exchange for wild-eyed radicals. As Cokie Roberts explained it on ABC‘s This Week (5/23/10): COKIE ROBERTS: I’m not sure, Donna, that the voters this year care about somebody being out of the mainstream. […]
I’ve commented before on the corporate media’s tendency to cherry-pick election results to illustrate their favorite political moral: that Democrats need to move to the right. Still, I was surprised, after a day of voting in which there was one major race pitting a Democrat against a Republican–the special election in Rep. Jack Murtha’s old […]
In the first year of the Obama administration, the corporate media suddenly overcame their general aversion to citizen movements that criticize government policies, granting the staunchly conservative Tea Party activists enormous coverage—a decision that seems likely to impact politics for the foreseeable future. Citizen movements are hardly ever front-page news, even when they have clearly […]
In his New York Times column today (2/24/10), Tom Friedman presents a bizarre view of the Iraq War. Attempting to answer the question of whether Iraq is dysfunctional because of its culture (the “conservative” argument) or because of its politics (the “liberal” argument), he writes: Ironically, though, it was the neo-conservative Bush team that argued […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Corporate media chatter about the Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts reflects participants’ priorities: which means you’re unlikely to hear advice offered to Democrats other than that they should act more like Republicans. Is that the takeaway? We’ll get another angle from journalist and activist Norman Solomon. Also on the […]
One of the frustrating things about corporate media coverage is that it’s so focused on horserace coverage—who’s likely to win or lose in voting that might be months or years away—and yet they’re so bad at it. Take the matter of Jonathan Tasini, running in the Democratic senatorial primary in New York against incumbent Kirsten […]
