FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Dan Noyes of the Center for Investigative Journalism talks Bush’s judges and what’s often missing from the media’s portrayal of this battle. Also on the program: a discussion with Greg Mitchell from Editor & Publisher magazine on the Pat Tillman scandal and what it says about media priorities.
Despite traction in Congress, the Central American Free Trade Agreement is getting minimal media attention. . . Why is that? Also on the program: the London Times recently published a piece validating the legitimacy of the Downing Street memo. And yet there remains very little coverage in the US. Former CIA official Ray McGovern joins CounterSpin to discuss the memo and its significance.
Elections this month in occupied Palestine and occupied Iraq prompt the question: do elections equal democracy? Also this week: Bush proposes stricter limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, alleging that a high percentage of claims are without merit. But how true are these accusations?
With the election less than two weeks away, allegations of voter suppression are popping up all over– how is the press responding to these allegations? Also: journalist David Lindorff on the possibility of a new military draft.
Discussion with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman on her new book, The Exception to the Rulers.
If mainstream media outlets had devoted as much ink and airtime to electronic voting machines as they had to O.J. Simpson, Monicagate or even Janet Jackson’s breast, the outcome of our next presidential election might not depend on machines that can be programmed to favor one candidate over another without anyone ever knowing. As it […]
January saw a major dispute between the Bush administration’s Iraq occupation authority and that country’s leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The administration was promoting a plan to hand over power to an Iraqi government selected through a system of what it called “caucuses.” Sistani, a spiritual leader for the country’s majority religious group, […]
If Mark Twain were living now instead of a century ago — when he declared himself “an anti-imperialist” and proclaimed that “I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land” — the famous writer’s views would exist well outside the frame of today’s mainstream news media. In the current era, […]
Media coverage of the nine Democratic candidates for their party’s nomination presents some as valid contenders, others as ineffective has-beens or laughable distractions.
In November 2000, thousands of journalists and the attention of the nation converged on Florida during the chaotic ballot recount to decide the presidential election. The horserace had come to a photo finish, and every element of that fuzzy snapshot was scrutinized, including the muddy track on which the race was run. Of course Florida’s […]
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 […]
While the McCain-Feingold campaign finance debate will often dominate political news over the next two weeks, one aspect of the story is rarely explained to TV viewers: Where does all the money go? Many media accounts correctly draw the links between the access that big money can buy and the political favors that donors come […]
Many pundits are worried about the delay in finding out who will become the next occupant of the Oval Office. “That’s probably the most crippling blow I’ve ever seen to a new president,” David Gergen lamented on national television (CNN, 11/25/00); whoever the next chief executive turns out to be, he has “been denied or […]
No sign of journalistic caution attended the pulsating graphic Fox News flashed across screens late on Election Night 2000: George Walker Bush, 43rd President of the United States Tom Brokaw was no more circumspect in interrupting NBC’s broadcast to announce, “George Herbert—George Walker Bush wins!” And CBS’s Dan Rather left no doubt when he announced: […]
The electoral breakthrough of the extreme-right Austrian Freedom Party—which came in a close second with more than a quarter of the vote in that country’s national elections last October—generated front-page coverage in most European newspapers. Editorial commentary emphasized the importance of keeping the Freedom Party, led by Jörg Haider, from joining a new governing coalition. […]
A group of 11 well-respected figures from the public interest community—most with many years of connection to Pacifica Radio—have declared their readiness to join the Pacifica board as a group in an effort to establish a new beginning for the nonprofit radio network. The 11 individuals, a sort of “board-in-waiting,” are from the fields of […]
A FAIR analysis of sources on ABC‘s Nightline and PBS‘s NewsHour during the first two weeks of the bombing of Yugoslavia found an abundance of representatives of the U.S. government and NATO, along with many other supporters of the NATO bombing. Opponents of the airstrikes received scant attention, however; in almost all stories, debate focused […]
Another election cycle is completed, and once again the local television news industry has let the voting public down, offering newscasts Filled with political advertising but little meaningful election news. Rocky Mountain Media Watch`s national network of volunteers taped their local evening newscasts on three consecutive nights (10/20-22/98) two weeks before election day and examined […]
This fall, thousands of campaigns have been waged across the country to elect everything from sewer officials to members of Congress. Despite the stakes involved, the country’s news media have appeared only briefly on the sidelines of a few races and ignored most of the rest. As curious as this behavior might seem, it has […]
The New York Times (9/4/98) sent Washington reporter Lizette Alvarez to Manchester, New Hampshire, to cover a series of campaign speeches by House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt (D.-Mo.). Early in the article, headlined “Gephardt Trumpets ’98 Agenda of His Party,” Alvarez noted that “the word ‘scandal’ or the name Monica Lewinsky did not drop […]
