FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The U.S. is violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That view, far from exotic or extreme, was expressed repeatedly by arms control experts and international officials at the month-long NPT review conference held at the U.N. in May. It is embraced by U.S. establishment figures such as former President Jimmy Carter and Kennedy-era Defense Secretary […]
What’s wrong with US reporting on Iraq’s Shia community? Also: discussion on under-discussed causes of rising gas prices.
CNN’s Frank Buckley (9/21/03) could hardly contain himself. “Dr. Johnson, we admire the heck out of you!” Buckley exclaimed on-air as he finished interviewing Dr. Torrance Johnson, project scientist for NASA’s Galileo space probe mission, minutes after it plunged into the atmosphere of Jupiter after an eight-year voyage through the solar system. Buckley’s excitement was […]
Coverage of Amtrak contains two surprises: the details reported about the 31-year-old railroad, and the details that aren’t reported about its competition. Despite the introduction of successful high-speed trains in the Northeast, as well as increased ridership both before and after September 11’s airborne attacks, coverage of Amtrak is surprisingly negative. “You don’t read much […]
The rapid demise of energy giant Enron is being called the largest corporate bankruptcy in modern American history. Stories of workers losing their life savings while executives struck it rich have certainly been big news–often overshadowing the war in Afghanistan–but conservative pundits and mainstream journalists alike have tried to minimize the story’s political impact. One […]
“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 […]
“Nuclear Follies,” a February 11, 1985 cover story in Forbes, declared U.S. nuclear power “the largest managerial disaster in business history.” With $125 billion invested, the magazine wrote, “only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent. It is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and […]
Power shortage! Unavoidable blackouts! Too much environmental regulation! All these media themes about the electric crisis in California have one thing in common: They are utterly false. Seldom have establishment media gone through greater contortions to misrepresent a crisis on behalf of the mega-corporations that made it happen. Of course, there’s usually not as much […]
Delegates from over 160 countries are gathered at the Hague in the Netherlands this week for negotiations to finalize the Kyoto climate treaty, the 1997 protocol on combating global warming. Despite the high stakes involved in global warming, news coverage of the Hague talks in mainstream U.S. print media has been extremely sparse. National television […]
Under our office door came a note advising us that African-American and Latino groups would have a press conference the next day to release a report showing that minority populations will suffer most if the United Nations Global Warming Treaty–the Kyoto agreement–passes the U.S. Senate. The press conference was being pulled together by Advantage Communications […]
As evidence continues to emerge that global warming is already occurring (Nature, 4/23/98), the oil industry is gearing up to try to convince the public that science is still uncertain. Representatives from the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon, Chevron and from corporate-backed think tanks got together to produce a “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan,” a […]
“Electricity from nuclear fission continues to be the most comprehensive source of energy available to meet growing U.S. demand,” declared Richard Rhodes, beginning his 1993 book Nuclear Renewal. He ended it 126 pages later declaring “whether it will be or not depends on leadership and public education.” Rhodes and John Palfreman made their contribution to […]
A California appeals court has ruled that public utilities cannot discriminate against reporters—in a case that revealed how much power corporations have in determining who will cover them. The Dec. 27, 1993 decision by the Court of Appeal reinstated a lawsuit brought by journalist J.A. Savage, who charged that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. got […]
Victor Neufeld runs 20/20, the second-most popular TV news magazine in U.S. media. Neufeld has been a top executive of 20/20 for 14 years—for the last seven, its executive producer with the final say on what the average 14 million viewers of the ABC news magazine get to see every Friday night. After 60 Minutes, […]
In The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, the eight-part series which aired in January 1993, PBS promised to reveal the real history of petroleum politics. But despite its impressive scope, and the wealth of archival film footage, the series is little more than an official oil company history with high production […]
According to the TV program What Happened?, broadcast on NBC earlier this year (3/16/93), “the system worked” during the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island (TMI). Although there were problems with “communication,” the show reported, with the undamaged unit of TMI back in operation, most people in the area now live happily with the […]
One of the claims of the nuclear industry is that it is subject to constant criticism from the media. But a five-month sample of clippings gathered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicates that the majority of editorials, columns and news stories on nuclear power in U.S. newspapers are supportive of nuclear power. Extra! conducted a […]
One reason so many news articles and opinion pieces support nuclear technology is the massive public relations effort backed by both the nuclear industry, and state and local governments. One example of how the nuclear industry engineers media support was disclosed in November l991, when the Safe Energy Communication Council obtained a plan for a […]
An investigative series on the Los Alamos National Laboratory by the Santa Fe New Mexican resulted in the sacking of the daily newspaper’s managing editor who edited the series, and a moratorium on nuclear technology stories by the newspaper. The editor, David N. Mitchell, told Extra! that due to the legal settlement reached after his […]
Time magazine’s April 29 cover story asked the question: “Nuclear Power: Do We Have a Choice?”–and answered it in the negative. Time mirrored the arguments of the nuclear industry and nuclear enthusiasts in the Bush administration–without investigating their validity. For instance, Time cited an April report by the National Academy of Sciences on the greenhouse […]
