FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
After “more than a decade” of having “attempted to cast a light on… ‘that curriculum of the corporation, by the corporation and for a corporation’s profits… [which] shall indeed hasten the rate of destruction of the earth’s resources,’” John F. Borowski offers instruction (Common Dreams, 10/20/08) to Journalists: Expose the agenda of this corrosive curriculum. […]
Ecology blog LiveGaia posts another entry (10/8/08) in the annals of corporate media’s poor advertising ethics: Last night in America, after the presidential debate the ads shown were as follows. ABC had Chevron. CBS had Exxon. CNN had the coal lobby. But you know what happened last week? ABC refused to run WeCanSolveIt’s Repower America […]
Women In Media & News blogger Miranda Spencer has “some good news for women in journalism: Longtime investigative environmental journalist Marla Cone, who spent nearly two decades at the Los Angeles Times, has just taken the helm as editor in chief at the online publication Environmental Health News.” Spencer gives the reinvigorated news site a […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin062008 Tyson Slocum and Matthew Lasar @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin062008.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: John McCain says the ban on oil drilling of the U.S. coast should be lifted, to increase oil production and lower prices. Drilling opponents say the drilling won’t lower prices and will endanger environments. Who’s right? Mainstream reporting is little help, […]
Michael Dorsey, Professor of global environmental policy at Dartmouth College, joins to discuss the cap and trade legislation currently being debated in the U.S. Senate. Also this week: Al-Jazeera English and the U.S. television market, with reporter Ken Picard.
Establishment media and Bolivian politics, with author Ben Dangl. Also on the program: Kate Sheppard, political reporter at Grist.org, discusses John McCain and how the press has perhaps oversold his environmentalism.
FAIR associate Norman Solomon on the recently-revealed Pentagon propaganda program. Also this week: Sheldon Rampton of the Center for Media & Democracy joins to discuss corporate greenwashing on Earth Day.
Eric Holt-Giménez of Food First joins to discuss what is missing from media coverage on recent global food shortages. Also this week: A conversation about American products and chemical exposure, with investigative journalist and author Mark Schapiro.
Nuclear advocates in government and the nuclear industry are engaged in a massive, heavily financed drive to revive atomic power in the United States—with most of the mainstream media either not questioning or actually assisting in the promotion. “With a very few notable exceptions, such as the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. media have turned […]
The lack of media criticism surrounding the No Child Left Behind law with Stan Karp, an editor at the magazine Rethinking Schools. Also this week: Was environmentalist Rachel Carson a mass murderer? We’ll talk with writer Aaron Swartz, who looked into the story for FAIR’s magazine, Extra!.
Sometimes you find mass murderers in the most unlikely places. Take Rachel Carson. She was, by all accounts, a mild-mannered writer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—hardly a sociopath’s breeding ground. And yet, according to many in the media, Carson has more blood on her hands than Hitler. The problems started in the 1940s, […]
An August 15 NPR Morning Edition segment touted the benefits of nuclear power, suggesting it was gaining popularity with many environmentalists who once opposed it. The segment was an interview with Fortune magazine editor David Whitford, who has written a series of articles about the debate over nuclear power. The piece was introduced by NPR […]
If 2006 was the year that the issue of global climate change broke through into greater public consciousness—thanks in large part to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, plus books like Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe—2007 could be the year that it becomes old news. Between February and May of this year, the Intergovernmental […]
This week on CounterSpin: Journalist Deepa Fernandes joins to talk about the immigration conversation that is currently unfolding on Capitol Hill, and what the press is missing. Also on the program: How do workers and the environment factor into trade agreements, with Laura Carlsen of the Americas Program of the International Relations Center.
The prevailing body of scientific evidence for climate change more or less holds sway in news reports, but opinion journalism—where the policy agenda is defined and debated—is dominated by those who question or reject that evidence.
The New York Times failed to mount a functional degree of skepticism toward city and federal government pronouncements about the safety of the air and dust around Ground Zero.
At a time of dramatic increases in gasoline prices and jaw-dropping oil profits, NBC’s Sunday morning talkshow Meet the Press has convened two panel discussions dominated by guests close to those interests—with no input from environmental or citizen groups critical of the energy industry. On April 30, Meet the Press devoted its entire hour to […]
[Note: this piece is a sidebar to “Fear & Favor 2005—FAIR’s Sixth Annual Report.”] At the beginning of the year, the Armstrong Williams scandal highlighted the disturbing practice of the Bush administration’s using taxpayer dollars to fund media that uncritically promote government policies and programs, without disclosing the source of the funding to readers or […]
Andrew Wetzler of the Natural Resources Defense Council on the Endangered Species Act. Also on the show: WBAI radio host and producer Bob Lederer provides some much needed context about current protests and politics in Puerto Rico.
University of Virginia Law professor Rosa Brooks discusses NYT reporter Judith Miller, whose faulty reporting helped the White House take the country to war in Iraq in 2003. Also this week: director Patrice O’Neill on his new documentary film, The Fire Next Time.
