FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The West Fertilizer Co. explosion last week was largely obscured by blanket coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. More than that, says legendary EPA whistleblower Hugh Kaufman, a guest on this week’s CounterSpin, what coverage there was often obscured the real story.
Reporting positive polling for the Keystone XL pipeline, USA Today reports, “The numbers come amid continuing efforts to clean up a major new oil spill in Arkansas.” But “come amid” is another way of saying “entirely unrelated to.”
Issues like oil spills, land use rights, groundwater pollution etc. are all complaints made by critics of the Keystone XL pipeline. And looming over all of them is the way that tapping the tar sands will exacerbate climate change. But the media doesn’t seem to care.
If It Weren’t for Those Meddling Iranians “This demonstrates the ever pernicious Iranian meddling in other countries in the region.” —unnamed U.S. official complaining to Reuters (1/28/13) about Iran allegedly sending arms to Yemen, where the U.S. is conducting a secret drone war Extreme Weather, Unexplained NBC Nightly News (1/13/13) asked a serious question, […]
The Washington Post had a two-page spread in its September 11 edition devoted to a “debate” on energy policy. But industry critics were missing from the picture. Why? Perhaps because the oil industry, undisclosed to Post readers, was sponsoring the discussion.
A few weeks ago Newsweek got a lot of attention for Niall Ferguson’s factually challenged cover story slamming the Obama case for re-election. This week, in true corporate media style, we get the “other” side: An argument that Obama should move the Democratic party to the right. Peter Boyer’s piece, “Why Barack Needs Bill,” recycles […]
This is the sort of awkward juxtaposition that newspapers usually try to avoid. In today’s Washington Post (7/9/12), a story about the Keystone pipeline appears above a Chevron ad: Awkward. Then again, maybe not. Juliet Eilperin‘s article is all about what supporters of the pipeline project in the state of Montana are saying. Politicians, […]
Independent media outlets have basically owned the ALEC story over the past few years. The American Legislative Exchange Council is a corporate-sponsored “bill mill” that works with state legislatures to pass the kinds of laws corporations want. Thanks to investigations in Mother Jones, the Nation, Extra! and continued attention from the likes of AlterNet and […]
One of the difficulties of reporting on climate change is its incremental nature: It’s hard to expect every media mention of someone driving a car or running an air conditioner to include a note about its effects on the environment. Yet even when the climate impacts of an action are unambiguous and central to a […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin060812 Fatima Goss Graves and Alexis Baden Mayer @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin060812.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The Paycheck Fairness Act, aimed at making it easier to fight gender-based wage discrimination, failed to muster the votes to break Republicans’ filibuster in the Senate. Sadly, the measure also failed to muster journalists to address the underlying problem, […]
More Democrats are starting to shift towards supporting the controversial Keystone pipeline, reports Jennifer Steinhauer in the New York Times (4/20/12). The media discussion has leaned heavily in favor of the project, so perhaps this is no surprise. And this report is no exception. The political fight over Keystone has a lot to do with […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin042012 Antonia Juhasz and Lee Fang @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin042012.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: This week marks the two-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Media will be checking in on the Gulf to mark the anniversary—but what will their reporting on this ongoing environmental catastrophe look like? We’ll talk to journalist Antonia […]
I was struck by an election night panel I saw on CNN last night (3/6/12). “Contributors here on the left and the right,” as host Anderson Cooper told viewers. On the right: former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer and right-wing blogger Erick Erickson. On the left? Frequent TV pundit and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and… Hilary […]
If you want an example of how much corporate media love so-called moderate Republicans, look no further than Frank Bruni‘s New York Times column (3/4/12): Back in 1999, when I covered Congress, I had a kind of crush on Olympia Snowe. Many of us in the Senate press gallery did. Well, that’s good to know. […]
The February 23 CBS Evening News segment on hydraulic fracturing gas drilling, better known as fracking, revealed how journalists can cover a highly controversial subject by removing the controversy. The report started off with references to high gasoline prices; the implication, then, is that domestic gas drilling will help solve that problem. As anchor Scott […]
New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer (2/2/12) accurately reports how Republicans want to frame the disputed over the Keystone XL pipeline. But she does almost nothing to challenge that framing. Under the headline, “For GOP, Pipeline Is Central to Agenda,” Steinhauer explains: Republicans are framing Keystone as an urgent jobs and energy project at a […]
When it comes to natural gas extraction via “fracking,” TV journalism has some serious competition: energy industry commercials. Like ads for political candidates that run concurrently with broadcast news coverage of the presidential race, ads promoting natural gas (and other fossil fuels) have long been running in concert with news segments about the topic, most […]
With New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane continuing to puzzle over whether (or how) the Paper of Record should factcheck politicians, one might wonder whether other newspapers worry about the same thing. Take USA Today (please!). Yesterday the paper reported on the very contentious matter of the Keystone XL pipeline and jobs–a favorite issue […]
Today’s front page of USA Today: The paper adds that “Obama was putting politics ahead of jobs and the nation’s energy security by rejecting the pipeline now, Republicans and oil industry leaders said.” It closes with this: Business leaders and Republicans say approving the project now would create as many as 20,000 jobs for an […]
Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel has a column in the Washington Post today (1/3/12) outlining the three important election issues to watch–and one of them is about how the press covers the process: Third, the media’s obsession with false equivalence: How the election is covered will almost certainly have a measurable impact on its outcome. […]
