FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
‘Rising Standard’ in Venezuela? Extra! (Soundbites, 3/13) disparages Jon Lee Anderson’s article in the New Yorker by ignoring the fact that the New Yorker is not in the business of stretching the truth and is known for very thorough factchecking. I have always had a great deal of respect for the New Yorker, as I […]
Venezuela’s left-wing populist President Hugo Chávez died on Tuesday, March 5, after a two-year battle with cancer. If world leaders were judged by the sheer volume of corporate media vitriol and misinformation about their policies, Chávez would be in a class of his own. Shortly after Chávez won his first election in 1998, the U.S. […]
Spinning the Sequester “Sequester Spin Gets Ahead of Reality” was the headline on a Washington Post piece (2/28/13) that cautioned that “no one really knows how bad things are likely to get” if the forced budget cuts go through. Take claims about, say, teacher layoffs with a grain of salt, the Post advised, and remember […]
If you relied on major media outlets for coverage of last November’s elections, you could be forgiven for thinking women were poised to rule the country in 2013. “From Congress to Halls of State… Women Rule,” the New York Times (1/1/13) trumpeted. “Big Gains for Women in 2012,” shouted CNN (11/7/12). “113th Congress Welcomes Benches […]
Withholding important news over supposed national security concerns is nothing new. And in many cases, no official request is even needed—the decision-makers seem to have internalized the notion that keeping the government’s secrets is part of their job.
The French military commenced Operation Serval against separatist rebels in Northern Mali on January 11, 2013. The air and ground intervention was undertaken with the cooperation and support of the United States, as well as several European and African states. U.S. press reporting has provided a simplistic account of the intervention as a heroic effort […]
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.
Joe Biden’s popularity stems from his perception of “folksiness.” In reality, though, Biden’s record is anything but working class–friendly.
The New York Times (2/13/13) reported that in the last few years, several elite U.S. universities have begun to cover sex reassignment surgery and/or hormones for trans-gender students. On the one hand, it’s great that they’re reporting news like this. After years of extremely disrespectful coverage of transgender issues (Extra!, 11/07), it feels like a […]
