FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Most wars—initiated by the United States or otherwise—require an official rationale. The stated reason for going to war needn’t be the real reason, and it can change over the course of the conflict, as the Iraq War ably demonstrated. As the Iraq War also proved, the media rarely apply much skepticism to the rationale given, […]
That Libya has oil is not lost on the media; network newscasts occasionally mentioned oil in the context of the war. But it often came up as as by-product of some consumer concern: “Oil and gas prices are on the rise this morning. Military action in Libya pushed crude prices up more than $2 today […]
Austerity Stops at the Top Gannett will be laying off another 700 employees, about 2 percent of its workforce (Poynter.org, 6/21/11), after shedding 2,400 jobs last year. “The economic recovery is not happening as quickly or favorably as we had hoped and continues to impact our U.S. community media organizations,” Gannett U.S. Community Publishing division […]
On April 14, a massive storm swept down out of the Rocky Mountains into the Midwest and South, spawning more than 150 tornadoes that killed 43 people across 16 states (Capital Weather Gang, 4/18/11). It was one of the largest weather catastrophes in United States history—but was soon upstaged by an even larger storm, the […]
The U.S.-based women’s rights group MADRE (6/10/11) reported that members of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq—its partner organization in Baghdad—and other protesters were brutally beaten and sexually assaulted in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square on June 10 by government-sponsored mobs. What were they demonstrating for that so threatened Iraq’s government? Democracy. “For months, young women […]
When it comes to reporting on labor disputes, corporate media don’t exactly have a track record of even- handedness. (See, e.g., Extra!, 4/11.) Throw in a $4 billion media investment, and you’ve got a story ripe for misreporting: the recent dispute between the NFL Players Association and the owners of what Forbes magazine (9/13/07) called […]
State Budget Shortfalls In his piece “Misrepresenting State Budget Crises” (Extra!, 6/11), Neil deMause lays blame for states’ budget shortfalls to the recession and tax cuts. However, he neglects to mention another big cause, the loss of federal revenue-sharing. Reagan ended that program, and with huge federal deficits, it’s probably never coming back. But deMause […]
When Bill Keller announced that he would soon be stepping down as the New York Times’ top editor, he was hailed as the man “who rebuilt the confidence of the New York Times newsroom after the Jayson Blair scandal” (Forbes, 6/2/11). Rem Rieder of American Journalism Review (3-4/11) wrote that Keller “righted the ship” and […]
