FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Many pundits are worried about the delay in finding out who will become the next occupant of the Oval Office. “That’s probably the most crippling blow I’ve ever seen to a new president,” David Gergen lamented on national television (CNN, 11/25/00); whoever the next chief executive turns out to be, he has “been denied or […]
This year, the normal rhythms of post-election punditry were disrupted by all the talk of dimpled chads and canvassing boards. But echoing the pre-election refrain, one message did emerge from the muffled Monday-morning quarterbacking: Al Gore’s campaign ran too far to the left. It’s a familiar charge, one that’s repeated every time a Democrat loses […]
“Excessive force” should be used against Palestinian civilians, including “interrogation methods that border on psychological and/or physical torture.” These are extreme proposals–but it is their author, Anthony Cordesman, to whom ABC News regularly turns to in wartime to provide military analysis. Cordesman made these recommendations in an October 2000 report released by the Center for […]
Mothers work because they’re selfish. That’s the conclusion viewers might have drawn after watching ABC and NBC news broadcasts about a recently released Census Bureau report (“Fertility of American Women,” 9/00) that showed that more mothers, especially mothers of infants, were in the work force in 1998 than ever before (73 percent and 59 percent, […]
No sign of journalistic caution attended the pulsating graphic Fox News flashed across screens late on Election Night 2000: George Walker Bush, 43rd President of the United States Tom Brokaw was no more circumspect in interrupting NBC’s broadcast to announce, “George Herbert—George Walker Bush wins!” And CBS’s Dan Rather left no doubt when he announced: […]
“In a time of peace and prosperity, Al Gore is betting that Americans want to go to war.” That was the lead of a Los Angeles Times article by political reporter Ronald Brownstein (8/18/00) the day after Al Gore’s speech to the Democratic Convention in August. Brownstein was referring to Gore’s pledge to take the […]
The media’s denial about potential disenfranchisement in Florida is cloaked in the denigration of Jesse Jackson. In lockstep media commentary, Jackson was depicted as a crazed black man on the corner, so nuts that cab drivers, the editors steering the news, had every justification to pass him up. On CNN (11/9/00), Jackson was “fomenting turbulence” […]
The pain establishment media felt over Ralph Nader’s challenge to the two-party system was evident in CBS‘s election night coverage. When reporter Ed Bradley commented that Ralph Nader might approach the 5 percent threshold for receiving federal matching funds, Dan Rather interrupted: “About $12 million, $13 million of your money and mine.” As Bradley pointed […]
Throughout the presidential elections, mainstream media outlets were quick to charge Democratic candidate Al Gore with exaggerations: Whether he was talking about inventing the Internet, inspiring Love Story or discovering Love Canal, you just couldn’t trust what Gore was saying. If you looked into these incidents, you found that in each case the media’s exaggerations […]
“The Palestinians began the latest protests with old-style demonstrations. Then they started shooting at Israeli towns. Now they are attacking settlements. It’s not at all clear what the next step will be, but every step seems to get bloodier.” —”Into the War Zone,” Time (12/4/00) In war—especially the kind of war that has now broken […]
