FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Koppel Covers for Limbaugh’s Rumor-Mongering Ted Koppel’s special (ABC Viewpoint, 4/19/94) on press coverage of Whitewater was a perfect opportunity to take Rush Limbaugh to task for spreading unfounded conspiracy theories. But instead, ABC journalists Koppel and Jeff Greenfield let Limbaugh off the hook. On his March 10 radio broadcast, Limbaugh had announced the following […]
Tired of reporting fraught with double standards and a blame-the-victim mentality, a coalition of women’s rights advocates in San Francisco decided to study daily press coverage of violence against women. Barbara Johnson, an independent media critic who frequently works with FAIR, conducted an eight-month study of the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner‘s coverage […]
It seemed like May madness had hit–at least as far as sexual harassment was concerned. Hoards of previously unreconstructed misogynists supported a working-class female who charged a powerful man with grimy sexual misconduct. New Republic editor and PBS pundit Fred Barnes, who once derided Anita Hill as”delusional,” claimed that Arkansas state employee Paula Jones’ accusations […]
Ever since Vice President Al Gore propelled the metaphor of the”information superhighway” into the public consciousness, Americans have been repeatedly assured that the digital communications revolution will enhance the lives of everyone–rich and poor–by creating instant, low-cost access to the world’s greatest information resources. Yet to observe the continuing feeding frenzy among the world’s most […]
Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy: The Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935. By Robert McChesney (Oxford University Press, 393 pp.) Revisionist historians tell us stories that debunk dominant myths, discover new kinds of heroes and illuminate oppositional movements hidden beneath hegemonic tales of the status quo. In Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy, journalism professor […]
No one–least of all the US government–lifted a finger to stop the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans. And US media coverage played along with the Clinton administration’s policy of handwringing.
From dioxin to Whitewater, from Rodney King to Reaganomics, Rush Limbaugh has a finely honed ability to twist and distort reality.
In a recent keynote address to the Religion Newswriters Association, Bill Moyers noted, “For broadcast executives, news of the soul is no news at all.” Such dissatisfaction with religion coverage seems to be shared by many Americans. Stewart Hoover has found that newspaper readers rated religion as an important topic for papers to cover (above […]
