FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Ashamed to Be a Subscriber As a FAIR subscriber and one who has given gift subscriptions to friends and family, I want you to know that “The Online Predator Scare: Profiting From the Panic” by Steve Rendall (4/09) is possibly the worst thing you have ever published. This piece makes me ashamed to be a […]
As debate over the White House’s economic stimulus plan took center stage in corporate media in February, citizens who wished to understand the details had to swim upstream against a current of Republican spin and misinformation. A study from Think Progress (1/28/09) found the lawmakers who appeared on cable news channels (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, […]
The three-week Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip that began December 27 was accompanied by aggressive public relations strategies intended to improve the assault’s portrayal in international media. “In the war of the pictures we lose, so you need to correct, explain or balance it in other ways,” said Israeli public affairs official Aviv Shir-On […]
Lessons of Lebanon On January 4, the L.A. Times published a piece on the Gaza conflict (1/4/09) co-authored by Michael Oren, who was identified as “a distinguished fellow at the Shalem Center and a professor at the foreign service school of Georgetown University.” Unmentioned was Oren’s other job; he’s currently serving as a reservist in […]
On January 11, 2009, a Washington Post article (“The View from Israel: Victors in a Necessary War”) declared that “Israelis have been . . . resolute” in their support of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza. What the piece did not mention was that some 20 percent of the citizens of Israel are […]
There were early indications that corporate media coverage of Barack Obama’s candidacy would be squirm-inducing, putting on display the elite (mainly white) press corps’ murky ideas about race much more than any straightforward reckoning of black Americans’ situation or what an Obama presidency might mean for their concerns. Journalists were sometimes embarrassingly frank about how […]
As the economy crumbles, issues of poverty and economic need have begun to make more frequent appearances in the news media. From October through December 2008, for example, the three nightly TV news shows ran 20 stories—about one every four or five days—addressing poverty or related issues such as homelessness or food stamps. A previous […]
