FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The proper topic for an occasion like this, I suppose, is pretty obvious: It would be the question of how the media have handled the major story of the past months, the issue of the “war on terrorism,” so-called, specifically in the Islamic world. Incidentally, by media here I intend the term to be understood […]
The rapid demise of energy giant Enron is being called the largest corporate bankruptcy in modern American history. Stories of workers losing their life savings while executives struck it rich have certainly been big news–often overshadowing the war in Afghanistan–but conservative pundits and mainstream journalists alike have tried to minimize the story’s political impact. One […]
Proving that irony is alive and well post-September 11, a book deriding the national press corps for its suppression of conservative views has received enormous attention in that same “liberal” media. Bernard Goldberg’s Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News is long on name-calling and vitriol, but short on substance. “Delusional,” […]
Mainstream US media rarely quoted international law or challenged the administration’s designation of detainees as “unlawful combatants.”
In 2001, during a time of crisis, the mainstream media rounded up the usual think-tank suspects. Once again, media used think tanks quite often during the year, with over 25,823 citations for the 25 leading think tanks. (FAIR’s annual survey looks at mentions of think tanks in the Nexis database files for major papers and […]
Introduction Fear & Favor is FAIR’s annual review of incidents that reflect the range of pressures on reporters to use something other than journalistic judgment in deciding what goes in the news and what gets left out. The year 2001 presented special challenges in this regard. The horrific September 11 attacks on the World Trade […]
“Everyone is genuflecting before the Pentagon powerhouse,” noted Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz (12/13/01). Since the war in Afghanistan started, Kurtz observed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was “getting better press than Rudy Giuliani.” Rumsfeld, Kurtz wrote, was “America’s new rock star.” Why do so many journalists revere Rumsfeld? His “rough-hewn charm and no-nonsense demeanor” […]
