FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
When the crime bill was being drafted, debated and passed by the Senate in 1993, most coverage focused on the political impact of the crime issue: “Trying to shed his party’s reputation as law-and-order wimps, President Clinton steps forward with a tough new plan to fight crime,” Time magazine declared (8/23/93) of the plan that became the blueprint for the Senate bill.
A California appeals court has ruled that public utilities cannot discriminate against reporters—in a case that revealed how much power corporations have in determining who will cover them. The Dec. 27, 1993 decision by the Court of Appeal reinstated a lawsuit brought by journalist J.A. Savage, who charged that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. got […]
When citing the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, mainstream journalists often affix the label “union-backed” or “labor-supported” (e.g. New York Times, 3/13/94). By contrast, these reporters rarely if ever refer to the American Enterprise Institute as “corporate-backed” or “business-supported.” (A search on the Nexis database turned up 73 instances where major papers […]
Covering the disintegration of Yugoslavia has often forced reporters to act as scouts without compasses in a completely unknown terrain. Reporters have had to wade through the complex cultural, historical and political geography of these conflicts. And very few had the necessary instruments. With the end of the Cold War, a whole set of principles […]
There is no shortage of reasons why women end up in jail. Women earn less, are responsible for more and are among the least well-protected people in the country. A recent article in Harper’s magazine (4/94) pointed out that a single mother is almost required to resort to illegal activity if she is to feed […]
Supporters of the Clintons suggest that Whitewater, a failed real estate venture from Bill and Hillary’s Little Rock days, is old news. The election campaign is over, the argument goes, and the voters chose Clinton. But Whitewater never really became a campaign issue in 1992. Most media gave a great deal of space to allegations […]
How did mass media give people the false impression that crime was climbing drastically? How did they justify portraying steady crime rates as a “scary orgy” that demands immediate action? An examination of U.S. News’ special report on crime is revealing, illustrating the major themes, distortions and self-contradictions of much of mainstream crime coverage in 1993 and 1994.
Rev. Jesse Jackson’s recent comments about how blacks can take action against crime in their communities received an unusually favorable response from mainstream media outlets that are usually cool, if not hostile, toward the civil rights leader. But the selective emphasis of many press accounts distorted the content and context of Jackson’s remarks, revealing more […]
