FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
More than 200,000 Guatemalan civilians were killed or disappeared during 36 years of civil war ending in 1996, according to a report from the Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission released in February. The nine-volume, 3,500-page report found that U.S. assistance was a key factor in human rights violations during the armed conflict. Yet Guatemala’s human rights […]
When the Indonesian government announced in January that it would consider cutting East Timor loose if people there refused its autonomy proposal, reports started surfacing that tensions between pro-Indonesia and pro-independence East Timorese had reached a critical point. Reuters wrote (3/10/99): “President B.J. Habibie…startled the world by suggesting independence as a ‘second option’ if autonomy […]
If you’ve been watching the network news over the last year or two, you know that Social Security’s going broke and the only choices facing us are to cut benefits, raise taxes, push back the retirement age, or throw the system onto the mercies of the stock market. An Extra! review of more than a […]
The US military’s plans to “control space” and the Earth below by placing weapons in orbit are explicit and extreme—and go unreported by mainstream media. What reporting is done on space military policy is restricted to the spin that only “missile defense” is involved. “US Space Command—dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect […]
To see who informs major network news discussions of Social Security reform, FAIR searched the Lexis/Nexis database for ABC, NBC and CBS evening news stories on the subject between January 1, 1998 and February 1, 1999. We identified all sources who appeared and spoke on screen, and classified them by whom they represented and what […]
For many years, Social Security was supposed to be the third rail of American politics–not to be touched by officials who valued their political lives. This unique power resulted from an irresistible combination of affection and clout: Social Security was appreciated as the most successful anti-poverty program in America, and its clout came from the […]
The pundits prayed for the long national nightmare to end, and free them to enlighten us on serious business like shoring up Social Security. They said the public had it up to here with tawdry scandal, that we craved nothing more than closure. But the vote of closure came at the start of Sweeps Month; […]
