FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
When mainstream media report on widespread dissatisfaction with the HMO-driven U.S. healthcare system, reporters seldom mention proposals for fundamental health reform; debate is usually limited to modest, incremental plans, like the “patients’ bill of rights.” But as Canada has struggled this year with a funding shortage for its much-admired public health system, ABC News and […]
After the crash of a U.S. Army reconnaissance plane in July 1999 that killed seven people (including five U.S. military personnel), the question of U.S. involvement in Colombia re-emerged on the media radar screen. Journalists wondered whether “the U.S. could wind up in a fight it doesn’t want” (NBC Nightly News, 1/16/00), with many reporters […]
If the mainstream media had been doing their job, most Americans would not have been eating genetically engineered food every day for the last six years without their knowledge or consent. Nor would we have allowed 70 million acres of our nation’s farmland to be planted in bioengineered crops without significant public debate and honest […]
At the end of Sesame Street, the show traditionally announces that the episode has been brought to you by, say, “the letter Z and the number 2”–a daily reminder of the show’s commitment to non-commercial educational programming. But these days, the tradition has been co-opted for profit: Today after the show, you might hear an […]
Much like in the global economy, in the world of the think tanks that dominate the mass media, the rich have gotten richer. There has been little shuffling at the top of the most cited think-tank list, based on references to the group in major papers and broadcast transcripts in the Nexis database. Once again, […]
When Taliban leaders claim women incite sexual assault by wearing clothing more revealing than a burkah or leaving their homes unchaperoned by male relatives, it’s not hard for U.S. reporters to recognize these statements as products of misogyny. But when two evolutionary psychologists recently put forth the same basic notion under the guise of objective […]
When New Yorkers went into shock over the 41 bullets fired at Amadou Diallo, journalist Elizabeth Kolbert found “comfort”–her word–by recalling the sodomizing of Abner Louima. The business with the broomstick, she explained in the New Yorker (3/29/99), was not what we hire the police to do, whereas we do pay them to accost characters […]
