FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Even before the bloody events of April, more than 300 Israelis and 1,200 Palestinians had been killed since the current Intifada began in September 2000 (Boston Globe, 3/31/02). Thousands more people have been injured. U.S. media coverage of the conflict was intense as Palestinian militants carried out several major suicide bombings and the Israeli Defense Forces […]
Ever since President Bill Clinton’s 1997 declaration that “we know now that welfare reform works,” media coverage of the issue has been haunted by the question of just what “working” means. Passed amid rhetoric of saving poor families from poverty, but with a preamble explicitly pushing a Gingrichian agenda of marriage and abstinence, the Personal […]
During the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan, international aid workers were among the few non-governmental sources with access to real-time information about how the attacks were affecting the population. In their statements, they often painted a bleak view of civilian suffering. But their ability to garner coverage for their comments seemed to depend on how […]
Countless leaders have been deified by national emergency, but few have been remade as quickly and completely as George W. Bush. In many cases, those who had misread him as a simple tool, braying automatically at his most trivial mistakes, now automatically revered him. Such converts suddenly agreed with those who had seen Bush’s […]
A dispute between Canada’s largest media company and its journalists has put media concentration on the political agenda as seldom before. In January, organizations representing journalists across Canada called for a parliamentary inquiry into media concentration, especially at CanWest Global Communications. The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) and the Quebec Federation of Professional Journalists (QFPJ) […]
Former Delaware Gov. Pete du Pont wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (3/27/02) condemning “scientific fraud” by environmentalists. His first example: “The December revelation that employees of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service had planted fake wild lynx hair in states where there were no lynx, so that the areas […]
If it’s “spin” to back up your arguments with bogus facts and statistics, and to dismiss numbers that don’t fit in with your preconceptions, then Bill O’Reilly‘s Fox News Channel show isn’t, as he repeatedly claims, a “no-spin zone”—it’s Spin City. During an interview with National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy (O’Reilly Factor, 2/5/02), […]
On an average weeknight, ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News are tuned in by approximately one-quarter of television-viewing homes in the U.S. (Nielsen Media Research, 2001)—about two-thirds of the U.S. public that claims to follow current events regularly (Pew Research Center, 2000). In 22 minutes the newscasts deliver snapshots of […]
Speaking in defense of reparations for slavery on Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes (4/25/01), attorney Alexander Pires explained that if advocates for reparations could “tell the story” of slavery and its consequences, the public would “respond to it.” “So what you’re saying is you really want a debate,” Alan Colmes replied, “and…that’s exactly what […]
Attending the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre, in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, was like seeing the world upside down—or perhaps right-side up. From portrayals in U.S. mainstream media, it’s easy to see those who protest corporate globalization and “free trade” dogma as a small minority, as uninformed, as elitists. […]
