FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
In her novel Damage, Josephine Hart wrote that the modern expression of guilt brings its own absolution: “Say the guilt prayer ‘I feel guilty,’ and hey presto, that’s the punishment.” So it was with President Bush’s nominee to head the CIA, Robert Gates, who appeared (and said the prayer) before the Senate Intelligence Committee this […]
The enormous press coverage generated by the recent coup attempt in the Soviet Union soon resolved itself into several recurring themes: the lionization of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin that obscured his troubling political history; a misrepresentation of the history of the Baltic states coupled with a shallow explanation of resurgent nationalism in the Baltic […]
“The senior editor leveled with me,” the reporter told Extra!. “His words were: Time is institutionally behind the Contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you’d have no trouble getting it in the magazine.’”
“A battle between hard-line communists and free-market democrats” (L.A. Times, 7/8/91). That’s how much of the media presents the conflict in Yugoslavia between Serbia and Croatia. Even after the Cold War, the national press persisted in inaccurately forcing the Yugoslavian civil war into a black-and-white Cold War framework. The press has portrayed the government of […]
When People’s Dirk Mathison infiltrated the exclusive Bohemian Grove retreat, he got a view into the US elite that very few reporters have glimpsed. Unfortunately, that elite includes the management of Time Warner, the owner of People, which prevented Mathison from telling his story.
New York City’s shelter system for homeless families has become so livable that hundreds, if not thousands, of families who could stay elsewhere are flocking to shelters so they can move to the top of the list for permanent subsidized housing, city officials say. Dorian and Renita Steeley and their three children, for example, were […]
An investigative series on the Los Alamos National Laboratory by the Santa Fe New Mexican resulted in the sacking of the daily newspaper’s managing editor who edited the series, and a moratorium on nuclear technology stories by the newspaper. The editor, David N. Mitchell, told Extra! that due to the legal settlement reached after his […]
“A decade after Washington declared war on businesses that expose the public to hazardous wastes,” began a New York Times front-page article (9/1/91), “environmental experts are questioning the unquestionable: Is it worth spending a staggering $300 billion to $700 billion to restore waste sites to pristine condition?” Leaving aside the question of when the U.S. […]
In a July 1991 column about the hate murder of a local gay man, Houston Post columnist Juan Palomo tried to come out of the closet to discuss his own fears about being gay-bashed. His editors demanded the mention of his sexual orientation be cut, finding it “inappropriate” and part of a “personal agenda.” After […]
