FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
A thirty-year veteran of network news at NBC and CBS, Marvin Kalb’s current position as Harvard’s leading press critic has made him one of the go-to guys when the question turns–as it often has this summer–to journalistic ethics. Whether appearing on PBS‘s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer or CNN‘s Reliable Sources (anchored by his brother Bernard), […]
Conservative think tanks patterned after the highly successful Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute (1996 revenues: $16.5 million) and Heritage Foundation (1996 revenues: $28.7 million) opened up around the United States during the 1980s and early 1990s almost as quickly as Scholotzky’s Delis. Like Scholotzky’s, they have now reached saturation. Most states have one, some have […]
Racial profiling–the discriminatory practice by police of treating blackness (or brownness) as an indication of possible criminality–has lately been the focus of frequent legal or legislative action, resulting in a significant amount of coverage in the mainstream news media (e.g. New York Times, 5/8/98, 5/10/98; Nightline, 5/31/98; Time, 6/15/98). The coverage of police racial profiling […]
The Toyota 4 runner sits off-road in the middle of a fern-laden forest. The ad copy proclaims: THE ANSWERING MACHINE FOR THE CALL OF THE WILD From a rugged mountain vista to deep in the plush forest, nature calls out for us. And the 1997 Toyota 4-wheel drive is one of the only machines capable […]
Coverage of the fall of Suharto reveals with startling clarity the ideological biases and propaganda role of the mainstream media. Suharto was a ruthless dictator, a grand larcenist and a mass killer with as many victims as Cambodia’s Pol Pot. But he served U.S. economic and geopolitical interests, was helped into power by Washington, and […]
There have been numerous instances when media have seized on a supposed medical “phenomenon” and hyped it beyond recognition, distorting facts irresponsibly or simply getting them wrong. But few media fabrications have been as invidious, persistent or politically devastating as that of the so-called “crack baby.” Mid-1980s case studies suggested a possible link between women’s […]
