FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
When would-be papal assassin Mehmet Ali Agca was pardoned by the Italian government and sent back to his native Turkey in June, a New York Times editorial (6/16/00) typified the prevailing U.S. media spin. The lead of the editorial described the commutation of Agca’s life sentence for the May 1981 papal shooting as “a reminder […]
Antioch College’s commencement for the class of 2000 featured a taped speech by death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted in a highly questionable 1981 trial of murdering a Philadelphia police officer. (See Extra!, 11-12/95.) The Ohio college’s graduation events also included a teach-in by supporters of Abu-Jamal and an organized police protest. Although the selection of […]
Under our office door came a note advising us that African-American and Latino groups would have a press conference the next day to release a report showing that minority populations will suffer most if the United Nations Global Warming Treaty–the Kyoto agreement–passes the U.S. Senate. The press conference was being pulled together by Advantage Communications […]
In September 1999, the Associated Press published a dramatic investigative story documenting a massacre of civilians by American soldiers during the Korean War. Eyewitness testimony was gathered from American veterans who said that they had fired—on the orders of their superiors—into a group of hundreds of Korean civilians fleeing the fighting at a place called […]
During the past three decades, the religious right has slowly chipped away at women’s access to safe, legal reproductive services with a multi-tiered approach to anti-abortion activism. Legislative efforts have resulted in funding restrictions, waiting periods, parental consent and notification bills, as well as so-called “fetal protection” bills and “partial birth” abortion bans attempting to […]
On June 2, the U.N.’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced that its 11-month assessment found no reason to open a criminal investigation of NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). Five days later, Amnesty International released a report, “‘Collateral Damage’ or Unlawful Killings?,” finding that NATO had […]
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) bills itself as the voice of American agriculture—and often succeeds in getting the media to identify it as such. In an article about an EPA study of insecticides, USA Today (10/28/99) turned to an EPA critic at the AFBF, describing it as a group that “promotes farmers’ interests.” Similarly, […]
As longtime supporters of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ important mission of defending press freedom, FAIR wrote the following letter to the CPJ to protest its exclusion of the 16 Radio-Television Serbia (RTS) employees killed by NATO from its annual list of journalists murdered because of their work. The letter was signed by a number […]
