FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Veterans of the battles over public broadcasting know the script by now: Right-wing Republicans denounce NPR and PBS for being too “liberal,” threatening to cut their federal funding. Public broadcasting’s defenders rally to “save” Big Bird and the like. The difference this time around, though, is significant. The right-wing Republican is not a politician per […]
In March 1997, a joint poll by the Washington Post, Harvard University and the Kaiser Family Foundation asked Americans which area of federal expenditure they thought was the largest. Was it Social Security (which actually constituted about a quarter of the budget)? Medicare? Military spending? Sixty-four percent of respondents said it was foreign aid—when in […]
Nothing rankles bigfoot journalists more than seeing the conventional wisdom they so painstakingly craft, distill and disseminate each day simply ignored—or worse, rejected en masse—by large numbers of people. That seems to be how most U.S. pundits and correspondents interpreted this spring’s rejection of the proposed European constitution by voters in the Netherlands and France. […]
While talking heads chattered about the Joe Wilson/Karl Rove “Plamegate” scandal (Extra!, 9—10/05), one cable news host staked out a firm position (7/12/05): “I say give Karl Rove a medal. . . . Valerie Plame should have been outed by somebody. And nobody else has the cojones to do it.” The host claimed—inaccurately—that Wilson’s “little […]
U.S. news media outlets have largely decided to echo White House charges despite the shortage of facts.
Over the past few years, the war over the Digital Divide has spread to a new technological turf: “broadband” Internet access. Broadband allows for much faster and more efficient data transmission than traditional dial-up modems. The catch: The telecommunications companies that offer broadband don’t necessarily offer it to all customers, and for those who can […]
On June 6, a years-long civic battle over plans to build a combined NFL/Olympic stadium atop publicly owned rail yards on Manhattan’s West Side ended with a thud. After a hard-fought lobbying campaign that saw more than $42 million spent on both sides (Newsday, 6/16/05), New York state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver used his power […]
Missing the Point of Torture Jacqueline Bacon’s article “Torturing Language” (Extra!, 7-8/05) is a very good review of how language can be used to confuse and mislead people, but it misses the main point. The torture of prisoners is not some closely guarded secret; the people of Iraq and Afghanistan know perfectly well what’s going […]
False Believers “True believers on the left and the right, hoping to rouse their armies for a showdown over [Supreme Court nominee] John Roberts, immediately trumpeted two ‘facts’” that “aren’t true,” Newsweek reported in its August 1 cover story. First, there were the “conspiracy theories” about Roberts’ “behind-the-scenes role” in the 2000 Florida recount, which […]
