FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Media polls have proclaimed, in self-congratulatory fashion, that about 70 percent of the public thinks the media did a good job in reporting the Gulf War. But if one measures the media by how well they inform the public, a recent study indicates they failed dismally. The study, conducted by the University of Massachusetts’ Center […]
The most important think tank for the media on the Persian Gulf Crisis was the Brookings Institution. In August 1990 alone, the group’s representatives spoke 14 times on network evening newscasts, not counting appearances on Nightline, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour or network news specials. A database search of citations in six national newspapers found 440 citations […]
1. Secret U.S. Arms Shipments to Iraq (Murray Waas, Village Voice, 12/18/90): The Reagan administration reportedly sent sophisticated weaponry to Iraq through third-country cut-outs. Waas indicated that the secret policy violated U.S. arms export laws. 2. The Diplomatic Scandal (Murray Waas, Village Voice, 1/22/91): U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie now claims that her assurance […]
Whatever the Gulf War will do to the political geography of the Middle East and the world, the war changed the landscape of the American and international news media forever. The clear winner is Cable News Network, in ratings, name recognition, praise, even envy. CNN has become the international channel of choice. When Iraqi foreign […]
“Even though a story can be incredibly preposterous in the Western mind, it can resonate deeply in other parts of the world,” Todd Levanthal, a U.S. Information Agency specialist on disinformation, told the New York Times (9/16/90). “The key is predisposition to believe, not the crudity of the charge.” While the point of the article […]
The extent to which Gulf War reporting was controlled by the Bush administration was seldom detailed by the press and hence widely misunderstood by the public, which largely bought the argument that restrictions were necessary for some vaguely defined “security” reasons. Such arguments were belied by the Pentagon’s arbitrary ban on coverage of coffins returning […]
