FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
When Republican presidential contender John McCain called on June 17 for an end to the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, corporate media framing of the debate that followed helped sell his position. Journalists focused more on the political calculations of the move and its supposed populist appeal—while downplaying the question of whether or not […]
When Barack Obama decided to reject public financing in the general election, corporate media and Republican partisans made an identical attack, claiming that Obama broke a promise to take public funding. Unfortunately, this claim was demonstrably untrue: Obama hadn’t made an unconditional promise to take public financing. The New York Times (6/20/08) referred to Obama’s […]
Cherry-Picking Intelligence The recent Senate Intelligence Committee report didn’t really conclude that the White House was playing games with pre-Iraq invasion intelligence, argued Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt (6/9/08): “On Iraq’s nuclear weapons program? The president’s statements ‘were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.’” Hiatt failed to quote the rest of the sentence […]
“I’ve been twisting gender stereotypes around for 24 years,” Dowd responded. She said nobody had objected to her use of similar images about men over seven presidential campaigns. . . . “From the time I began writing about politics,” Dowd said, “I have always played with gender stereotypes and mined them and twisted them to […]
