FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
U.S. airstrikes in Libya have brought renewed focus on the 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Some are making the argument that the U.S. could–and should–be getting revenge for this act a mere 22 years later. Last night (3/21/11), one cable news host said this: Given the fact Americans died on […]
At a time when the Japanese prime minister is describing his country’s nuclear crisis and the growing threat of radiation exposure as “very grave,” it must have been comforting for Fox News watchers to turn on the O’Reilly Factor last night (3/17/11) to see Ann Coulter telling them that radiation is actually good for you. […]
To make his claim that the right hasn’t been responsible for a terrorist act since 1995, O’Reilly even had to overlook at least two domestic terror acts apparently inspired by his Fox News colleague Glenn Beck.
From David Carr‘s piece on Glenn Beck in the New York Times today (3/7/11): “When I first came here,” he told his audience on Wednesday, “I had this pie-in-the-sky belief that if I told you the truth, if I verified all of my facts and double-checked, and we could make that compelling case with facts […]
You had to assume that there would be folks in the media who wouldn’t like the recent CBS/New York Times poll that found strong public support for public workers. Sixty percent of those polled oppose stripping public workers of collective bargaining rights; 56 percent opposed cutting pay or benefits of those workers in the name […]
On his Fox News show Friday, self-described “union guy” Bill O’Reilly was touting the results of a newpoll finding that Wisconsinites are backing Gov. Scott Walker: According to a new poll by WisconsinReporter.com, a nonpartisan group, 71 percent of Wisconsinites believe that Gov. Scott Walker’s union cutbacks are fair.71 percent. And 69 percent of Wisconsin […]
A front-page story in today’s New York Times strongly suggests that Roger Ailes–the News Corp executive who runs the Fox News Channel, the Fox Business Network, and Fox broadcast stations–urged a witness to lie to federal officials in order to protectfriend and politician Rudolph Giuliani. If true, what may be most remarkable about the story […]
It is bizarre to see Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly denying that pundits from her network compare people to Nazis—contrasting this reticence to Rep. Steve Cohen (D.-Tenn.), who said calling healthcare reform a “government takeover of healthcare” was “a big lie. Just like Goebbels.” In fact, such comparisons are common currency on Fox News and […]
In addition to his repeated murder fantasies, Glenn Beck harbors apocalyptic fantasies of mass death–suggesting, for instance, that if the direction of the country doesn’t change, “God will wash this nation with blood.” (Barack Obama, are you listening?) But the Fox News host harbors many deranged obsessions. He has long obsessed over Frances Fox Piven, […]
From comedian Joan Rivers’ Twitter feed (read from the bottom up if you can): Fox says, for the record, that Rivers wasn’t canceled due to the joke; the show was overbooked, and she’llbe rescheduled. As someone who has been booked–andthen canceled–by Fox a couple of times, I’m skeptical of Fox‘s story here.
Glenn Beck has expressed on-air desires to strangle Michael Moore with his own hands, beat Charles Rangel to death with a shovel, and once aired a sketch on his Fox News show that had him poisoning then–Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Appearing on the Today show this morning (1/19/11), responding to questions about his […]
Earlier this week (1/10/11) I wrote, given how short corporate media’s memories are, “Let’s hope that when someone convenes a civility in media discussion in 2020, they don’t ask Glenn Beck to weigh in.” No need to wait that long. Time magazine has convened a panel to talk about civility in our public discourse. And […]
Right-wing pundits have come out vociferously against the idea that they, their colleagues and the political movement they identify with have anything to answer for in the wake of the Tucson massacre. David Brooks (New York Times, 1/11/11) asserted that “the evidence before us suggests that [shooting suspect Jared] Loughner was locked in a world […]
Last night (O’Reilly Factor, 1/10/11), Bill O’Reilly talking to Brit Hume: O’REILLY: We have a network, an entire network that’s built around attacking Fox News and right-wing people. That’s all they do at MSNBC. They have nothing else. HUME: How’s that working out for them? O’REILLY: It’s not working out for them. But it does […]
Last night on Fox News (12/22/10), Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly attempted to defend GOP opposition tothe James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, whichwould providehealth care for 9/11 Ground Zero workers. In his final broadcast of the year (12/16/10), Comedy Central‘s Jon Stewart devoted the entire show to lambasting the Republican opposition.Stewart’s […]
Fox host Bill O’Reilly warned viewers on December 3 about “a disturbing development at the FCC”: Commissioner Michael Copps has been criticizing the failure of the media to provide citizens with substantive political information and discussion. O’Reilly zeroed in on these comments Copps made in a BBC interview (12/1/10): I think American media has a […]
Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia caused a bit of an uproar at a hearing yesterday. As Brian Stelter reported at his New York Times blog (11/17/10), Rockefeller mused: There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC, “Out. Off. End. Goodbye.” It […]
On Friday, Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher took a study that says there are 100,000 fewer Hispanics in Arizona than there were before the debate over the state’s disputed anti-immigrant law, and reported it as 100,000 fewer “illegals.” By conflating Hispanics with “illegals,” Gallagher inadvertently illustrates the case made by opponents of the law.
Last Wednesday (Glenn Beck Program, 11/10/10), we got a glimpse of how low Glenn Beck will go to smear a political opponent. Beck’s lie that philanthropist George Soros helped “send the Jews to the death camps” during World War II, was, in essence, an attack on a Jewish child for the heartbreaking things he was […]
Bill O’Reilly‘s recent “joke” about decapitating Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank was only the latest example of a demented Fox News culture that permits on-air personalities to fantasize about assassination and other forms of violence against those deemed enemies of the station, its personalities or their worldview. During the cable channel’s 2008 election coverage, in […]
