FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Media Bistro‘s Christine Delargy quotes (3/23/09) at length from a letter to the Washington Post questioning the “lack of diversity on WaPo‘s Sunday editorial pages”: Sunday’s editorial pages are presumably the most-read of the week. They should represent the most critical and varied thinking of the week and set the standard for editorial pages. Help […]
It takes a special kind of person to send stalkers out after a woman because she wrote a blog post criticizing you for blaming a victim of rape and murder for wearing the wrong sort of clothing.
Journal-isms writer Richard Prince is highlighting (3/19/09) an article in the current issue of GQ headlined “You Think Your Job Sucks? Try Working for Lenny Dykstra”–the title of which might be an understatement, considering some of its reporting therein: A photo editor’s unflattering portrait of baseball-player-turned-financial adviser Lenny Dykstra as a racist, sexist and homophobe […]
Resisting the tide of “liberal blogger men” who “are thrilled with the New York Times‘ appointment of 29-year-old Atlantic blogger Ross Douthat to replace William Kristol on the op-ed page,” Katha Pollitt (Nation, 3/18/09) contrasts the fact that “Douthat is best known for his conservative Catholicism (abortion is murder, frozen embryos are children, contraception kills […]
Paying homage to “perhaps the first journalist to speak out on the racist and sexist implications of lynching,” Black Agenda Report‘s Sikivu Hutchinson (3/11/09) says that the “relative obscurity” of Ida B. Wells doesn’t reflect well on the present day: Despite her challenges to the American criminal justice system, her long record of publication at […]
Women In Media & News guest blogger Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser’s examination (3/12/09) of the “media firestorm” that “erupted… when Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets” shows that in initial “stories playing on the well-worn ‘wow factor’”–like “the AP‘s piece, posted on Fox News‘ website, [that] bore a cutesy headline: ‘8 Is Definitely Enough‘”–“basic information was […]
A Tiny Revolution blogger Jonathan Schwarz (2/8/09) quotes from yet another “Time magazine article about Larry Summers and how incredibly brilliant he is”: Perhaps as early as March, they’ll launch their biggest lift with the beginnings of a plan to reform Social Security and Medicare, the two entitlement programs that, even before the economy collapsed, […]
Courtesy of Ben Armbruster (Think Progress, 2/9/09), generally right-leaning media “critic” Howard Kurtz displays a total lack of self-reflection when, after discussing the sexism Katie Couric faced “as the first woman to anchor a network news program,” Kurtz then asked Couric if her new hairstyle has something to do with her most recent successes: KURTZ: […]
David Ansen (Newsweek, 12/22/08) has a point when he says that the movie Borat “epitomized the [Bush] era.” But he strikes a jarring note when he says: Racism, misogyny and homophobia come pouring out of the mouths of [Sasha] Baron Cohen’s unsuspecting dupes, and in a time of political correctness, when the slightest suggestion of […]
As President-elect Barack “Obama has made a point of appointing a diverse group of thinkers to his cabinet,” Courtney E. Martin’s American Prospect article (12/8/08) asks, “What about the diversity of opinion outside the White House?”: Let’s start at the top. Kristal Brent Zook, author of I See Black People: The Rise and Fall of […]
Blogger Carole Cohen has posted (Cleveland Real Estate News, 12/2/08) Margot Friedman’s mass email wherein the media activist bemoans NBC‘s choice of yet another white male to host their premier Sunday news show–yet Friedman finds a silver lining: Thank you for writing a letter to the president of NBC News to ask that the network […]
Feministing blogger Vanessa Valenti (11/21/08) plugs the recent FAIR study of gender disparity at Huffington Post, saying that “too many of us feel that women bloggers are underrepresented and undervalued in the progressive blogosphere, but hard evidence is always helpful.” Valenti’s request for readers’ “thoughts” is met by commenter Renee’s observation that not only are […]
Noam Chomsky points out that a Boston Globe analysis (11/9/08) of the Obama victory claims that the president-elect owes nothing to “traditional Democratic constituencies” like labor, women, ethnic minorities and the peace movement, because a “grassroots army of millions”—seemingly unconnected to such constituencies—”propelled” Obama’s win. It’s worth noting, however, that this idea of a Democratic […]
Calling herself “more of an ally than an activist for transgender people,” Veronica Arreola admits (Women In Media & News, 11/16/08) to “not being on top of each nuance of the movement” but still is aghast “at most of the media’s reaction to [Thomas] Beatie’s second pregnancy”: It’s not the headlines that upset me; most […]
For those who have had enough election coverage, here’s the alternate story of the day: “Sex on TV Increases Teen Pregnancy, Says Report” (Time, 11/3/08). “Teen Pregnancies Tied to Viewing Sexy TV Shows” (AP, 11/3/08). “Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies” (Washington Post, 11/3/08). Stories like these are catnip for the […]
Too many things to say, really, about this New York Times online opinion piece by former Dole advisor Douglas MacKinnon. But hereâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s just one: Regarding the Obama phenomenon and the media fascination with him, a senior staffer for a rival Democrat primary opponent offered up this theory to me for part of the bias. This […]
The New York Observer‘s Felix Gillette brings our attention (10/20/08) to a new self-described “grassroots” website created after “NBC/MSNBC was criticized during the 2008 election for sexism in its coverage.” Founder Margot Friedman further explains that “picking a qualified woman and/or person of color to host Meet the Press would help repair some of the […]
First-time film director Michelle Garcia discovers (Women In Media & News, 10/13/08) how sexism affects media images of such underreported issues as the U.S. government “denying passports to Mexican-American–CITIZENS–whose birth were attended to by midwives”: [WIMN editor Jennifer L. Pozner] mentions the images and voices contained in the piece are not often widely seen. After […]
Former FAIR staffer Jennifer L. Pozner gives props on her Women In Media & News site (10/12/08) to a “local Louisiana newspaper report[ing] on the cycle of domestic violence without sensationalism”: Last week, I blogged about the Eunice News, a small, local newspaper in Louisiana that has decided to do something that shouldnâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t be (but […]
Having found the issue “quite… complex” when facing it herself as a parent, Veronica Arreola of Women In Media & News writes (10/8/08) that “the debate over vaccines is a serious issue and does not deserve to be sexualized” as in this Chicago Tribune lede (10/3/08): “Former Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy and actress Amanda Peet […]
