FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
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.
Columnist Katha Pollitt (Nation, 6/10/09) has examined the extent to which, “in the immediate aftermath of Dr. Tiller’s murder, it was astonishing how many men were called upon to weigh in on abortion on national television”: CNN featured William Schneider, Sanjay Gupta and Bill Press. On Fox, Bill O’Reilly defended his use of “baby killer” […]
In wonderment that, as “Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is making the rounds of the Capitol this week,” corporate pundit “jackasses are still saying she has to explain her ‘wise Latina’ comment,” Laura Flanders (Women In Media & News, 6/4/09) remarks that “the money-media have spent the week making the comment ‘controversial’ (and then calling […]
There’s almost too much to say about this recent column Joe Klein wrote in Time magazine. But let’s start by parsing this: In the good old days of the last century, the years before the collapse of the economy and the World Trade Center towers, political discourse in the U.S. was, too often, rutted in […]
In Tuesday’s New York Times online edition, the paper’s neo-neo-con columnist Ross Douthat laid out a sprawling argument that seemed to conclude that pro-choice activists and the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling were responsible for violence against women’s healthcare providers, including the murder of Dr. George Tiller last week. “If anything, by enshrining a […]
The website Gawker (6/9/09) caught Newsweek making some sneaky changes in an online article—changes that were ordered by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, and which just happened to favor the host of a show that Meacham appears on regularly. On the afternoon of Friday, June 5, Newsweek‘s website put up an interview with Joe Scarborough, the […]
Reporting that “reactionary radio host and white supremacist Hal Turner was taken into custody Wednesday after remarks urging Catholics to ‘take up arms’ against two Connecticut lawmakers and a state ethics official over legislation… regarding the church,” independent news outlet Raw Story‘s John Byrne (6/4/09) deepens the story by recalling that “Turner used to be […]
Writing at Salon (5/31/09, ad-viewing required) on the murder of “Kansas doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday while attending church services with his wife,” Gabriel Winant wants us to know that there’s no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly […]
Attempting to add appropriate context to mainstream reportage of Sunday’s murder of Kansas doctor George Tiller, the Media Justice Fund blog has reprinted (6/1/09) an October 8, 2006, Women In Media & News post by Jennifer Pozner titled “The Terrorists Who Aren’t in the News: Anti-Abortion Fanatics Spread Fear by Bombings, Murders and Assaults, but […]
The Washington Post (11/10/03) described an unusual arrangement between the Pentagon and 18 local TV stations across the country: In exchange for being allowed to interview Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the stations agreed to also air interviews with three or four other Pentagon officials, like Paul Wolfowitz and Paul Bremer. One should always question when […]
Since the victory declared in Iraq turned out to be premature, the Bush administration has been doing more and more media criticism. Their complaints about the media may be dubious, but they do get results. For example: On Fox News Sunday (10/26/03), Paul Bremer, the administration’s overseer in Iraq, took issue with a New York […]
In an October 4 interview with CNBC‘s Tim Russert, Fox News star Bill O’Reilly made a puzzling boast about his network’s Iraq coverage. He said, “Well, I think Fox News Channel was lucky because we were less skeptical of the war, and the war went very well. So we won.” O’Reilly treated his network’s lack […]
