FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The New York Times editorial the day after George W. Bush’s inauguration didn’t find space to mention the most striking feature of the 2001 inauguration: that it occurred amidst widespread and angry protests rejecting the legitimacy of Bush’s claim to office.
U.S. News & World Report‘s February 19 cover story on the Bush administration tax-cut plan featured the usual presidential-honeymoon puffery, marveling at Bush’s “derring-do” in facing down critics who “didn’t fully appreciate” how deeply he believed in his tax-cutting agenda. When the piece finally ventured into the tax plan’s specifics, it fell straight into the […]
The New York Times editorial the day after George W. Bush’s inauguration (“A Vision of Unity,” 1/21/01) predicted, based on the inaugural address, that Bush could “lift the nation to a new era of inclusion and social justice,” and found room to describe how “the gloomy light of a winter’s day was offset by splashes […]
John Ashcroft, George W. Bush’s nominee for attorney general, was questioned during his Senate confirmation hearing about his on-the-record endorsement of the white supremacist publication Southern Partisan. Sen. Joe Biden (D.-Del.) asked Ashcroft to respond to a series of quotes from the magazine, each of which had appeared in FAIR’s January 12 media advisory on […]
“Your magazine also helps set the record straight. You’ve got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Confederate President Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I’ve got to do more. We’ve all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we’ll be taught […]
No sign of journalistic caution attended the pulsating graphic Fox News flashed across screens late on Election Night 2000: George Walker Bush, 43rd President of the United States Tom Brokaw was no more circumspect in interrupting NBC’s broadcast to announce, “George Herbert—George Walker Bush wins!” And CBS’s Dan Rather left no doubt when he announced: […]
Throughout the presidential elections, mainstream media outlets were quick to charge Democratic candidate Al Gore with exaggerations: Whether he was talking about inventing the Internet, inspiring Love Story or discovering Love Canal, you just couldn’t trust what Gore was saying. If you looked into these incidents, you found that in each case the media’s exaggerations […]
The end of the presidential race has produced one thing media can virtually all agree on: The time for fighting is over. Reporters like Tim Russert had predicted a potential “political civil war;” when it didn’t happen, that seemed reason enough for celebration. Unfortunately, for many reporters the “ceasefire” in the ballot battle signaled an […]
While mainstream media outlets have been quick to charge Vice President Al Gore with exaggerations after the presidential debates and throughout the campaign, a series of comparable exaggerations and distortions made by Republican candidate George W. Bush have received far less coverage. Media were fervently interested in Gore’s claim in the first debate (10/3/00) that […]
In a presidential election campaign allegedly focusing on meaty debates over public policy, the king of all policy questions is how to use the $4.6 trillion in projected government budget surpluses. Despite the daunting complexity the media like to attribute to fiscal issues, the budget question basically comes down to three choices: Expected surplus tax […]
June 1999 The Times ran a disclaimer (3/19/95) for a remark it would not repeat. It said the computer did it. The remark had turned up in a March 15 dispatch about Texas Governor George W. Bush studying to become president. One of the Times ‘ many editors, the correction revealed, had added in a […]
