FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
To hear some tell it, the intelligence clues that ultimately led to Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan were generated by the use of torture. But the evidence available so far does not bear this out. Torture advocates on the right are claiming vindication. On Fox News Channel‘s O’Reilly Factor (5/2/11), Rep. Peter King (R.-N.Y.) […]
In today’s edition of the Washington Post (5/2/11), Dan Balz puts forth what is probably going to be a popular theme in the coverage of the killing of Osama bin Laden: that catching the Al-Qaeda leader was a top concern of both the Bush and Obama administrations. Bush put down the marker not long after […]
Today in the New York Times Paul Krugman (1/10/11) suggests that we not pretend that “both sides” are responsible for toxic political rhetoric: Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: It’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to […]
Stephen L. Carter has a piece over atNewsweek that points out that Barack Obama hardly differs from George W. Bush when it comes to war; as the subhead explains: “How does Barack Obama differ as a commander in chief from his swaggering predecessor? A lot less than you might think.” Now that’ssomethingyou don’t hearvery often […]
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen uses WikiLeaks as a jumping off point to talk about George W. Bush’s new book and the run-up to the Iraq War (11/30/10): As my colleague, the indefatigably indefatigable Walter Pincus, has pointed out, Bush manages to bollix up both the chronology and the importance of the various inspections of […]
Time magazine’s Joe Klein has read George W. Bush’s memoir, and has a few criticisms (11/11/10); for instance, he points out that Bush never stops to wonder if the UN inspectors, whom Saddam Hussein had allowed back into Iraq, were not finding weapons of mass destruction because, maybe, uh, the WMD didn’t exist. That’s a […]
NBC star Matt Lauer’s one-on-one interview with George W. Bush revealed very little in the way of information, though some lessons could be drawn from Lauer’s mediocre performance. Here was one comment from near the top of the interview: The Florida recount. Hanging chads. A divided Supreme Court. George Bush had a rough road to […]
Over athis Nation Media Fix blog (a must-read), Greg Mitchell watched Matt Lauer’s NBC interview with George W. Bush, and wasn’t impressed. He writes: Time after time Bush would offer a whopper and Lauer either said nothing, or expressed sympathy for the poor man who was subjected to such harsh criticism. It went that way, […]
“I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.” That’s how George W. Bush referred to the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in his new book Decision Points. The quote is featured in Time magazine’s Verbatim section (11/15/10), and has been discussed pretty widely. This is an interesting […]
Back in June, a study by Harvard students (echoing earlier work in Extra!—5-6/08) found that media outlets like the New York Times consistently called things like waterboarding torture when they reported on them–that is, until the Bush administration’s torture came to light. The study sparkeda lot of discussion, with the Times responding that it didn’t […]
Noting that policies like the stimulus plan tend to poll pretty badly, New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes (7/16/10) that Obama says he has pursued such policies because they’re “the right thing to do for America.” To Stolberg, that sounds familiar: It is an argument that sounds eerily similar to the one Mr. […]
That George W. Bush kept America safer from terrorism than Barack Obama is a conservative article of faith these days—and corporate media seem little inclined to challenge the blatant falsehoods used to advance this childish GOP talking point. The most prominent example came on Good Morning America (ABC, 1/8/10) during a discussion of the failed […]
Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert shook things up at the annual White House Correspondents’ dinner on April 29. In the right-wing, Bill O’Reilly-like persona made famous on his Colbert Report, Colbert skewered George W. Bush and the press, ironically congratulating journalists for giving cover to Bush on tax cuts, WMD and global warming, and chiding them […]
The Weekly Standard, the country’s preeminent neoconservative magazine, was sold to Clarity Media Group, a Denver-based publishing group, for an undisclosed sum in June (Washington Examiner, 6/17/09). Rupert Murdoch’s unloading of the country’s most vigorously pro-war journal marks the end of a particularly sinister and regrettable era in the history of U.S. media. At a […]
Asking his readers to “remember” that, on NBC, Chuck Todd “is billed as a reporter covering the White House, not a pundit expressing opinions,” Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald (7/15/09, ad-viewing required) examines a Todd appearance on the MSNBC show Morning Joe “discussing reports that [U.S. Attorney General] Eric Holder is likely to appoint a prosecutor to […]
A Tiny Revolution blogger Jonathan Schwarz (7/9/09) has posted a reminder that “back in March Phillip Swagel, who’d been assistant treasury secretary under Hank Paulson, wrote a long article about the TARP bailout called ‘The Financial Crisis: An Inside View.’” Thinking that maybe “it would be news if Swagel had stated that Paulson, Bernanke and […]
As Barack Obama and his pliant media pundits are “talking up the achievements of the six-year occupation,” Consortium News‘ Robert Parry (7/1/09) is writing of the “public celebrations by Iraqis marking the American pullout from Iraq’s cities.” Parry’s look back the last six years’ reality clearly recalls how, “relying on false intelligence and laughable legal […]
In Dan Froomkin‘s last column for the Washington Post (6/26/09), he promises to “continue doing accountability journalism”–as good as any self-description to distinguish his work from his typical Post colleague’s obsequiousness–and tries “hard to summarize the past five-and-a-half years” in which “George W. Bush was truly the proverbial emperor with no clothes”: In the days […]
Looking at “people of a certain age” for whom “getting a letter published in the Times has always been a very, very big deal,” David Margolick (Nation , 5/27/09) tells the tale of two lifelong friends and constant New York Times letter submitters–one with a “Babe Ruth”-like record of getting his views into print, and […]
Recapping at TPM Café (5/27/09) how the U.S. “press bent over backward to paint both Bushes as moderate, sensible, nice guy Republicans,” Editor & Publisher‘s Greg Mitchell writes that “a hard-right [George W.] Bush, whether real or media-created, would have never beaten Gore–not that this one did either.” Reminding us that “the New York Times, […]
