FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
According to Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald (8/18/09, ad-viewing required), pro-coup lobbyist and frequent news show guest Lanny Davis is merely “masquerading as a ‘political analyst’ and Democratic media pundit,” when really he “is unmoored from any discernible political beliefs other than: ‘I agree with whoever pays me.’” Greenwald’s present example is a new Politico and […]
Glenn Greenwald has responded via his regular Salon feature (8/6/09, ad-viewing required) to Rush Limbaugh, “speaking to his audience of 15 million, compar[ing] Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler and Nancy Pelosi to Nazi leaders,” by asking you to instead compare (a) the way that a single anonymous person’s comparison of Bush and Hitler swamped our […]
In a piece about current media “Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did” by (belatedly) condemning the U.S. war on Vietnam, Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald (7/18/09, ad-viewing required) addresses another recently passed war reporter as well: When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam died, media stars everywhere commemorated his death as though he were one of […]
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 […]
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald (7/9/09, ad-viewing required) is extolling “The Significance of McClatchy‘s Act of Journalism” when reporting that recently released six-year Guantanamo prisoner Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil–one of many who supposedly “returned to or are suspected of returning to terrorism after their release”–“far from being in hiding, operates openly among officials of Afghanistan’s U.S.-allied government.” […]
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald has an update (7/2/09, ad-viewing required) on “several noteworthy developments since I wrote on Tuesday about the refusal of NPR‘s ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, to be interviewed by me about NPR‘s ban on using the word ‘torture’ to describe the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics”: Given the utter vapidity of her rationale (“there are […]
Salon‘s Greenwald (6/27/09, ad-viewing required) has taken a hard look at Washington Post and ProPublica journalists Peter Finn’s and Dafna Linzer’s report–“relying exclusively on three Obama officials speaking behind a veil of anonymity”–“that the White House is ‘crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.’” Finding it […]
Deeming “the battle against baseless, worthless grants of anonymity by journalists” to be “at this point, probably futile,” Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald (6/15/09, ad-viewing required) is exasperated to see how “even many of the nation’s best and most valuable reporters–such as the New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer–seem helplessly addicted to it.” Greenwald points to “an otherwise solid […]
Responding to “both Likud Party members in Israel as well as their Americans supporters” who “complain that the Obama administration is unduly ‘interfering’ in Israeli politics”–as exemplified by Ben Smith of Politico reporting that “the administration’s escalating pressure on Israel to freeze all growth of its settlements on Palestinian land has begun to stir concern […]
Writing on Salon (5/31/09, ad-viewing required) of the “controversy surrounding Jeffrey Rosen’s New Republic anonymity-driven smear attack on Sonia Sotomayor’s intellect and character,” Glenn Greenwald sees more evidence that the one trait that defines establishment pundits more than any other is a pathological inability ever to accept blame or admit error. That’s because they work […]
Poking holes in the Brookings Institution’s “preening conceit”—”they bequeath their website with an ‘.edu’ suffix…. They are ‘scholars.’ Just ask them and they’ll tell you“—Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald (5/26/09, ad-viewing required) quotes one blogger fundamentally debunking Brookings mainstay William Glaberson‘s May 22 New York Times contention that, as U.S. president, Barack Obama “has sworn an oath […]
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald (5/19/09, ad-viewing required) “gives the lie to the collective national claim that we learned our lesson and are now regretful about the Bush/Cheney approach to terrorism”: Republicans are right about the fact that while it was Bush officials who led the way in implementing these radical and lawless policies, most of the […]
While Glenn Greenwald and Camille Paglia catch us up on the increasingly hateful and dangerous language emanating from conservative talk radio–including Mark Levin show substitute host Andrew Wilkow repeatedly calling a gay man a “vile sodomite” and Limbaugh sub Mark Davis joking about the murder of top Democratic officials–there are other signs the genre is […]
Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald gets the site’s lead story today (5/8/09, ad-viewing required) with an excerpt from the New York Times obituary for U.S. fighter pilot Harold E. Fischer Jr., who, as the Times headline puts it, was “Tortured in a Chinese Prison.” Greenwald deems such naming of Fischer’s ordeal–“kept in a dark, damp cell […]
In his latest Salon blog entry (5/1/09, ad-viewing required), Glenn Greenwald displays his find of “a perfect illustration of how severely our political spectrum has shifted in the last two decades and how depraved and extremist our political and media classes have become”–one quote of the Washington Post‘s Charles Krauthammer rebutting those who “believe you […]
We noted recently that a New York Times story about the waterboarding of two Al-Qaeda detainees included a bit of media criticism. The Times mentioned that in 2007, ABC featured an interview with former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who claimed that “Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything […]
Writing at Salon (4/23/09, ad-viewing required) of how the “sheer criminality” of George W. Bush-era torture, “really for the first time, has exploded into mainstream political debates,” Glenn Greenwald is thoroughly unsurprised by their behavior as “media stars are forced to address it”: Exactly as one would expect, they are closing ranks, demanding (as always) […]
On the occasion of the first annual Izzy Awards from Jeff Cohen’s Park Center for Independent Media, the son of progressive journalism icon I.F. Stone, Jeremy Stone (Consortium News, 4/1/09), describes Stone’s most journalistically valuable quality–“his capacity for thinking independently”–along with its rewards and consequences: In the McCarthy era, because he spoke in defense of […]
Blogging from his regular Salon perch (4/20/09, ad-viewing required), Glenn Greenwald notes that the public wants to investigate U.S. torture (that’s what the polls tell us), but: These facts about public opinion are virtually always excluded from establishment media discussions, and those who advocate investigations and prosecutions–the view held by large percentages, if not majorities, […]
In his regular Salon feature (3/10/09, ad-viewing required), Glenn Greenwald is having a hard time stomaching corporate media pundits’ righteous “lectures to other countries”: The Washington Post‘s Fred Hiatt today condemns the Obama administration generally and Hillary Clinton specifically for “continu[ing] to devalue and undermine the U.S. diplomatic tradition of human rights advocacy.” Hiatt is […]
