FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
On November 11, Lou Dobbs abruptly quit his CNN program, bringing a sudden end to a television program most notable for its remarkably one-sided presentation of immigration issues. Since 2003, Dobbs regularly used his CNN platform to issue misleading and alarmist warnings about the threats posed by unauthorized immigrants. Dobbs has spoken of an “army […]
The Houston Chronicle‘s Susan Carroll (6/30/09) reports that Fox News celebrity journalist Geraldo Rivera “was touched” by the televised statement of a daughter mourning her law enforcement father who “was killed last week by a suspected illegal immigrant,” but also stepped up to speak to the truth larger than divisive media coverage of the matter: […]
Steven T. Jones and Sarah Phelan are reporting (San Francisco Bay Guardian online, 6/19/09) on San Francisco Chronicle immigration reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken’s acceptance of “an award and cash prize (he refuses to say how much) from the Center for Immigration Studies–which a Southern Poverty Law Center report in February 2009 criticized for its overtly […]
A posting on Timothy Karr’s Media Citizen blog (6/17/09) contrasts Crooks & Liars‘ collection of cable news pundits like Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly likening the anti-immigrant Minutemen to a giant, friendly “neighborhood watch” organization with the “chilling double-murder” Minutemen leader Shawna Forde is accused of–describing “the 911 recording of the mother as she witnessed […]
“If media reports are to be believed,” Gabriel Arana of the Nation writes (5/27/09), “an Armageddon-like rash of drug-related violence–unlike any seen since ‘Miami Vice years of the 1980s‘–has crossed from Mexico into the United States, ‘just as government officials had feared.’” But that’s a pretty big if, even though “in the national media, it’s […]
The East Valley Tribune’s Pulitzer-winning series (7/9–13/08) exposing the soaring crime rates that followed from Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s redeployment of law enforcement resources into a campaign against undocumented immigrants (see Extra!, 6/09) offers a fine example of journalism holding the powerful to account. It’s a model of journalism that has been all […]
As the country braces for another attempt at immigration reform on Capitol Hill later this year, it’s likely that we’ll see plenty more of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, his supporters and his detractors in the media. But if the past year is any indication, we may not hear from the people that are most affected by […]
Reporting on how “Jay Severin, the fiery right-wing talkshow host on Boston’s WTKK-FM radio station, was suspended yesterday,” (5/1/09), the Boston Globe‘s David Abel lists just a few of the “fiery” jock’s “incendiary comments”: In one of his broadcasts this week, Severin said: “So now, in addition to venereal disease and the other leading exports […]
In just over a month last winter, two Latino men were beaten to death in New York state while their attackers shouted racial slurs and epithets (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/25/09). Such hate crimes, motivated by anti-immigrant prejudice and other bigotries, have spurred a media justice campaign to reveal the potential human costs of hate speech. When […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin052009 Robert Johnson and Laura Carlsen @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin052009.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The AIG executive bonuses account for less than one percent of the money taxpayers are turning over to the insurance giant in the largest of the corporate bailouts. But it’s the bonus story that has riveted the public attention and outrage. […]
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok (HateWatch, 2/13/09) gives a review of Ann Coulter’s lengthy history of “sliming everyone and everything she disagrees with” before disclosing that, “despite denouncing school desegregation as a ‘spectacular’ failure, Coulter has generally avoided bolstering white supremacist hate groups. Until now, that is”: In her latest foaming-mouth tome–Guilty: Liberal […]
There was an Editorial Observer piece in the New York Times today (12/4/08) that really read like a piece from the segregated South of the 1950s, taking the side of the Jim Crow-enforcing sheriff against the outside agitators. The piece described an event at a church in Patchogue, N.Y., that encouraged immigrants to talk about […]
Immigrants aren’t a crime problem. “The foreign-born commit considerably fewer crimes than the native-born,” as President Herbert Hoover’s National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement concluded in 1931 (National Lawyers Guild Quarterly, 10/39; Immigration Policy Center, Spring/07). While noncitizens now make up more than 8 percent of the U.S. population, the available evidence indicates that […]
Fareed Zakaria, now the highly influential editor of Newsweek International, author of The Post-American World, and host of Fareed Zakaria GPS, constructed a landmark of unintended irony when he regally pronounced that “the downtrodden beg to differ” with protesters of corporate globalization (Foreign Affairs, 12/13/99). Those who demonstrated against the World Trade Organization at the […]
Media coverage of the 2008 presidential election identifies immigration as a key issue for the U.S. electorate—even though, according to most polling, it does not rank as a top priority for voters. CNN‘s Republican debate on November 28 opened with a full 35 minutes devoted to the issue of immigration. Washington Post columnist David Broder […]
Media coverage of the 2008 presidential election identifies immigration as a key issue for the U.S. electorate–even though, according to most polling, it does not rank as a top priority for voters. CNN‘s Republican debate on November 28 opened with a full 35 minutes of the debate devoted to the issue of immigration. Washington Post […]
A new FAIR survey of poverty coverage on the network newscasts finds scant media interest in the topic. We’ll talk to the co-author of the report Neil deMause. Also on the show: The cable news redemption arc of the Border Patrol agents who were convicted of shooting an unarmed suspect with writer Alex Koppelman, who recently covered the story for Salon.com.
Upon the proposed omnibus immigration bill’s final defeat in the Senate, the Washington Post (6/29/07) published an editorial titled “An Immigrant’s Lament,” which told the sad story of Ernesto, “a 31-year old Salvadoran handyman” who “watched ruefully as the senators dealt their lethal blow to his prospects for a normal life on the right side […]
This week on CounterSpin: Journalist Deepa Fernandes joins to talk about the immigration conversation that is currently unfolding on Capitol Hill, and what the press is missing. Also on the program: How do workers and the environment factor into trade agreements, with Laura Carlsen of the Americas Program of the International Relations Center.
During a May 6 60 Minutes profile, CBS reporter Lesley Stahl asked CNN anchor Lou Dobbs about a statistic cited on his program regarding immigrants and leprosy. While Dobbs assured Stahl that his show had the facts right, he was wrong. Stahl cited an April 14, 2005 report that alleged that 7,000 new cases of […]
