FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen says it’s time to “fight crazy with crazy” on Iran’s nuclear policy. If that passes for discussion of diplomacy in the corporate press, maybe we should look beyond them for interpretation of the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report. We’ll be talking with analyst […]
Various forces have been accused of being behind the January 12 killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi–including the Iranian government, the Iranian opposition, the United States and Israel. To sort through this murky subject, MSNBC (1/12/10) turned to Democratic congressmember Jane Harman, who confidently told Andrea Mitchell: I think the logic here is […]
The New York Times’ treatment of Iranian and Israeli nuclear programs in recent months is a clear example of the systematic double standard the “paper of record” displays in international coverage (Extra!, 8/09). The Times has devoted tremendous space and resources to covering Iran’s nuclear program. Even though, as the Times itself explained (9/26/09), there […]
There have been recent discussions (e.g., New York Times, 9/29/09) about whether the press is doing a better job covering allegations about Iran’s nuclear program than they did during the run-up to the Iraq War. But in some crucial and very basic ways, many in the media are performing just as poorly as they did […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: This week on CounterSpin, did the White House really disclose the existence of Iran’s new Uranium enrichment plant, and does the plant, as many news stories seem to indicate, really violate the law? And what evidence is there that the new plant may have anything to do with a […]
As negotiations begin in Geneva between Iran, Germany and the U.N. Security Council permanent members, Juan Cole debunks the prevailing myths about Iran. Myths that could not endure if U.S. news outlets took journalism seriously and challenged U.S. officialdom on Iran.
When the results of the June 13 Iranian elections were decried as fraudulent (charges that were later backed up by a detailed study by Chatham House—6/21/09), U.S. media instantly became the champions of the oppressed Iranians who took to the streets in protest. Cries of righteous solidarity echoed from virtually all mainstream outlets, and the […]
Realizing that “by now, talk of the Iranian elections will have traversed into the abyss of yesterday’s news,” Warehouse magazine contributing writer Mohsen al Attar (7/10/09) still thinks “the events narrate a highly educational tale about the role of media in present-day society”: Few would question the media machine’s efficiency. Once a major media outlet […]
Independent investigative journalist John Pilger recently (7/6/09) gave Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman his view of the broad media landscape, informed by the fact that “we have many alternative sources of information now, not least of all your own program, though I wouldn’t call that alternative“: But for most people, the primary source of their information […]
Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research had one of the most informative pieces I’ve seen on the Iranian election, published on WashingtonPost.com (6/26/09). Weisbrot examines the actual Iranian vote-counting procedures, and concludes that in Iran, “large-scale fraud is extremely difficult, if not impossible, without creating an extensive trail of evidence.” Since […]
Knowing how much “we reporters love a catch phrase,” Iran writer Reese Erlich (ZNet, 6/28/09) wants you to know that, despite “Twitter being all a flutter in the west,” current reporting is “highly misleading” in that “Iran is not undergoing a Twitter Revolution. The term simultaneously mischaracterizes and trivializes the important mass movement developing in […]
Veteran independent Mexico reporter John Ross (CounterPunch.com, 6/28/09) wants to know which countries come to mind when thinking about “a stolen election by an entrenched regime,” “demands for a recount to which election officials respond by offering to recount just 10 percent of the vote,” or even “a regime-controlled media that exalts the incumbent’s victory […]
Proving his memory better (or at least less selective) than that of the institution of corporate journalism, Media Bloodhound blogger Brad Jacobson (6/24/09) is proposing that “It might be more difficult for Republicans to bash President Obama for being ‘timid‘ in his comments about the Iranian government’s violence against protesters if the U.S. media didn’t […]
Discussing (5/31/09) the “story on the two U.S. journalists detained in North Korea,” NPR Check‘s Mytwords states clearly that it “deserves coverage, as did some coverage of [Roxana] Saberi’s arrest in Iran (though not the wall to wall attention given by NPR).” But a reader‘s link to the L.A. Times‘ May 24 “article on another […]
Reporting that “the Obama administration has recently paid a lot of lip service to freedom of the press, particularly around the case of Iranian-American journalist Roxanna Saberi, who was released May 11 from an Iranian prison,” Jeremy Scahill asks (Rebel Reports, 5/26/09) the simple question, “If Iran Freed Roxanna Saberi, Why Won’t the U.S. Release […]
The New York Times had a story yesterday (5/21/09) about the test of an Iranian missile “that was capable of striking Israel and parts of Western Europe.” This was an important point in the article—reporters David E. Sanger and Nazila Fathi included it in their lead paragraph, and later listed it among “three technologies necessary […]
Pointing to a May 9 Boston Globe editorial saying that Barack “Obama conveyed the right message last week by hosting Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari” to emphasize “the close link between Pakistan and the anti-Taliban struggle in Afghanistan,” before admitting that “U.S. military strikes against militants in both countries inevitably […]
Corporate media outlets treat U.S. intelligence agencies with solemn reverence when those agencies are reinforcing official views about American enemies and friends. This is true even when the same media outlets are duped by intelligence agencies time and again. But stray from the nationalist straight and narrow, and these otherwise respected sources risk becoming invisible, […]
Asserting that “one positive aspect of the wreckage left by the Bush presidency is that many of the most sacred Beltway pieties stand exposed as intolerable failures, prominently including our self-destructively blind enabling of virtually all Israeli actions,” Salon.com‘s Glenn Greenwald (3/9/09, ad-viewing required) cites “the last three New York Times columns by Roger Cohen” […]
The U.S. election, to no one’s surprise, was of great interest to Iran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s letter of congratulations to Obama is being widely covered, though this passage in today’s New York Times jumped out: Mr. Obama has said that he would engage in aggressive diplomacy with Iran, and that he might offer economic incentives if […]
