FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
For a moment it looked like the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) finding that Iran had halted its alleged nuclear weapons program might put a crimp in the White House’s campaign to portray Iran as a menace to the U.S. and its Mideast neighbors. The Washington Post (12/4/07) summarized the NIE’s impact: The new intelligence […]
George W. Bush’s goal of elevating the Iran threat (New York Times, 1/8/08) got a major boost last week from the news media, who failed to question the Pentagon’s alarmist account of an encounter between U.S. and Iranian boats. On January 6 in the Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf, U.S. Navy […]
U.S. news media outlets have largely decided to echo White House charges despite the shortage of facts.
News stories about George W. Bush’s appointment of numerous Iran-Contra veterans to key posts have largely relied on past reporting and he-said, she-said soundbites rather than in-depth investigations into their complicity in one of the bloodiest scandals of the past 20 years.
The day after a Soviet interceptor plane blew up a Korean passenger jet, a New York Times editorial was unequivocal: “There is no conceivable excuse for any nation shooting down a harmless airliner.” Confronted with the sudden reality of a similar action by the U.S. government, the New York Times inverted every standard invoked with righteous indignation five years earlier.
