FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Responding to a FAIR activism campaign, HBO recently added a message to the end of its movie Live From Baghdad, clarifying the scenes that seemingly endorsed the fraudulent stories about Iraqi soldiers removing Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The film, a fictionalized account of CNN‘s coverage of the Persian Gulf War, leaves viewers with the impression […]
In the weeks preceding the congressional vote on the Iraq war resolution, media reports continually emphasized poll results showing apparently solid support for the Bush administration. But below the radar screens of the pollsters and the Washington press corps, something else was happening. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were writing letters and e-mails, making […]
Nothing makes a newspaper prouder than a juicy foreign policy scoop. Except, it seems, when the scoop ends up raising awkward questions about a U.S. administration’s drive for war. Back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors, known as UNSCOM, to spy on Iraq […]
CounterSpin: Mainstream U.S. media love dissent. They love to report about it and editorialize in favor of it—when it happens in places like China or Cuba. The Washington Post and the New York Times have even endorsed armed dissent, editorializing in the 1980s in favor of aid to rebel armies. But when dissent comes home, […]
Opinion polls don’t just measure; they also manipulate, helping to shape thoughts and tilting our perceptions of how most people think.
(Note: Please read the recent update to this alert.) Last Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London to protest military action against Iraq, rallying in what the London Independent called “one of the biggest peace demonstrations seen in a generation” (9/29/02). Yet neither the Washington Post nor the New York […]
Nothing makes a newspaper prouder than a juicy foreign-policy scoop. Except, it seems, when the scoop ends up raising awkward questions about a U.S. administration’s drive for war. Back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq for the U.S.’s own […]
In the midst of the 1998 standoff over Iraqi weapons inspections, an almost frantic editorial ran in the Washington Post (8/28/98). Brimming with urgency, the editorialists declared that 22 days have now passed without United Nations inspections of Saddam Hussein’s weapons-making capabilities. That is 22 days during which he could work unimpeded to develop chemical, […]
“Everyone is genuflecting before the Pentagon powerhouse,” noted Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz (12/13/01). Since the war in Afghanistan started, Kurtz observed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was “getting better press than Rudy Giuliani.” Rumsfeld, Kurtz wrote, was “America’s new rock star.” Why do so many journalists revere Rumsfeld? His “rough-hewn charm and no-nonsense demeanor” […]
2001 saw a revival of long-discredited claims that sanctions are not to blame for Iraq’s suffering, but that Saddam Hussein bears sole responsibility
On September 12, the New York Times ran a blatantly biased front-page article by U.N. correspondent Barbara Crossette about Iraq’s decision not to allow two teams of United Nations experts into Iraq to assess the effects of the sanctions. This article is only the latest example of Crossette’s alarming willingness to repeat increasingly shrill—and largely […]
Since January 1999, the Washington Post has spun a tall tale about the 1998 collapse of U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq and the U.S./British airstrikes that followed. Not only has the Post rewritten Iraqi history, but the paper’s new version of events contradicts its own coverage from the time of the airstrikes. Despite running several […]
The same day the Washington Post was hyperventilating about the U.N. being excessively candid with its own reporter (1/7/99), the New York Times advanced the UNSCOM-spying story with a front-page article by Tim Weiner. Weiner’s piece went further than the previous day’s story in the Post, reporting that “American spies had worked undercover on teams […]
On January 6, the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman revealed in a front-page article, sourced to “advisors” and “confidants” of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, that Annan had “obtained what he regards as convincing evidence that United Nations arms inspectors helped collect eavesdropping intelligence used in American efforts to undermine the Iraqi regime.” A similar story […]
“A PR debacle.” “A very difficult sell.” “A fiasco.” Those were among the terms used to describe the Ohio State “town meeting” on Iraq broadcast on CNN February 18—used not by the Clinton administration, but by the news media. In the days following the raucous event, at which audience members peppered three administration officials with […]
The US press was full of explanations for the attack on Iraq in January 1993, many of them misleading or wrong.
“Even though a story can be incredibly preposterous in the Western mind, it can resonate deeply in other parts of the world,” Todd Levanthal, a U.S. Information Agency specialist on disinformation, told the New York Times (9/16/90). “The key is predisposition to believe, not the crudity of the charge.” While the point of the article […]
For years, FAIR wondered what would happen if he were actually interviewed by Robert MacNeil. On September 11, 1990, the mystery ended.
