FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
‘How Short Our Memory Is’ Looking back at the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough (Morning Joe, 3/19/13) scorned media outlets and others who failed to acknowledge their responsibility for leading the country into war: “The very same people who spent years beating up George Bush were the very ones beating the […]
The pundits’ message on Barack Obama’s talk of a “red line” on Syria is that they are concerned about the credibility of the president’s threats of violence–much more so than about the credibility of his evidence.
When someone says they “broke” with George W. Bush over the Iraq War, you might be inclined to think that they did that sometime before 2006 or so, which is about when Bush strategist-turned-TV pundit Matthew Dowd is saying he left.
O’Reilly was outraged by Sirota’s point that the government’s response would be very different–more costly, potentially more violent–if the perpetrators fit a certain profile. This is ironic, because O’Reilly had, the night of the attacks, basically made Sirota’s point.
The headline on a story by Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi is “On Iraq, Journalists Didn’t Fail. They Just Didn’t Succeed.” To make that case, though, he has to redefine “failure” so far down that it’s hardly possible to avoid failing.
This week on FAIR TV: Joe Scarborough remembers some things about the Iraq War–but forgets the things he said back then. We’ll take a look at the CNN Steubenville coverage that had so many critics outraged. And the Washington Post presented two takes on drone deaths in Pakistan.
Thanks to the Washington Post, we’re still reading lies about the Iraq War ten years later.
Ten years ago, a front-page New York Times story helped mislead us into war with the idea that Iraq was trying to procure special aluminum tubes for its nuclear weapons program. Last night, one of the PBS NewsHour’s two expert journalists to look back on Iraq was the guy who co-authored that piece.
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s commentary looking back at the Iraq War took aim at some politicians and media outlets who were supportive of removing Saddam Hussein from power. But somehow he forgot to include his own words.
Howard Fineman–formerly at Newsweek, now at Huffington Post–tries to come to terms with his Iraq War failures, seemingly with good intentions. But he falls short of addressing a record that shows a remarkable level of enthusiasm for the job of advocating for Bush’s “eyes-on-the-prize decisiveness.”
Ten years ago, a major American magazine published a bombshell report about the non-existence of Iraq’s WMDs. But it was hardly noticed by a corporate press corps too busy hyping the threat from those non-existent weapons.
Time magazine has a profile this week of Senate Republican buddies John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and one passage really stands out–not for what it reveals about them, really, but about the media. Michael Crowley writes: Graham and McCain have been friends for more than a decade, a partnership born of their shared passion for […]
I suppose we might ignore that the first lady of a country appeared at an awards show, flanked by members of the military, to present a prize to a film about the heroism of U.S. intelligence. No, the real problem is Iran’s Photoshopping.
In the run up to the Iraq War, the New York Times famously reported on an Iraqi scheme to procure special aluminum tubes that could only have one purpose: Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program. The claims were false–Iraq, as it turned out, had no nuclear program–but still hugely influential.
This week on CounterSpin: “Irrefutable” was the headline on the Washington Post editorial responding to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s UN presentation making the case for war on Iraq. That was ten years ago this week; we’ll talk with author and activist Norman Solomon, co-founder of RootsAction.org about how much difference there is between then and now.
Also on the show: Reading the eulogies for late New York City mayor Ed Koch, you’d think he was a universally loved figure. But for the not so adoring, Koch is remembered as an antagonist of ethnic minorities who presided over massive corruption and failed to adequately confront the emerging HIV/AIDS pandemic. We’ll explore how Koch dealt with the pandemic with Nation editor Richard Kim.
Last night, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews hosted a discussion on the Obama administration’s recently disclosed “white paper” justifying its policy of using drones to strike at U.S. citizens. Matthews ultimately deciding that the policy was defensible–on the grounds that the CIA director Leon Panetta goes to church.
Ten years ago today, Colin Powell made the Bush administration’s case for going to war against Iraq, and much of what he said was false. Most of the journalists who promoted his justifications for the war paid no price for their failures.
Anonymous government sources speaking to the New York Times, along with intelligence based on satellite imagery, tell a frightening story: The brutal leader of an unfriendly Arab country is preparing to unleash chemical weapons. Sound familiar? There are significant differences between the allegations about Syria’s WMDs today and Iraq’s nonexistent weapons in 2003. But the […]
It goes to show you how limited the debate over warmaking is when politicians whose records are mostly pro-war can be portrayed as war skeptics. That’s what is happening with Barack Obama’s new cabinet picks: Sen. John Kerry for secretary of State and former Sen. Chuck Hagel as Defense secretary.
If you were concerned that the Syria WMD stories didn’t already feel enough like the Iraq WMD reports, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius had one just for you. It’s not that Ignatius doesn’t know that this story sounds, well, familiar–but it’s important to recall more of the journalism from the Iraq invasion era.
