FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Over on Twitter, Glenn Greenwald recommended this USA Today profile of Boston University historian Andrew Bacevich, who has been one of the most prolific and incisive critics of U.S. foreign policy in recent years. Greenwald called it “surprisingly good,” which is right. But one thing about the piece really bothered me–how it dealt with the […]
A December 1 CBS Evening News report about the Iraq War managed to mislead viewers about the start of the war and severely diminish the loss of civilian lives. Reporting on the handover of the U.S. military headquarters to Iraqi forces, anchor Scott Pelley announced: What began in 2003 as an effort to overthrow Saddam […]
In Wednesday’s New York Times (10/26/11), Michael Gordon wrote a piece headlined “Papers From Iraqi Archive Reveal Conspiratorial Mind-Set of Hussein,” about some Iraqi archives that give an inside-the-bubble picture of Saddam Hussein’s rule. Not surprisingly, Hussein comes off as paranoid, incompetent and so on. Gordon begins the story noting that Hussein was troubled by […]
Richard Engel on NBC Nightly News (10/21/11), speaking about the end of the Iraq War: The training wheels off, Iraq will have to succeed or fail without American troops on the ground to guide the way. That’s quite a metaphor—invading and occupying a country for eight years as “training wheels.” Engel’s report includes this reference […]
Fox host Bill O’Reilly knows a thing or two about boundaries. As he told his TV audience Monday night, some “far-left” radicals crossed the line on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a blog post about how some Republican politicians turned the attacks into a “wedge issue,” […]
Over the course of the Iraq War, many U.S. media outlets have managed to misconstrue Iraqi public opinion about the presence of U.S. troops. As early as 2004, as FAIR (6/2/04) pointed out, research showed that the Iraqi public wanted U.S. troops out: According to a new poll from the Iraq Center for Research and […]
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (9/5/11) takes the eve of the 10th anniversary of 9/11 to say that he’s sorry: I went home on September 11 with my shoes dusted with the detritus of the World Trade Center. I felt a hate that was entirely new to me. Soon after, the anthrax attacks began, and […]
(UPDATE: Today’s Times includes a story about the WikiLeaks Iraq cable, under the somewhat strange headline “Cable Implicates Americans in Deaths of Iraqi Civilians.” Still very little in the rest of the press— nothing on television, according to a search of the Nexis database). One of the main media tropes regarding WikiLeaks‘ release of […]
Fareed Zakaria cheers the Libya War in Time magazine this week for not following the Iraq model: It has been prosecuted with the memory of the Iraq war firmly in mind. Only this time the approach has been to view the last war as a negative example. The international coalition—and even the Libyan opposition—is doing […]
A headline and subhead in the Los Angeles Times: Iraq attacks raise new concerns about U.S. pullout Suicide bombings, car explosions and gunfire that killed at least 70 in an apparently coordinated assault suggests Iraqi forces may be overwhelmed by insurgents after American troops withdraw. Of course, these attacks happened while U.S. troops are still […]
U.S. officials seem to be making progress in convincing Iraqi politicians to let some troops stay in Iraq beyond the December withdrawal deadline. The Washington Post weighs in today (8/4/11) and gets some anonymous straight talk: “There seems to be broad partnerships and political coalitions emerging that take tough decisions,” said a senior U.S. Embassy […]
The U.S.-based women’s rights group MADRE (6/10/11) reported that members of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq—its partner organization in Baghdad—and other protesters were brutally beaten and sexually assaulted in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square on June 10 by government-sponsored mobs. What were they demonstrating for that so threatened Iraq’s government? Democracy. “For months, young women […]
Newsweek has a feature called “My Favorite Mistake,” where a famous person talks about something they’ve done wrong.https://fair.org/blog/wp-admin/edit.php This week (7/24/11) it’s former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. The mistake she cited was when she wore the wrong pin to a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and then said something critical about his Chechnya […]
The current Status of Forces agreement calls for U.S. troops to be out of Iraq by the end of the year. The U.S. government wants to stay longer, and would seem to be pressuring the Iraqi government to ask them to do just that. But the Iraqi government hasn’t done that yet–leading to stories like […]
The New York Times’ Michael Shear has a piece today (5/19/11) reminding readers that presidential candidates often have early stumbles of the sort that Newt Gingrich has been having. He recalls several examples, most of which don’t really offer much hope for Gingrich. One is Wesley Clark’s brief 2004 campaign: In 2004, General Clark’s campaign […]
The Washington Post today (5/10/11) has a perplexing article by Aaron Davis about U.S. troops leaving Iraq. Here’s the lead: BAGHDAD — The United States’ pleas for Iraq’s government to decide “within weeks” whether American troops should stay beyond a year-end deadline to leave will not be met, Iraqi politicians say, complicating plans for the […]
I was struck by the contrast between two passages I came across recently: Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people–including combatants–have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22–less than 3 percent–are women. If Gadhafi were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties. –Alan J. […]
OK, this isn’t Sean Hannity‘s byline in the Post today, but it might as well be. The headline should stop you: In bin Laden Victory, Echoes of the Bush Years The piece–actually written by Scott Wilson and Anne Kornblut–lays out the argument: As President Obama celebrates the signature national-security success of his tenure, he has […]
Tom Friedman, writing today about the Arab Spring (4/13/11–the same column Jim Naureckas critiqued for FAIR Blog here): Another option is that an outside power comes in, as America did in Iraq, and as the European Union did in Eastern Europe, to referee or coach a democratic transition between the distrustful communities in these fractured […]
Afraid of NATO killing civilians in Libya? The New York Times editorial page (4/8/11) sees the way forwardby ramping up the war: There is a much better option: the American A-10 and AC-130 aircraft used earlier in the Libya fighting and still on standby status…. But no other country has aircraft comparable to Americaâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s A-10, […]
