FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The big news out of the Middle East yesterday was the Israeli government’s decision to approve an expansion of the Gilo settlement near Jerusalem. The White House’s muddled position on settlement expansion has been a key part of Israel-Palestine negotiations. Many headlines framed the news as you’d expect (New York Times: “Plan to Expand Jerusalem […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: A new investigative series by McClatchy newspapers’ Greg Gordon reveals that in 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs sold more than $40 billion in securities backed by risky home mortgages, “but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the […]
Today’s Washington Post (11/2/09) notes the White House’s apparent softening towards the Israeli side in Mideast negotiations (the headline is “Israel Putting Forth ‘Unprecedented’ Concessions, Clinton Says,” a good indication of the current administration stance). The Post tells us that the Palestinian position “appears to have hardened in recent days,” with “little room to negotiate […]
Isabel Kershner writes a piece in the New York Times (10/9/09) that starts out as a profile of an Israeli artist who makes flowers out of Qassam rocket pieces. The main point, though, is to discuss thechanged reality in southern Israel, thanks to the invasion of the Gaza Strip late last year that killed over […]
The Obama administration’s push to freeze Israeli construction of illegal colonies in the West Bank has brought the settlement question back to the fore of media coverage. On July 27, Time published a rather long piece by Nina Burleigh on Israeli settlements under the headline “Two Views of the Land.” The first view was Israeli: […]
PBS‘s NewsHour‘s Gwen Ifill (9/15/09), quizzing Richard Goldstone on his U.N. fact-finding mission that found that both Israel and Palestinian fighters had committed war crimes in the Gaza conflict: The term “even-handed” is the problem that Israel has with the conclusions in the report. Your criticism of Israel seems so much harsher than that of […]
FAIR associate Sam Husseini has blogged his reaction (Husseini.org, 7/4/09) to a Barack “Obama Photo Op with Helen Thomas” in which the president “came with cupcakes to wish Helen Thomas a happy birthday”: “Now, if only he’d take her questions.” Obama claimed they have a “common birthday wish”–for a “real healthcare reform bill”–but Thomas is […]
Time has a big piece by Nina Burleigh on Israeli settlements in this week’s issue. It’s a familiar framing: The Katzes, very normal, gentle people readers can identify with (they’re even from New York!), “consider themselves law-abiding citizens” and do painfully earnest and upstanding things like “publish a small community magazine and take part in […]
Responding to “both Likud Party members in Israel as well as their Americans supporters” who “complain that the Obama administration is unduly ‘interfering’ in Israeli politics”–as exemplified by Ben Smith of Politico reporting that “the administration’s escalating pressure on Israel to freeze all growth of its settlements on Palestinian land has begun to stir concern […]
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 […]
The New York Times‘ Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner (5/9/09) wrote about the Israeli government’s development planin Jerusalem–a “$100 million, multiyear development plan in some of the most significant religious and national heritage sites just outside the walled Old City here as part of an effort to strengthen the status of Jerusalem as its capital.” […]
Writing under the pen name Jami Tarn (CounterPunch, 3/27/09), one San Francisco lawyer is rallying against “a hate-filled column in the San Francisco Chronicle.” Chronicle commentator Debra J. Saunders “insinuated that Tristan Anderson, still lingering in a coma in Tel Aviv after taking an Israeli tear gas canister to the face, costing him part of […]
As “the American foreign policy community worked itself into something resembling a frenzy over the appointment of Charles W. ‘Chas’ Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council”–because “at stake was, if not a direct policy battle of huge consequence, a real struggle over the range of viewpoints that will be permitted in an official government […]
Veteran journalist Robert Parry (Consortium News, 3/15/09) has a message for anyone left who, when they “hear the name Washington Post,” might “still think of… brave journalists facing down a corrupt president”–“today’s version of the newspaper would be a sad disappointment, a betrayal of a noble past”: Over the last three decades, the Post has […]
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” […]
National Public Radio watchdog Mytwords (NPR Check, 3/3/09) is moved to declare the network’s Palestine/Israel coverage “worse than worthless” after “yesterday morning first featured Michele Kelemen redelivering Secretary of State Clinton’s talking points (Hamas is a terrorist organization, blah, blah, blah, Hamas has to renounce violence, blah, blah, blah, U.S. is giving tons of money […]
Sometimes when you read reports about the Middle East, you get the impression that corporate journalists think Palestinians are another species entirely. Here’s the New York Times‘ Mark Landler (3/4/09) explaining the theory of how better relations with Syria could help create a peace deal between Israel and Palestine: By seeking an understanding with Syria, […]
On January 11, 2009, a Washington Post article (“The View from Israel: Victors in a Necessary War”) declared that “Israelis have been . . . resolute” in their support of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza. What the piece did not mention was that some 20 percent of the citizens of Israel are […]
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman referred disparagingly this week to the praise that terrorism allegedly receives in “mainstream Arab media, like Al Jazeera.” In his February 18 column, Friedman wrote: To be sure, Mumbai’s Muslims are a vulnerable minority in a predominantly Hindu country. Nevertheless, their in-your-face defiance of the Islamist terrorists stands out. […]
Even though “Al Jazeera English is also on the cusp of a carriage deal in Canada,” Broadcasting & Cable‘s Marisa Guthrie reports (2/18/09) that the channel has “had little luck getting picked up by U.S. cable and satellite providers.” As part of an effort to “appeal to consumers via a grassroots marketing campaign that attempts […]
