FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
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 […]
Remembering how, “for days, the mainstream media talked endlessly about… Michael Vick. Dogfighting. Blood sport,” OnlineJournal.com writer Missy Comley Beattie (2/9/09) recalls being “utterly dismayed that so many people who expressed outrage over Vick’s crime, seemed to pay little or no attention to the killing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Which leads Beattie to […]
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs‘ Michael Gillespie (1-2/09) saw Alison Weir of If Americans Knew speak about her group’s “look at a category that would be universally accepted as significant and quantifiable” to examine U.S. media coverage of the Israel’s occupation of Palestine: “We settled on coverage of deaths among both populations.” Explaining that […]
New York Times reporters Ethan Bronner and Sabrina Tavernise went to Gaza (2/4/09) to look into stories of civilian atrocities, and turned up some very powerful examples. Unfortunately, the impact of that reporting was undermined by the all-too-familiar tendency to “balance” these facts with criticisms of Palestinians. Fora piece that is attempting to get a […]
To: CBC President & CEO Hubert T. Lacroix Dear Mr. Lacroix I was surprised and a bit puzzled to read the remarks concerning Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (where I am now a contributing writer) in a recent report from the CBC/Radio-Canada Ombudsman. The ombudsman’s report, which deals with the Middle East documentary Peace, Propaganda […]
As the BBC continues to come under fire for refusing to carry an aid appeal for Gaza, the U.S. media watch group FAIR is challenging the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for making false and biased claims after a campaign by groups that advocate for uncritical coverage of Israel. The campaign was launched in response to CBC’s […]
FAIR issued a press release today (2/4/09) challenging the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation over false and biased claims made by its ombud after the CBC came under pressure from a campaign launched by groups that advocate for uncritical coverage of the Israeli government. The campaign was launched in response to CBC‘s October 23, 2008 airing of […]
Reading the Electronic Intifada‘s report on how U.S. corporate media coverage of Gaza “blindly asserted Israel’s right of self-defense regardless of what was happening on the ground” reminded me of a passage in the book I’m reading, Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee. Diamond argues that the ability to exterminate other groups of our own kind […]
Two newspaper stories today provide a false account of the context of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The Washington Post: Hamas and its allies have fired thousands of rockets into Israel in the past eight years. The pace accelerated after the Islamist movement, which won Palestinian elections in 2006, routed forces loyal to the rival […]
The New York Times today makes a rare, if highly obfuscatory, reference to the fact that Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory continues despite nearly unanimous international consensus, expressed annually via the United Nations General Assembly. As a FAIR media advisory recently pointed out, international law is largely missing from U.S. media reporting on Israeli […]
When white phosphorus was used by Saddam Hussein, the weapon was identified by U.S. intelligence as a “chemical weapon.” The New York Times (3/22/95) seemed to concur; In an article noting that white phosphorus was technically classified as an “incendiary weapon,” the paper nonetheless described it as one of “the worst chemical weapons” in existence: […]
Posting his letter to the New York Times on FAIR Blog, FAIR activist bpb points out that not only is Thomas Friedman claiming that terrorism works, he’s making up evidence to claim that terrorism works: There is no evidence for Thomas Friedman’s contention that after Israel’s 2006 war with Hizballah, “Lebanese civilians, in anguish, said […]
Independent journalist Justin Podur has some advice (Dissident Voice, 1/9/09) for his fellow Canadians: “Today, if you want to have the first idea what is happening in Israel/Palestine (or most of the rest of the world), the best thing to do would be to turn [national Canadian media] off completely.” A friend of mine, Brooks […]
Those who might expect the Paper of Record to ignore or bury stories about Israel using the incendiary white phosphorous in its attack on Gaza can point to yesterday’s paper (1/11/09), where the following sentence appears at the very bottom of one piece: Human rights groups are also concerned about the Israeli use of white […]
Writing for the Nation (1/7/09), Alexander Cockburn finds that in “the major media, aside from some passable stuff on the cable news shows, the flow of ignorant drivel seems as toxic as ever,” maybe worse, since Israel has tried to empty Gaza of all reporters. The Israelis wipe out whole families, phone apartment blocks to […]
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer continues to support Israel’s assault on Gaza in today’s paper (1/9/09). He displays a remarkably odd notion of what a cease fire is for, citing the lessons of Lebanon as a cautionary tale: The U.N.-mandated disarmament of Hezbollah in Lebanon is a well-known farce. Not only have foreign forces not […]
Peter Hart asked the New York Times: What should TV reporting of a civilian massacre look like, exactly? Well, I guess the Times thinks they should be covered this way: Extra!: How America’s Leading Paper Covered a Massacre …which is to say, they should be covered almost exclusively from the point of view of the […]
When you routinely report about Israel and Gaza through the eyes of Israelis, the results can be awkward, like today’s New York Times front-pager that frames what was a human catastrophe for many Palestinians–the killing by Israel of some 40 Gazans at a U.N. school–into a mere military and PR “pitfall” for Israelis. As the […]
The Associated Press reported on December 27 that “thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons.” In his latest column (1/2/09), Charles Krauthammer pointed to that report to prove just how obvious it is that Israel is the moral actor in […]
