FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The corporate media template for explaining Mideast violence can be summed up like this: Palestinians attack, Israel retaliates. It wasn’t surprising, then, to read this lead in today’s New York Times (12/19/08): JERUSALEM – Rockets are flying from Gaza into southern Israeli communities again. Israeli warplanes are firing missiles back, and Israel is closing the […]
The U.S. election, to no one’s surprise, was of great interest to Iran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s letter of congratulations to Obama is being widely covered, though this passage in today’s New York Times jumped out: Mr. Obama has said that he would engage in aggressive diplomacy with Iran, and that he might offer economic incentives if […]
You don’t generally expect to see a member of a terrorist movement portrayed sympathetically in the pages of a major U.S. newspaper, but that’s what the Washington Post gave us this week (10/15/08) in a report from the West Bank by Linda Gradstein: Avi Ben Yakov is a soft-spoken Jewish settler who loves playing with […]
Though the New York Times ignored Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid when it was first published–it didn’t review the book until it had already been on the Times’ bestseller list for five weeks–that didn’t stop the paper from running an article about a former Carter employee who didn’t like the book. The December […]
When Human Rights Watch recently released two investigations of the 2006 Israel/Lebanon war, the New York Times found the group’s documentation of unlawful attacks against Israel to be far more newsworthy than unlawful attacks committed by Israel. It’s rare that a media outlet’s news standards can be tested so directly. The human rights group released […]
In November 2004, a New York Times article on Palestinian elections (11/14/04) stated, “The post-Arafat era will be the latest test of a quintessentially American article of faith: that elections provide legitimacy even to the frailest institutions.” The “faith” that elites in the press and in government have in such elections is tested when the […]
As reports from Iraq become increasingly dire, US policy makers and their media enablers look to point fingers and deflect blame. This week journalist Gary Younge joins CounterSpin to discuss Iraq and the political endgame. Also on the show: Author Ali Abunimah shares about his new book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
After the June 25 capture of one of its soldiers in a raid by Hamas militants, Israel responded with a massive invasion of Gaza. It destroyed the area’s electrical generators, blew up bridges and launched a barrage of artillery at Palestinian camps and settlements. Palestinian fighters vowed steadfast resistance. Whatever meager hopes remained for peace […]
In the wake of the most serious outbreak of Israeli/Arab violence in years, three leading U.S. papers—the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times—have strongly editorialized that Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were solely responsible for sparking violence, and that the Israeli military response was predictable and unavoidable. These editorials ignored […]
(NOTE: Please see the Activism Update regarding this alert.) On July 16, CBS Face the Nation host (and CBS Evening News anchor) Bob Schieffer dedicated the entire Sunday morning news show to the Middle East conflict. In his closing editorial, he adapted a well-known fable in an attempt to explain the causes of the current […]
On June 28, CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer turned to CBS reporter Bob Simon for analysis of the current Israel-Palestine crisis. What Simon offered, however, was a familiar scenario that puts the blame squarely on the Palestinian side. As Simon put it: We can’t say how it’s going to end, but there is a […]
Journalist Robert Dreyfuss discusses his new article for the American Prospect on Dick Cheney and his staff. Also on the program: Patrick O’Connor from Palestine Media Watch discusses coverage of Israel-Palestine.
Media coverage tends to focus solely on the suffering of Israeli settlers, largely failing to include Palestinian views and the larger context in which the withdrawals of settlers are taking place. Also this week: business lobbyists and conservative politicians like to push the narrative that frivolous lawsuits are leading to unfair payouts to plaintiffs. Myron Levin, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, shares that those groups often benefit from misleading media coverage of the civil justice system.
On January 4, NPR’s Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep noted that Palestinian presidential candidate Mahmoud Abbas had described Israel as the “Zionist enemy.” But the NPR anchor didn’t tell listeners the context of Abbas’ remark: Seven Palestinian children working in their families’ strawberry fields had just been killed by Israeli forces. Abbas referred to the […]
Elections this month in occupied Palestine and occupied Iraq prompt the question: do elections equal democracy? Also this week: Bush proposes stricter limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, alleging that a high percentage of claims are without merit. But how true are these accusations?
Ali Abunimah of the website Electronic Intifada on new developments in the Palestinian West Bank. And journalist Jason Vest on the Coalition Provisional Authority and its alleged criticism of the Iraq occupation.
To encourage restraint in war coverage, governments don’t need to shoot journalists — though sometimes that’s helpful. Thirteen journalists were killed while covering the war and occupation in Iraq last year, says a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The deaths were a subset of 36 on-the-job fatalities related to journalistic work across […]
The deadly bus bombing in Jerusalem on August 19 was foreshadowed by a pair of suicide attacks a week earlier which killed two Israeli civilians. While U.S. media tended to portray these attacks as a return to violence after a relatively peaceful period, there were numerous killings in the weeks leading up to the suicide […]
The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported in May (5/31/02) that the Israel Broadcasting Authority, at the behest of a member of the Israeli cabinet, has directed its editorial departments not to use the terms “settlers” or “settlements” on radio or TV. According to Ha’aretz, “it is not clear if the editors will obey the order.” What […]
The seemingly endless volleys of attack and retaliation in the Middle East leave many people wondering why the two sides can’t reach an agreement. The answer is simple, according to numerous commentators: At the Camp David meeting in July 2000, Israel “offered extraordinary concessions” (Michael Kelly, Washington Post, 3/13/02), “far-reaching concessions” (Boston Globe, 12/30/01), “unprecedented […]
