FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
As one would expect, corporate media reacted to the developments in Libya by turning to one of their favorite sources: Republican Sen. John McCain. He was on CNN this morning (and last night as well), and odds are that he’ll be on a Sunday show. McCain’s line on Libya is that the White House should […]
Of the 24 members of Congress who have appeared three or more times in 2011 on any of the five Sunday morning shows (i.e., CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox or CNN), according to Roll Call‘s ongoing tally, 16, or two-thirds, have been Republicans. Just seven, or 29 percent, have been Democrats. (The other one was Sen. […]
The New York Times has a piece today (3/7/11) about the debate over U.S. military intervention in Libya. The paper reports that there are persistent voices–in Congress and even inside the administration–arguing that Mr. Obama is moving too slowly. Reporters David Sanger and Thom Shanker contend that there is too much concern about perceptions, and […]
A few laughs on CBS‘s Face the Nation yesterday (1/23/11): BOB SCHIEFFER: And we begin this morning welcoming back to Face the Nation for the first time in exactly one year Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the person who, by the way, has been on this broadcast more than any other politician now in office. […]
Meet the Press announced that its show this Sunday will feature two conservative Republican guests, Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.). Well, that’s only natural, because the GOP did so well on Tuesday, winning back the House…. Right? Oh wait…. Here’s Meet the Press‘s then-host Tim Russert on November 12, 2006: Our […]
Some in the media just can’t let go of John McCain. David Broder’s column today is really headlined, “John McCain, Your Country Is Calling.” He explains that he wasn’t “bothered by the doctrinal compromises the senator made to convince Arizona voters that he was, in fact, a conservative. McCain has always been a realist, doing […]
Matthew Yglesias (8/3/10) has a good takedown of senators John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn’s (R.-Ok.) list of supposedly wasteful stimulus projects that generated an “exclusive” on ABC‘s Good Morning America (8/3/10): Jon Chait observes that McCain and Coburn also seem to have decided that anything relating to animals is necessarily waste. Hence a small […]
Today’s Los Angeles Times (6/16/10) has this headline: Debate Grows Over Afghanistan Withdrawal Plan The lead: Recent setbacks in Afghanistan have intensified debate over the wisdom of the Obama administration’s plan to begin withdrawing U.S. military forces next summer and highlighted reservations among military commanders over a rigid timeline. Debating the war—let’s have at it. […]
“I miss John McCain,” writes the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank today (2/5/10). Milbank calls himself “an original McCainiac”–by which he means that he, like so many others in the corporate media, adored the so-called “maverick”John McCain of the 2000 presidential campaign. As we’ve pointed out plenty of times before, McCain’s Senate record has staunchly conservative […]
“It is difficult to overstate President Obama’s unpopularity in most of Louisiana,” writes Campbell Robertson in a front-page New York Times article (9/11/09). Yet Robertson managed to pull it off. Robertson continues: “He lost handily to Senator John McCain here, picking up only 14 percent of the white vote. (The state is roughly two-thirds white.)” […]
Foreign Policy In Focus analyst Conn Hallinan (8/6/09) has yet another debunking of “the story most U.S. readers are getting about the coup” in Honduras, being “that Zelaya–an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez–was deposed because he tried to change the constitution to keep himself in power.” Calling this dominant media narrative “a massive distortion […]
Brad Jacobson is resurrecting the “NYT Front|Back” feature of his Media Bloodhound blog (7/10/09)–spotlighting the New York Times‘ “penchant for placing a supremely unnewsworthy story on its cover while burying a vital one in its back pages”–only for “the most egregious and absurd examples.” The current example being their July 7 front-page headliner, “In Sex […]
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald has an explanation (3/23/09, ad-viewing required) for why he thinks that Howard Kurtz’s belief that the image of corporate reporters as “just a bunch of cozy Washington insiders” is not “that big a deal”—because “there’s such a built-in adversarial relationship between the press and the pols”—constitutes “an extremely funny joke today, showing […]
Steve Benen of Political Animal points out a couple of strange questions posed by corporate journalists—one to each of last year’s major presidential candidates. In this post, Benen quotes an unnamed New York Times reporter (apparently either Sheryl Gay Stolberg or Steven Lee Myers) basically red-baiting Barack Obama: “The first six weeks have given people […]
Sometimes you don’t need to read more than a headline. Take today’s Washington Post: Senate Gets Reacquainted With McCain the Maverick OK, let’s read just a bit: Two and a half months removed from his defeat in the race for the presidency, colleagues say, McCain bears more resemblance to the unpredictable and frequently bipartisan lawmaker […]
In a column in the Baltimore Sun, journalism professor John F. Kirchdoes a quick tally of coverage of third-party presidential candidates in 2008: According to a basic Lexis/Nexis database search of election coverage from August 5 to November 5, the Washington Post and the New York Times published a combined 3,576 news stories, editorials, op-eds, […]
The point of Michael Shear’s post-mortem in today’s Washington Post (“Right Turn in July Put McCain on Unfamiliar Path“) is that John McCain ditched his “maverick” shtick only this summer: Starting in July, McCain largely abandoned the well-known brand he had built over a decade: a moderate, steady, experienced maverick whose great political skill was […]
Tim Rutten writes today in the L.A. Times (11/5/08): What is perhaps most remarkable about the changed America to which we woke this morning is how the president-elect’s race seems, in most ways, the least remarkable thing about him. In large part, that’s a tribute to the fact that Barack Obama declined every opportunity […]
The dean of D.C. press corps’ column yesterday was headlined “What We’ve Learned About McCain,” but it’s not clear “we” were watching the same campaign. After paying tribute to McCain’s heroism, his “backbone,” his “patriotic impulses,” and on and on, Broder got down to supposed lessons– McCain didn’t manage his relationship with a wounded GOP, […]
This is the tease for tonight’s O’Reilly Factor: New Gallup poll shows McCain gaining ground. Karl Rove, Dick Morris and Dennis Miller weigh in.
