FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
In a bizarre column blaming TV talkshows, in part, for the “sexually irresponsible culture of poverty,” Newsweek‘s Joe Klein (2/6/95) provided telling insight into how some in mainstream media see their relationship to poor people: “Television is the only sustained communication our society has with the underclass,” Klein wrote. “It is the most powerful […]
From dioxin to Whitewater, from Rodney King to Reaganomics, Rush Limbaugh has a finely honed ability to twist and distort reality.
In her new book Where the Girls Are, Hampshire College media studies professor Susan J. Douglas argues that to grow up female with the mass media in the United States is to grow up confused, or, as she puts it, “with the bends.” When it comes to the women’s movement, or the dreaded F-word, “No […]
In 1990, the executive editor of the New York Times responded to a critical study of his paper by saying, in effect, that when women were making the news, they would be in it. But women are making news daily. Usually, they are the news, yet Frankel and his colleagues, as Jane O’Reilly would say, […]
In 1990, the executive editor of the New York Times responded to a critical study of his paper by saying, in effect, that when women were making the news, they would be in it. But women are making news daily. Usually, they are the news, yet Frankel and his colleagues, as Jane O’Reilly would say, […]
A new study of public television programming challenges many of the premises of the conservative-dominated debate over public television bias. The independently conducted study, a version of which will appear in the September/October issue of FAIR’s magazine Extra!, is the first ever to examine public TV’s full evening schedule. It focuses, in particular, on the […]
Just what do lesbians have to do to get a photo on the front page of the Washington Post? When thousands of gay women roared past the White House the day before the big lesbian and gay civil rights march April 25, fire-eaters did their thing in front of the Clinton home. Some were bare-breasted, […]
It was the military and the media that made The Gay Agenda popular, says Bill Horn, once a CBS sportscaster, now video maker for the Springs of Life charismatic Christian church that produced the tape. “Since The Gay Agenda was featured on Larry King Live and ABC World News Tonight, calls have poured in on […]
Once a month, In the Life broadcasts on 60 public television stations throughout the country, reaching an estimated audience of 4 million. The independently produced half-hour variety show, sponsored by New York City PBS affiliate WNET, is the nation’s first nationally distributed, gay-oriented television show. In the Life began broadcasting in 1992, the culmination of […]
In a July 1991 column about the hate murder of a local gay man, Houston Post columnist Juan Palomo tried to come out of the closet to discuss his own fears about being gay-bashed. His editors demanded the mention of his sexual orientation be cut, finding it “inappropriate” and part of a “personal agenda.” After […]
The latest trend in intellectual (and not-so-intellectual) magazines, lest you have been asleep, is a widespread denunciation of the Tyranny of the Politically Correct.
The media have been fascinated with the thousands of U.S. military women on active duty in the Persian Gulf. “Women Warriors,” a Newsweek cover called them (9/10/90), while People‘s cover story was “Mom Goes to War.” Women have long been used to whip up public enthusiasm for battle. What makes the Gulf crisis different is […]
The New York Times no longer prints the word “gay” only in quotation marks, but it still has a long way to go to represent gay and lesbian reality. On the issue of gay-bashing, Times coverage in recent months has shown a pattern of neglect and distortion. “A Gay Protest Against Attacks Becomes Violent” was […]
Most mainstream human rights organizations place a de facto priority on questions of physical integrity and violations of political and civil rights. Social and economic rights are addressed only insofar as they have a direct bearing on the political and civil issues; labor organizing, for example, is a form of free association, and restraints on […]
