FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Most people have heard the famous quote by press critic A.J. Liebling, “Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one.” Recently I keep recalling another, less popular quote in which Liebling referred to the press as the “weak slat under the bed of democracy.” He continued: It is an anomaly that information, […]
In 1997, the Soviet Union detonated thermonuclear weapons in the sky over the United States, shutting down the Pentagon’s computer systems and leaving the nation vulnerable to invasion and occupation. The U.N., dominated by East Bloc Communists, became the U.S.’s de facto government, forcing schoolchildren to pledge allegiance to the U.N. flag. The year 1997 […]
I first became acquainted with FAIR in 1987, when a friend handed me a special issue of Extra! (10-11/87) that described the distortions in U.S. news coverage of Nicaragua, highlighting the success of the Reagan administration at manipulating the news media. At the time, I was a grad student in sociology at Boston College, and […]
On April 29, FAIR issued an action alert pointing out that G. Gordon Liddy, who appeared on a Scarborough Country segment on violent talk radio rhetoric (MSNBC, 4/27/05), had on his own radio show advocated shooting federal agents. FAIR received this response from the show’s host, Joe Scarborough: Just saw your site’s write up on […]
September 28, 2004 Some callers to NBC Nightly News, responding to FAIR’s September 28 Action Alert, were told that FAIR’s transcript of Tom Brokaw’s item (9/24/04) on “liberals [who] want to ban the Bible” was incomplete. A spokesperson for NBC told callers that FAIR had left out a line in which a representative of a […]
Discussion with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman on her new book, The Exception to the Rulers.
In the wake of a FAIR action alert, the New York Times printed the following correction on Saturday, October 4: An article on Wednesday about renewed criticism of the Bush administration for its handling of intelligence before the Iraq war misstated the circumstances under which international weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998. They were withdrawn […]
“We’d like to thank the mainstream media for showing up,” quipped Cheri Honkala, adjusting her baby son on her jeans-clad lap. The executive director of the Philadelphia-based Kensington Welfare Rights Union, a multiracial organization of, by and for poor and homeless people, Honkala was opening a Saturday press conference last October in a claustrophobic classroom […]
George W. Bush’s June 14 commencement address at Ohio State University was a sign of a “revived” presidency, according to Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank (6/15/02). “Bush basked in the adulation of 55,000 people who treated him to waves of standing ovations in Ohio Stadium as he received an honorary doctorate,” he wrote. “If there […]
Good evening, I’m Congressman Bernie Sanders and I want to welcome you to what I believe is the first congressional town meeting ever organized to address the issue of corporate control of the media. Thus began the first of two public town meetings in late April 2002, where US Rep. Bernie Sanders (Vt.–Ind.) did what […]
Talking to an on-the-scene reporter covering the school shooting in Santee, California, Geraldo Rivera (MSNBC, 3/7/01) noticed lots of honking in the background. It prompted the following exchange with reporter Chip Reid: RIVERA: What–what are all those horns we’re hearing? Is there a kind of a “media go away” movement there in Santee? REID: Oh, […]
Make your own media! I’m what they call a “media critic”—I teach a course called Politics of Media as a journalism professor at the State University of New York’s College at Old Westbury, and criticize media plenty, especially in the pages of Extra!. My focus is on concentration of media ownership, especially its impact on […]
For three and a half months, the world waited for Rush Limbaugh’s promised “point-by-point rebuttal” to FAIR’s report, “Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error” (Extra!, 7-8/94). On Oct. 11, Limbaugh’s “rebuttal” finally arrived–not with a bang but a dud. Limbaugh’s 37-page manuscript addresses only about half of the points on which FAIR had documented his inaccuracy. […]
Editor’s Note: George Seldes is one of the premier journalists and press critics of the 20th Century. In his reporting on World War I, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Fascism and the Spanish Civil War, he always displayed a commitment to telling the whole truth — which often got him into trouble. From 1940 […]
When reading U.S. news coverage of international affairs, it pays to be alert, skeptical and familiar with alternative news sources. The mainstream media present the news with great assurance and glibness, moving together in the solid phalanx known as “pack journalism,” so their choices and formulations of the news seem natural and inevitable, even when […]
The April 1990 release of FAIR’s study, “All The Usual Suspects: MacNeil/Lehrer and Nightline,” rekindled the debate over TV news bias. The study was reported by major U.S. dailies, was endorsed by numerous columnists and TV critics, and led to a TV debate involving FAIR’s Jeff Cohen and NewsHour co-anchor Robert MacNeil. The six-month study, […]
