FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Time magazine’s James Poniewozik (9/24/12–subscription required) says it’s been “a banner year for the factcheckers,” and yet the facts keep on getting mangled: Yet the traffic violations keep coming. Scads of fibs, exaggerations and misleading statements have been swept up in the dragnet: a super-PAC ad implying that Mitt Romney was responsible for the cancer […]
At Huffington Post (9/13/12), Ryan Grim and Michael Calderone are raising questions about the somewhat mysterious disappearance of a New York Times news article: On Wednesday, the New York Times published a provocative story bylined by David E. Sanger and Ashley Parker, leading with the news that Mitt Romney had personally approved the blistering Tuesday […]
If you’re a profit-seeking outfit, which do you prefer, the appearance of fairness or the inner peace that comes with knowing you’ve done the right thing?
On NBC‘s Meet the Press (9/9/12), Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and host David Gregory had a discussion about the failures of the Obama administration’s foreign policy that included this: ROMNEY: The president has not drawn us further away from a nuclear Iran. And in fact Iran is closer to having a weapon, closer […]
The new episode of FAIR TV is here, featuring misreporting on Iran’s nuclear energy program, NewsHour lecturing labor leaders on Labor Day, and some of the most embarrassing biographical puffery for a presidential candidate you’re likely to ever hear. Please share it with your friends, and let us know what you think in comments below.
Under the headline “Democratic Disinformation From Charlotte,” the website Factcheck.org (9/5/12) took aim at this “dubious or misleading claim”: Rep. James Clyburn engaged in partisan myth-making when he said “Democrats created Social Security” while Republicans “cursed the darkness.” History records strong bipartisan support in both House and Senate for the measure President Roosevelt signed in […]
NBC‘s Tom Brokaw from the Republican National Convention last night (8/30/12): The best line, I think, in the speech was the one in which he said: “President Obama wants to slow the growth of the oceans, I want to help you and your family.” Yeah, wasn’t that great when Romney pretended we weren’t facing an […]
In an attempted factcheck of Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention, AP‘s Calvin Woodward (8/30/12) takes on Romney’s big laugh line: President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family. Woodward looked into it and found […]
It appears someone has posted a hilarious send-up of Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. On his site there’s a Talking Points commentary so wrong-headed and contradictory that it has to be a joke–and a pretty convincing one. “As you may know, we cover politics a bit differently here. We are not much on party propaganda […]
In a New York Times story (8/24/12) about Mitt Romney’s energy proposals, reporters Eric Lipton and Clifford Krauss make this observation: With gasoline prices again approaching $4 a gallon, Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, is also trying to merge energy and economic policy in a way that will make voters see increased energy production […]
“Mitt Romney Sees Path to Energy Independence,” an L.A. Times piece by Seema Mehta (8/22/12), doesn’t mention climate change at all. It also doesn’t mention tar sands, the Canadian oil deposits whose extraction would devastate the environment, even though that’s what Romney’s talking about when he says that approving the Keystone pipeline will be one […]
The Washington Post has done it again. Reporter Felicia Sonmez (8/17/12) somehow got a Republican campaign adviser to spill the beans on the Ryan/Romney relationship : A senior Republican adviser close to the campaign who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Ryan views Romney’s career as “a case study of some of the ideas […]
Washington Post columnist Dan Balz has a big scoop from an anonymous source in today’s paper (8/14/12): The choice, like most vice presidential selections, also was a way for Romney to say something bigger about the kind of campaign he hopes to run. In that sense, advisers say, Ryan was “Mitt’s pick, completely.” “Stories talk […]
Some campaign disputes can be tricky to sort out. Others are not. That’s why media coverage that takes the both-sides-have-a-point approach can be so disappointing, if not dangerous. Take Mitt Romney’s recent claim that the White House was “gutting” the work requirements in the 1996 welfare “reform” law. As a Romney TV ad put it: […]
Senator Harry Reid started a whole lot of trouble on the campaign trail when he told some Huffington Post reporters that he’d heard that Mitt Romney paid no taxes. As in zero. For an entire decade. Now there are reasons to be skeptical of Reid’s account. As Dana Milbank pointed out, Reid’s record does not […]
Writing in Newsweek, Peter Beinart has a pretty good idea: America’s foreign-policy debate desperately needs some measure of accountability. I’m not suggesting that politicians and pundits who got Iraq wrong be banished from public life. (This standard would leave me looking for other work.) But neither should they be able to flee the scene of […]
One of the most confusing terms in the media discussion is “objectivity.” In philosophy, it refers to a belief in a reality independent of the conscious mind, generally one that can more or less be known and meaningfully discussed. In journalism, on the other hand, it means “don’t scare away any potential customers.” “Objective” journalism […]
On Sunday (7/15/12), Meet the Press host David Gregory caught Barack Obama in a big-time flip flop on taxes. At least, that’s what he seems to think. Gregory said: What the president would like to do is extend the Bush tax cuts for those making less than $200,000, or $250,000, as a family, and then […]
The criticism of Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital doesn’t appear to be leaving the headlines. And thus some political reporters are, as Jamison Foser notes, drawing an unusual comparison: Romney is being Swift Boated. The latest example comes from Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (7/17/12): In a sense, Romney deserves the Swift Boating he’s […]
There are some pretty intense factchecking fights over what is true and not true about the Obama campaign’s claims about Romney’s record at Bain Capital. Media outlets are struggling with how to render a verdict; most seem to think Obama has exaggerated. But one outlet has found a voice willing to deliver a judgment. CNN […]
