FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Imagine that the company founded by the frontrunning Republican presidential candidate also owned a massive radio company–say, the largest one in the country. And imagine that said company announced, right as the election season started, that it was ditching its progressive talk format in a major city for a mostly conservative lineup. Stop imagining–Brad Friedman […]
If you’ve paid attention to the presidential campaign season, you’ve no doubt been entertained by the string of embarrassments and gaffes: Rick Perry blows the voting age! Herman Cain can’t remember what to say about Libya! Mitt Romney talks about the upside of a murderous dictatorship! Wait–what? In the November 22 debate, Romney gave this […]
Huffington Post reporter Jon Ward did what reporters should do when covering political campaign ads. He told readers, at the top of his story, that the new Mitt Romney ad was based on a lie: The 60-second Romney ad quoted Obama as saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” It […]
Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s new TV commercial is based on a lie. Will reporters say so? The ad starts with a Barack Obama quote: ”We’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades.” To which Perry responds: ”Can you believe that? That’s what our president thinks is wrong with […]
With all the chatter about the inevitability of Mitt Romney winning the Republican nomination, it might be useful to recall the last time the media were sending the same message about an early favorite, at least according to the national polls: Democratic Nomination Preferences Oct. 4-7, 2007 Gallup Poll Candidate % Support Hillary Clinton 47 […]
The New York Times has an interesting profile today (10/18/11) of a retired Wall Street trader named Robert Halper who, it turns out, made an early donation to Adbusters to help with the Occupy Wall Street movement: Mr. Halper, who lives on the Upper West Side, had long been a supporter of the magazine, donating […]
The front page of USA Today (9/19/11) tells us that Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is taking “the heat,” but not to worry–he says he can handle it. That’s especially true with reporters like Susan Page on his side: He’s not worried, he said, because only one issue really matters to Americans in this election. […]
There is little reason to care about what the polls say right now about who’s leading in the Republican presidential nomination. But the media obviously think otherwise, hence this headline in the Washington Post yesterday (8/25/11): Romney Loses GOP Front-Runner Status The “news” is that Rick Perry is leading in a new Gallup Poll. But […]
As we’ve said plenty of times before, one of the main jobs of campaign journalists is winnowing the field of candidates– which must come as a relief to voters who don’t want to have more of a say in the process. Before the results of the Iowa straw poll rolled in this weekend, there were […]
There’s a lot of chatter—and presumably more to come—about this Politico story today (8/9/11): Obama Plan: Destroy Romney By Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin August 9, 2011 04:29 AM EDT Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, […]
I noticed a few stories in today’s USA Today (6/13/11) about supposed Republican front-runner Mitt Romney. There will be plenty more of this to come–horserace commentary based on polling that’s being done in order to give journalists a reason to talk about one candidate more than another, which candidate has “momentum” and so on. It’s […]
The Washington Post had a piece yesterday (6/9/11) on Mitt Romney’s views on global warming. It serves as a reminder that Republican political candidates are under enormous pressure from the right-wing base of the party on this issue–any politician who’s ever suggested that climate change is a problem, or backed efforts to address it, is […]
Sasha Issenberg reports in the Boston Globe (3/2/10) that Fortune magazine Washington bureau chief and Fox News pundit Nina Easton advised Republican Mitt Romneyon his recent book No Apology. Easton told the Globe that she “offered some writer’s advice on things like structure and how to better tease out themes in his writing.” This isn’t […]
At the Republican candidates’ debate on June 5, White House contender Mitt Romney remarkably claimed that weapons inspectors were barred from entering Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. But Romney’s error was little noted by the mainstream media. Asked if he thought it was “a mistake for us to invade Iraq,” Romney declared the question […]
