FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Major news media continued to give greater prominence to conservative think tanks in 1996, according to a survey of major paper and broadcast media citations in the Nexis computer database. Of the 10 most-media-cited think tanks, six are conservative or right-leaning, three are centrist and one is left-leaning. More than half of the total citations […]
The permissible spectrum of opinion in major newspapers seems to be narrowing. In July 1995, USA Today fired its only progressive columnist, Barbara Reynolds. Now the Washington Post has unceremoniously dumped its one consistent voice for peace and justice, Colman McCarthy, who has written for the paper since the late ’60s. Like Reynolds, McCarthy represented […]
Based in a spacious brick building a few blocks from the Capitol, the Heritage Foundation is running the most effective media operation in American politics. Heritage has succeeded with a savvy strategy: Raise a lot of money from rich people with a right-wing agenda. Hire writers, commentators and out-of-office politicians who share that agenda, and […]
The media are liberal, CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg claimed in a recent column in the Wall Street Journal (2/13/96). His proof? CBS reporters are allegedly instructed to identify the Heritage Foundation as “conservative”–but in a story on the flat tax, his CBS colleague Engberg failed to label another Washington-based think tank, the Brookings Institution, as […]
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s spectrum excludes “unvarnished progressives” while making sure that antisemites have someone to represent them.
The myth of the feminist dominatrix lives. When a handful of right-wing women founded the “Independent Women’s Forum” in 1992, they did so because “they felt invisible in a media culture that tends to represent all professional women as liberal Democrats” and they wanted “to get conservative women’s views heard in the media and on […]
A good public library strives to offer balance, diversity and inclusivity in providing sources of information for all members of the community. Libraries do not always live up to this ideal, however. Often progressive alternatives to mainstream or right-wing publications are overlooked. Faced with cutbacks in funding in recent years, many public libraries have had […]
Why have progressives virtually lost their voices in serious public policy debates? Is it the superior effectiveness (or entertainment value) of the Newt/Rush appeals to reason? Or is it just some inevitable historical cycle, which progressives should endure quietly, assuming that their turn will come? These would be logical questions if the contest for public […]
Several years ago, a Central America activist asked the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer: Who on his opinion page was the leftist who offset his regular offerings of George Will and Charles Krauthammer? David Broder, the editor replied. Broder himself would quite properly deny this designation of “leftist.” But it is true that in the […]
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, […]
Shortly after a favorable review of his book on Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Zealots for Zion, appeared in the New York Times Book Review (1/10/93), Village Voice reporter Robert I. Friedman was invited to discuss the book on Fresh Air, an interview-format show distributed by NPR. The interview was taped on January […]
There’s an old grade-school joke that about homework that went something like this: The more you study, the more you know. The more you know, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why study? Substitute “watch TV news” for study, and it still sounds like a joke, but it’s […]
The U.S. Senate has been taken for a ride on public broadcasting by the same right-wing critics who have long sought to destroy any alternative to commercial broadcasting. The current attacks on public TV — made by people who don’t seem to watch the programming — turn reality upside down. Many PBS stations air three […]
The relatively low national stature of the “major” Democratic candidates might logically have led people to pay attention to alternative candidates. But when I spoke to journalists, many immediately adopted the perspective of their sources in the Democratic Party Leadership, which they told me was more concerned than ever about not giving the impression of […]
One of the claims of the nuclear industry is that it is subject to constant criticism from the media. But a five-month sample of clippings gathered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicates that the majority of editorials, columns and news stories on nuclear power in U.S. newspapers are supportive of nuclear power. Extra! conducted a […]
Strongly backed by a well-connected neoconservative institute, right-wing campus newspapers are waging battles over what they see as highly contested territory—the nation’s college campuses. Right-wing newspapers are not a new phenomenon, but over the past 11 years, their influence appears to have grown. The increased clout is owed not so much to the tireless efforts […]
The most important think tank for the media on the Persian Gulf Crisis was the Brookings Institution. In August 1990 alone, the group’s representatives spoke 14 times on network evening newscasts, not counting appearances on Nightline, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour or network news specials. A database search of citations in six national newspapers found 440 citations […]
Right: Pat Buchanan, Fred Barnes, John McLaughlin, David Gergen, Robert Novak, William F. Buckley, George Will. Center: Sam Donaldson, Mark Shields, Michael Kinsley, Morton Kondracke, Al Hunt, Jack Germond, Hodding Carter. The power to define the political spectrum is an awesome one — determining who gets to speak and who gets censored, which positions gain […]
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, […]
As part of its ongoing examination of television news, FAIR is releasing the results of its new study, “All the Usual Suspects: The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and Nightline.” After FAIR’s February 1989 study of Nightline, members of the public joined journalists in urging the media watch group to compare Nightline with other news programs and to […]
