FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
In the past few years, the Democratic Party’s rank and file has shifted left on major issues. In contrast, nominally liberal media—or major media whose editorial line is reliably pro-Democratic—have drifted rightward.
A new FAIR study finds that Republicans dominated coverage of Donald Trump’s appointments, with GOP partisans making up 47 percent of total sources and outnumbering their Democratic counterparts by a 5-to-2 ratio.
The New York Times’ op-ed page’s latest right-wing hire, Bret Stephens, doesn’t like Donald Trump—but he loves Trump’s worst ideas.
The orthodoxy on the New York Times op-ed page isn’t “liberalism”; Bret Stephens is the third representative of his ideological niche, the anti-Trump conservative, to currently have a home there.
Bret Stephens’ hiring highlights the radical asymmetry at work when considering what is and isn’t a fringe opinion. When one goes to the far right, there doesn’t seem to be a line that can’t be crossed, while anything slightly to the left of Hillary Clinton is nonexistent in the staff opinion section at the New York Times.
Of the top 100 US newspapers, 47 ran editorials on President Donald Trump’s Syria airstrikes last week: 39 in favor, seven ambiguous and only one opposed to the military attack.
Five major US newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and New York Daily News—offered no opinion space to anyone opposed to Donald Trump’s Thursday night airstrikes. By contrast, the five papers ran a total of 18 op-eds, columns or “news analysis” articles (dressed-up opinion pieces) that either praised the strikes or criticized them for not being harsh enough.
“What we see as a result of McCarthyism is a much narrower range of political ideas that impoverished the American political scene.”
Hundreds of thousands filled the streets of New York for the People’s Climate March. But some big corporate media outlets didn’t seem to think that was news.
It’s hard to imagine news coverage of military regulations that excludes Pentagon officials, or a discussion of derivatives trading that leaves out Wall Street executives—those directly affected by policy outcomes. But that’s how corporate media cover the minimum wage story, according to a new study by Extra! that finds low-wage workers are largely excluded from […]
Issues like oil spills, land use rights, groundwater pollution etc. are all complaints made by critics of the Keystone XL pipeline. And looming over all of them is the way that tapping the tar sands will exacerbate climate change. But the media doesn’t seem to care.
In the view of the head of Chicago public radio, Smiley & West—a show with two African-American hosts focusing largely on the powerless—was an obstacle to inclusivity because its opposition to poverty and inequality alienates those with other views.
The establishment media figures who moderated the 2012 major-party candidate debates confined the discussion to a remarkably narrow range of topics, a FAIR analysis of debate questions finds. A wide variety of topics were never brought up in questions during the six total hours of debate. Among economic subjects, no questions were asked about poverty, […]
The Washington Post had a two-page spread in its September 11 edition devoted to a “debate” on energy policy. But industry critics were missing from the picture. Why? Perhaps because the oil industry, undisclosed to Post readers, was sponsoring the discussion.
Since 1990, the Latino population in the United States has more than doubled to 16 percent, but English-language U.S. news media outlets are simply not keeping up. While people of color and women have always been underrepresented in U.S. media, Latinos consistently stand out—in the coverage as well as inside the newsroom—for their exceptionally paltry […]
For many Latinos, the growth of new media offered hope for both expanded representation and democratization in the truest sense of the word. It was not enough for this growing demographic in the United States to be written about and reported on. Latinos, who defy simplistic labels and check boxes, wanted to represent themselves and […]
Citizens need thorough coverage from local media outlets of their potential representatives to make an informed decision about who will best serve their interests. It’s unfortunate that quality news on congressional elections is so hard to come by.
The New York Times‘ Jerusalem bureau was embroiled in controversy two years ago when news broke that bureau chief Ethan Bronner had a son who enlisted in the Israeli army (Extra!, 4/10). As Bronner wraps up his tenure, a new conflict of interest has arisen: Bureau reporter Isabel Kershner’s spouse works to promote favorable coverage […]
It’s time to tell the TV networks: Sunday morning should be more than GOP TV. Sign FAIR’s petition today! A new study from FAIR (Extra!, 4/12) of the Sunday morning network chat shows found a distinct conservative, white and male tilt in the guest lists. In an eight-month study (6/11-2/12) of the four shows–ABC‘s This […]
CBS host Bob Schieffer once declared that his show’s mission was to “find interesting people from all segments of American life who have something to say and give them a chance to say it.” By that standard, Schieffer’s Face the Nation–and the rest of the Sunday morning TV chat shows–are failing miserably, according to a […]
