FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Yesterday (4/12/12) Pakistan’s parliament unanimously voted in favor of a resolution that, among other things, calls for an immediate end to CIA drone strikes in their country. The Washington Post‘s account of this news included this curious observation: From Washington’s perspective, the debate in Parliament was a healthy exercise in democracy but one that is […]
The Justice Department alleges that Apple‘s collusion with book publishers to fix ebook prices has cost readers $100 million. So why are so many news reports on the anti-trust suit suggesting that the Apple/publisher alliance is actually good for consumers? The New York Times‘ David Streitfeld (4/12/12) warns: Amazon, which already controls about 60 percent […]
The corporate media love bipartisanship. So the news that a “bipartisan” budget failed a vote in the House was something to be mourned. Under the headline “Budget Plan’s Defeat Shows Hurdles to Compromise,” New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman (4/2/12) explains that this budget proposal modeled on the media-beloved Bowles/Simpson plan failed because “Washington’s conservative […]
Today the New York Times (4/3/12) has a long report detailing how the Obama White House has politicized the regulatory process, apparently partly out of a fear of being portrayed by Republicans as “an overzealous and job-killing regulator.” It’s an interesting piece, covering an array of regulatory decisions. One of the more interesting media anecdotes […]
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is doing what he does best–traveling the world. In today’s column (3/28/12) he finds that other countries’ political systems– Australia and New Zealand–are well to the left of our own: In New Zealand and Australia, you could almost fit their entire political spectrum–from conservatives to liberals–inside the U.S. Democratic […]
The big New York Times story on the Afghan War today (3/27/12) focuses on public opinion in the United States, which is now dramatically anti-war: 69 percent think we shouldn’t be there. An interesting point argument is raised later in the piece, when two sources make the argument that the war wouldn’t be so unpopular […]
Newspaper columnists often seem to get to write what they want. So it’s interesting when two of them are writing about the same thing on the same day—and arriving at the opposite conclusion. In the Washington Post (3/23/12) , conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote this about the Affordable Care Act’s costs, as tallied by the […]
Over the weekend, the New York Times (3/18/12) published an article pondering why no one has taken Gloria Steinem’s place as ubiquitous spokesperson for women’s rights: Over the last 40 years, Gloria Steinem has almost always been at the other end of the phone when some member of the news media has sought comment about […]
There is a big piece in the New York Times today (3/19/12) on the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. And, as has been the case before, the U.S. perspective comes via anonymous government officials: A senior American official in Washington said that the CIA had consistently taken precautions to reduce the risk to civilians, and […]
In the New York Times (3/19/12), Elizabeth Jensen reports on some unusual scheduling decisions at PBS that are diminishing the audience for some of the best stuff you’re likely to see on public television–the acclaimed documentary series Independent Lens and POV: After being bumped from Tuesday nights to a hodgepodge of time slots, Independent Lens […]
Bill Keller’s New York Times column (3/19/12) begins with what might be a bit of self-deprecation: “When you’ve been wrong about something as important as war, as I have….” You might take that as a cue to stop reading right there. But Keller’s point is that people should think long and hard about signing on […]
I felt like there was something slightly off about this New York Times story yesterday (3/15/12), “In Reactions to Two Incidents, a U.S.-Afghan Disconnect.” Reporter Rod Nordland wanted to explore why Afghans seemed so much more outraged over the recent burnings of the Quran than they were about a massacre of 16 civilians by a […]
Anyone who doubts the extent of pressure on media outlets when it comes to covering Israel should pick up the New York Times. In yesterday’s Times (3/8/12), we saw this correction: Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about a large lobbying effort on Capitol Hill Tuesday by delegates to the annual conference […]
Glenn Greenwald wrote recently of the extraordinarily limited media debate on Iran, which seems to consist of U.S. and Israeli officials making threats–attack now or attack later–alongside clinical discussions of the difficulties of bombing Iran. There is plenty missing–actual Iranians talking about what war would mean in human terms, legal experts discussing how preventive war […]
If you want an example of how much corporate media love so-called moderate Republicans, look no further than Frank Bruni‘s New York Times column (3/4/12): Back in 1999, when I covered Congress, I had a kind of crush on Olympia Snowe. Many of us in the Senate press gallery did. Well, that’s good to know. […]
I think most sensible people understand that the current uproar in Afghanistan over the desecration of the Quran isn’t really just about the defiling of a holy book. But if there’s sense in the world, there’s also nonsense. Enter Tom Friedman’s New York Times column today (2/29/12): U.S. troops accidentally burned some Qurans, and President […]
Imagine that there’s a mad scientist living on an island surrounded by treacherous, shark-infested waters. When ships are wrecked on the hidden rocks, the survivors swim to the island to escape the sharks, where they become prisoners of the mad scientist, who subjects them to bizarre experiments for his own amusement. When people point out […]
After our new alert (2/24/12), the New York Times public editor’s office contacted FAIR to let us know that Arthur Brisbane responded to readers who complained about one of the articles discussed in the alert. Below is that response, which was emailed to readers. It was not published on the Times‘ site. Thanks for your […]
The New York Times, along with a few other media outlets, went to court to win the right to publish Teacher Data Reports–the “value-added” ratings for some 18,000 New York City public schoolteachers. The Times explains today–accurately–that the numbers are seriously flawed: Even before their release, the ratings have been assailed by independent experts, school […]
There’s this notion in the elite press that Mitt Romney’s flip flops are a good thing–we’ve written about it here and here. In the latter post, I pointed to Nicholas Kristof’s take: I’d much rather have a cynical chameleon than a far-right ideologue who doesn’t require contortions to appeal to Republican primary voters, who says […]
