FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
FAIR’s new Action Alert points out that the New York Times has abused its own policies on anonymity to allow government officials to smear critics. We’re encouraging people to write to the Times public editor. Please post your letters to the Times in the comments section below.
(UPDATE: The Times public editor has notified FAIR about his email response to readers critical of the February 6 story. You can read it at the FAIR Blog). In two stories this month, New York Times journalists allowed anonymous government officials to smear critics as terrorists and terrorist sympathizers–a shocking violation of the paper’s explicit […]
In today’s New York Times report (2/22/12) about Khader Adnan–the Palestinian hunger striker challenging Israeli “administrative detention” practices–reporter Isabel Kershner allows this: An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called the deal over Mr. Adnan “a workable arrangement” since ultimately he will be almost completing his four-month term of detention. “We faced a […]
There’s a popular verb in headlines about climate researcher Peter Gleick’s admission that he used trickery to get damning documents out of the climate change–denialist group the Heartland Institute: “Activist Says He Lied to Obtain Climate Papers” (New York Times, 2/21/12); “Scientist Peter Gleick Admits He Lied to Get Climate Documents” (L.A. Times, 2/21/12); “Climate […]
James Traub seemed a little bummed in a Sunday New York Times op-ed (“The End of American Intervention?,” 2/18/10), that military cuts and changing priorities will mean fewer humanitarian interventions in America’s future. So we must accept, if uneasily, the future which now seems to lie before us: We will do less good in the […]
Bombing Iran could be a real strain for Israel, reports Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times (“Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets,” 2/19/12). No one’s sure they can pull it off, what with the logistics involved: Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to […]
For years prominent corporate media pundits have told us that the world—and the media—would embrace a dramatic, non-violent Palestinian resistance movement. If only such a movement—perhaps led by a Gandhi-like figure—were to finally emerge, we are told, the media coverage will come, and sympathy from across the world will strengthen support for the Palestinian cause. […]
One recent poll found 84 percent opposition on Okinawa to a new US base. And yet the New York Times tells readers that it knows better.
The media coverage of Iran is terrible, and seems to be getting worse—see Glenn Greenwald’s latest piece on the ABC and NBC nightly newscasts. And today the New York Times (2/15/12) tells readers this about Iran’s nuclear program: The new uranium enrichment plant, known as Fordo, has raised Western concerns because it is buried deep […]
In the Times Sunday Review Jesse Kornbluth writes (2/12/12): There are things that do not happen in the real world. Noam Chomsky becoming president. Unflattering photos of Jennifer Aniston. Apple doubling the price of iPhones so its Chinese assemblers can work a 40-hour week. OK, I know he’s being cheeky (Chomsky hasn’t declared as a […]
You often see pundits making suggestions to political candidates like David Brooks makes in his New York Times column today (1/10/12): If Romney is to thrive, he really needs to go on an integrity tour. He needs to show how his outer pronouncements flow directly from his inner core. He needs to trust that voters […]
His campaign might fading, but Newt Gingrich is still wowing the New York Times (2/10/12). Reporter Trip Gabriel writes: Mr. Gingrich is well known as the candidate of big ideas, hatched from a deep knowledge of politics and policy. But he is less recognized for his warehouse of everyday facts, the kind of small-bore knowledge […]
Not even a week after Barack Obama declared that not too many civilians die in the CIA’s drone strikes in Pakistan, a new report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism finds that “at least 50 civilians” have been killed in rescues attempts, 20 in strikes on funerals, with at least 282 total civilians killed since […]
New York Times columnist David Brooks, who’s been called the “bard of the 1 percent” for his writings in defense of the economic elite, is at it again–telling people not to worry about the concentration of wealth at the very top of the income scale. Brooks writes in his January 31 column that the claim […]
New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer (2/2/12) accurately reports how Republicans want to frame the disputed over the Keystone XL pipeline. But she does almost nothing to challenge that framing. Under the headline, “For GOP, Pipeline Is Central to Agenda,” Steinhauer explains: Republicans are framing Keystone as an urgent jobs and energy project at a […]
Barack Obama did something yesterday that government leaders tend not to do: He talked about the CIA drone war in Pakistan. This admission–which, it should be pointed out, happened in a Google-sponsored Q & A with the public, not a session with reporters–made it into the papers. The New York Times (1/31/12) flagged civilian deaths […]
By the tone of some of the media coverage, you might have thought Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a plan to slash military spending yesterday. On the front page of USA Today (1/27/12), under the headline “Panetta Backs Far Leaner Military,” readers learn in the first paragraph: The Pentagon’s new plan to cut Defense spending […]
A new research paper by a team of economists got a lot of pretty favorable press because it appears to deliver results that would seem to confirm what many in the media believe about American schools: If you could just use standardized test scores to weed out underperforming teachers, you would see serious improvement in […]
If Arthur Brisbane wants the Times to consider becoming factchecking ‘truth vigilantes,” this is hopefully not what he had in mind. At last night’s Republican debate (1/19/12), CNN host John King asked the candidates how they would convince a corporation like Apple to employ more workers in the United States: It employs about 500,000 people […]
When a Republican presidential candidate goes around talking about Barack Obama as the “food stamp president,” eventually reporters are going to have to write about racism. But how they talk about the issue in instructive. In today’s New York Times (1/18/12), Jim Rutenberg has a piece headlined “Risks for GOP in Attacks With Racial Themes,” […]
