FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The big news in the U.S.-guided Israel/Palestine talks is that a renewal of a so-called “settlement freeze” in the West Bank is basically dead. Ethan Bronner has a post-mortem of sorts in the New York Times (12/9/10), where he describes the backdrop for the previous round of negotiations: The Israelis had insisted that the only […]
In AlterNet‘s article “Is Amazon Evil?” (12/8/10)–reprinted from the Boston Review (11-12/10)–the description of the economics of e-books is seriously dubious. Reporter Onnesha Roychoudhuri writes: If Amazon had asked publishers what they thought about locking in e-book prices at $9.99, it would have been subjected to a chorus of outrage. That’s because the math behind […]
One gets the impression, reading the New York Times‘ coverage of the WikiLeaks cables, that the paper is particularly interested in documents that portray the State Department in a good light, struggling to do good in a world that continually resists its efforts. Take today’s front-page piece (12/7/10), “America Prods and Protests But Can’t Halt […]
New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane wrote a response (of a sort) to the criticisms that the paper’s reporting on Iranian missiles was fundamentally flawed. It’s hard to believe thathis column was meant be taken seriously. To review: The Times published a story, based ona WikiLeaks cable,onNovember 29 alleging that Iran possesses powerful missiles […]
Certain editions of the New York Times (12/3/10) published today an update to its reporting on Iranian weapons with a much more skeptical tone than its original article. The first article (11/29/10), headlined “Iran Fortifies Its Missilies With the Aid of North Korea,” presented the case in definitive terms: Iran now possesses powerful missiles with […]
As Peter Hart noted earlier, New York Times political reporter Matt Bai has a piece today (12/1/10) critical of Barack Obama for being “loath to publicly disown his base.” Bai writes of Obama: “Since he isn’t willing to break publicly with liberals, independent and conservative voters tend to see him as a tool of the […]
New York Times reporter Matt Bai uses the debt commission (12/1/10) to ask whether Barack Obama will finally stand up to the liberal base of the Democratic Party. As the headline puts it, “Debt-Busting Issue May Force Obama Off Fence.” You see, in Bai’s world, Obama was never much of a Clinton-style “triangulator,” which is […]
A November 29 New York Times article alleging that Iran possesses powerful missiles with “the capacity to strike at capitals in Western Europe” appears to rest on incredibly shaky evidence–amounting to a German newspaper article that did not fully corroborate the U.S. claims the Times was touting. The piece relied on one of the cables […]
Today’s New York Times piece (11/29/10) on the re-election of a governor of Okinawa who opposes the U.S. military base there seems to treat the views of the People Who Live There as one thing to maybe think about, and an annoying, in-the-way thing at that, with residents’ resistance described, variously, as a “wrench,” a […]
WikiLeaks document dumps are largely what media want to make of them. There’s one conventional response, which goes something like this: “There’s nothing new here, but WikiLeaks is dangerous!” But there’s another option: “There’s nothing here, except for the part that confirms a storyline we’ve been pushing.” In those cases, WikiLeaks is deemed very, […]
Right here on November 12, we asked what the New York Times means when it talks about “centrism”– specifically when it comes to Beltway deficit reduction plans. The Times framed the proposal from deficit commission co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson as offering the Obama White House an opening to move to the center. That […]
If you had concluded that the Afghan War was in disarray, the front page of the New York Times today probably didn’t do much to change your mind: Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor By DEXTER FILKINS and CARLOTTA GALL KABUL, Afghanistan – For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan […]
The Irish economy is in need of a $100 billion bailout, thanks in large part to the bursting of its housing bubble. But for years the Irish model was lionized by U.S. pundits. ThinkProgress blogger Matthew Yglesias digs up a 2005 piece by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman that said: There is a huge […]
In today’s New York Times (11/22/10), Kim Severson covers the annual protest at the U.S. military training facility formerly known as the School of Americas. The point of the story, though, is that the protests aren’t such a big deal anymore (the headline: “Fort Benning Protest Dwindles, if Not Its Passion.”) The dismissive tone was […]
There’s a lot to say about Ethan Bronner’s Week in Review piece in the New York Times (11/21/10). The headline says a lot on its own: “Why America Chases an Israeli-Palestinian Peace.” This is ironic, at the very least, given the role the U.S. has historically played in making peace quite difficult. And the current […]
The civilian trial of terrorism suspect Ahmed Ghailani, who was linked to the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, was unsatisfying to those who believe that accused terroristsshould not be tried in civilian courts. To them, the scoreboard tells the story: Ghailani was convicted on one count, and acquitted onover 280 other charges. The […]
The New York Times‘ Ross Douthat (11/15/10) warns us about the nightmare world that “Nancy Pelosi and her compatriots” live in: It’s a world where the Social Security retirement age never budges, no matter how high average life expectancy climbs. Shudder! Luckily, Pelosi and co.’s world seems to have diverged from ours around 2003, when […]
New York Times headline (11/15/10): U.S. Plan Offers Path to Ending Afghan Combat More accurate headline: U.S. Plan Extends Afghan Combat by Three Years
The lead story in today’s New York Times (1/12/10), written by Sewell Chan, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David E. Sanger, focused on allies’ complaints about Barack Obama’s economic policies: There was no way to avoid discussion of the fundamental differences of economic strategy…. Major disputes broke out between Washington and China, Britain, Germany and Brazil. […]
It’s never hard to figure out what side the media are on when it comes to corporate-friendly “free trade” deals. They’re for them,because they’re “free,” and people whooppose themapparentlyprefer protectionism over freedom. So Barack Obama’s apparent failure tonegotiate a trade deal with South Korea is bad news–thoughit’s hard to read the papers and figure out […]
