FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The lesson of the Shirley Sherrod story would seem to be a simple one:A conservative blogger with a history of promoting inaccurate, racially chargedstories published another one, and people in the media (not to mention the White House) fell for it–again. But New York Times reporter Matt Bai wrote a piece in the paper’s Week […]
The list of First Amendment–trampling rules for Guantánamo reporters makes for dispiriting reading in today’s New York Times (7/21/10)—e.g., “If information the government deems protected is inadvertently disclosed, the Pentagon can order reporters not to reveal it.” But perhaps the most discouraging part of Jeremy Peters’ article is the list of reporters who fell afoul […]
As France’s lower house of parliament approved a ban on wearing full-face Islamic veils such as the burqa or niqab, many U.S. news outlets left out a key voice in their reports: the Muslim women in France who are actually affected by the ban. Several major outlets, including the New York Times (7/14/10), Washington Post […]
Ever since the Israeli raid on a Turkish group’s boat filled with aid for the Gaza Strip, there has been a lot of attempts in the press (FAIR Blog, 6/10/10), following Israel’s lead, to label the Turkish humanitarian group IHH a supporter of “terrorism.” The latest salvo comes from a New York Times article (7/15/10) […]
New York Times London bureau chief John Burns has joined other high-profile reporters (e.g., CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan) in denouncing fellow journalist Michael Hastings. Hastings’ Rolling Stone expose prompted the dismissal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was relieved of his Afghanistan command following Hastings’ revelations that he and some of his aides had […]
Noting that policies like the stimulus plan tend to poll pretty badly, New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes (7/16/10) that Obama says he has pursued such policies because they’re “the right thing to do for America.” To Stolberg, that sounds familiar: It is an argument that sounds eerily similar to the one Mr. […]
New York Times reporter Isabel Kershner (7/15/10) writes a news analysis of why “peace talks” between Israel and the Palestinians are at a virtual standstill, despite the “upbeat atmosphere” in Washington following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama’s recent meeting. When she attempts to contextualize the “peace talks,” Kershner throws in this misleading history: […]
The fact that the Federal Reserve could be doing much more to stimulate the economy—but so far has chosen not to do so—is finally getting some prominent corporate media attention. The New York Times wrote today (7/15/10), referring to Fed chair Ben Bernanke: As Mr. Bernanke pointed out in a speech in 2002, when he […]
Can we agree that calls for a government to violate international law are not a helpful contribution to the public debate? That’s what the New York Times (7/6/10) offered when it published a call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land in a letter from Richard Gertler of Teaneck, New Jersey. Gertler argues […]
There’s been an awful lot written about the Washington Post and David Weigel. The short version of the story: Weigel was hired by the Post to do blogging/Internet reporting on the conservative movement. This bothered some on the right, since Weigel’s left-libertarian politics made them think he was out to get them. Weigel evidently had […]
Blogger Ben Somberg (7/3/10) notes that the New York Times is still telling readers that there isserious public concern about the budget deficit. This time the story is the debate within the Obama administration: Political advisers are channeling the widespread public anger at deficits while the economic team argues that the government should further spur […]
Taghreed El-Khodary, formerly the New York Times correspondent in Gaza, spoke recently at an event organized by the Palestine Center (6/23/10). She shared some interesting observations–the first being that her revelation that she left Gaza after the controversy erupted over Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner’s son joining the Israeli Defense Forces: I’m sorry that I […]
A study (4/10) by Harvard students discovered that waterboarding was commonly called torture by major newspapers–right until the United States was found to be practicing it. The study looked at coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal. As Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald put it, “We don’t need a […]
You’d think after the paper’s recent whopper on the magnitude of the BP oil spill, folks at the New York Times would be extra careful. Apparently not. Back in May the paper suggested the BP spill wasn’t nearly as bad as Iraq’s 36 billion gallon spill at the end of the Gulf War. That number […]
Writing from the confines of what some Palestinians call the “Ramallah bubble“ (Ha‘aretz, 1/1/09), Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 6/30/10) thinks he knows how to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: “quietly support[ing]“ the Palestinian Authority while it builds a “real economy, a professional security force and an effective, transparent government bureaucracy.“ Friedman has a curious definition […]
New York Times reporter Larry Rohter turned in a factually challenged fact-check of Oliver Stone’s new film South of the Border. So Stone and the film’s co-writers Mark Weisbrot and Tariq Ali wrote a devastating rebuttal. A reader passed along a link to that piece to Rohter, suggesting that he “should be embarrassed” by his review. […]
We’ve rather amply documented Bill O’Reilly’s record of misinformation on Arizona, immigration and crime. It’s not surprising–but nonetheless worth documenting–that O’Reilly would bend reality in order to bash immigrants and defend the new Arizona law. But the way the New York Times handled the matter is worth a look. The paper’s June 19 piece, “On […]
It’s not a huge surprise that a correspondent for a newspaper that supported the coup that ousted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would dislike a film that offers a more sympathetic view of Chavez’s politics. That said, Larry Rohter’s review (New York Times, 6/26/10) of the new Oliver Stone film South of the Border still manages […]
FAIR has a new Action Alert (6/21/10) on misleading historical context about Gaza’s rockets in the coverage of flotilla attack in the New York Times and Washington Post. You can post copies of your letters to the papers, or responses on the alert, in the comments thread below.
In the aftermath of Israel’s May 31 raid on the Gaza humanitarian aid flotilla that killed nine activists, the Washington Post and New York Times have propagated an inaccurate historical context that serves to bolster Israeli claims. The conventional rendition is that Israel invaded Gaza at the end of 2008 in order to stop a […]
