FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
New York Times editorialist Lawrence Downes (5/4/09) has some good questions about Pete Seeger‘s big 90th birthday party. The broadcast surely is bound to “be a PBS special made in pledge-week heaven,” but Downes has to “wonder, though, how many of the angry moments will survive”: Will we hear the Native American musicians pleading for […]
While asserting the extremely simple journalistic principle that “Past Records Should Matter In Assessing Views on the Economy,” Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 5/2/09) is willing to admit that everyone makes mistakes, but the odds are that anyone who couldn’t see an $8 trillion housing bubble is not a really good person to rely upon […]
Two newspapers have flagged some concerns about Barack Obama’s popularity, citing a new poll to raise questions about the public’s enthusiasm for White House policies so far. Both accounts, though, seem to try to hard to stretch the rather awkward poll results to match their arguments. In the Los Angeles Times (5/3/09), Peter Nicholas noted […]
During coverage of the Obama administration’s 100-day mark, MSNBC had war reporter Richard Engel and anchor Tamron Hall interview MSNBC analyst Barry McCaffrey, who CJR.org‘s Clint Hendler (4/29/09) calls “the retired army general whose many conflicts of interest have been analyzed by David Barstow’s now-Pulitzer Prize winning reporting for the New York Times.” When asked […]
Brad Jacobson has an incisive take (Media Bloodhound, 4/29/09) on the consequences of mealy-mouthed torture language at the New York Times, where public editor Clark Hoyt provides he said/she said examples to show how the public has reacted. But in doing so, in this context, he turns the very idea of news reporting–that it should […]
We noted recently that a New York Times story about the waterboarding of two Al-Qaeda detainees included a bit of media criticism. The Times mentioned that in 2007, ABC featured an interview with former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who claimed that “Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything […]
An April 24 New York Times op-ed from “Skeptical Environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg contends “that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a hopeless cause and that public money is better spent on research and development of renewable energy”–which Jonathan Hiskes of Grist calls (4/27/09) “a classic Lomborg argument–deliberately provocative and presenting several worthy goals as an either/or […]
A New York Times op-ed by Roger Cohen saying that, because post–September 11 “journalists did not meet the challenge of holding the executive branch accountable,” he is “wary of the clamor for retribution. Congress failed. The press failed. The judiciary failed,” has moved First-Draft.com blogger Athenae (4/24/09) to declare that “I really think I hate […]
Voter turnout in last weekend’s Haitian Senate elections was very low; observers cited in a Reuters report, “Haitians Largely Boycott Senate Election,” estimated it at less than 10 percent, which an Al Jazeera report attributed in part to “resentment over the banning of a popular party”–Fanmi Lavalas–as well as disenchantment with the ruling government and […]
New York Times reporter Robert Pear (4/23/09) joined the rest of the media world expressing discomfort with the idea that the Senate Democrats might adopt budget reconciliation rules, which wouldthey would use to pass major legislation on a majority vote rather than seeking 60 votes. His lead: With solid majorities in both houses of Congress, […]
Asking a simple question about a large issue–“How Do Trillion Dollar Bank Bailouts Fit With ‘Free-Market Fundamentalism?’”–Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 4/19/09) tells his readers that “the obvious answer is, they don’t”–since, “if you are a free-market fundamentalist, then you are absolutely opposed to bank bailouts” that “involve taking taxpayer dollars and handing them to […]
Today the New York Times is reporting that waterboarding was used far more often than we have been told—almost 300 times on two prisoners, including Abu Zubaydah.This stands in rather stark contrast to what we heard about the instant, positive effects of waterboarding—as the Times notes: A former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News […]
In today’s New York Times (4/16/07), Jane Perlez is wondering about Pakistani government officials who complain about U.S. drones attacks in their country. Perlez starts by floating the idea that Pakistan can’t possibly be against the strikes, because the government has asked to have some control over the use of the drones: In fact, both […]
Maureen Dowd today (New York Times, 4/15/09) writes about the newspaper industry’s complaints about Google: Robert Thomson, the top editor of the Wall Street Journal, denounced websites like Google as “tapeworms.” His boss, Rupert Murdoch, said that big newspapers do not have to let Google “steal our copyrights.” The AP has threatened to take legal […]
It was surprising to see that critical scholar Mahmood Mamdani’s new book (which is largely about debunking Western notions about Darfur and genocide—something he discussed on CounterSpin) got a positive review in the New York Times (3/30/09). Today (4/3/09) the paper sort of apologizes, in an editor’s note (only in the print edition, so far): […]
The New York Times reported today (3/30/09) that New York State government had reached an agreement on a $131.8 billion budget. The third paragraph of the front-page story by Nicholas Confessore and Danny Hakim reads: And despite the enormous fiscal pressure the state faces, the budget contains $170 million in financing for pet projects—an amount […]
The New York Times editorial page’s lending of space to former AIG financial vice president Jake DeSantis’ plea for “us all to reconsider our anger toward the poor overworked employees of his unit” has incurred some of Matt Taibbi’s trademark wrath (Alternet, 3/26/09): He acts like he’s a victim because he didn’t get to keep […]
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof issued a call in his column today for pundit accountability. After making a problematic argument about knowledge and experience being overrated, Kristof correctly pointed out that in the media, “the marketplace of ideas for now doesn’t clear out bad pundits and bad ideas partly because there’s no accountability,” and […]
Caitlin Flanagan, primarily known (and embraced by mainstream media) for her anti-feminist writings, was back in the New York Times this weekend—this time attacking former ’70s radical Sara Jane Olson. As a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, Olson (born Kathleen Soliah) was indicted for plotting to bomb LAPD patrol cars; she evaded capture until […]
The lead of an article in the New York Times today (3/23/09): KABUL, Afghanistan – A predawn raid by United States Special Forces that killed five people on Sunday has produced sharply conflicting accounts from the American military and local Afghan officials as to whether the dead were civilians or militants, resurrecting a sore point […]
