FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
One of the most noted trends in the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina has been the aggressive and critical tone some journalists have adopted towards the White House and Bush administration officials. A headline at the online magazine Slate read, “The Rebellion of the Talking Heads” (9/2/05). “Katrina Rekindles Adversarial Media” is how USA Today […]
Cindy Sheehan’s protest outside George W. Bush‘s Texas ranch has recently focused media attention on the antiwar movement. But some mainstream media outlets seem determined to marginalize such activism. On August 25, ABC World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson asked, “People may tell pollsters they oppose the war, but are they part of any real […]
Like much of the mainstream media coverage, Newsweek magazine’s August 1 cover story on Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts was overwhelmingly positive. But Newsweek went even further than most, dismissing as inaccurate stories that depicted Roberts as a conservative partisan—even though it was Newsweek, in fact, that was getting the stories wrong. Newsweek led […]
In a week in June when 15 GIs were killed in Iraq (6/13-19/05), the war pictures in the New York Times (6/19/05, 6/20/05) featured dazed Iraqis after a suicide bombing, a Marine patrolling, the twisted remains of a vehicle, wounded children, a civilian casualty in a morgue. No photographs featured American casualties—a typical absence in […]
After eight years in the White House, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address on January 17, 1961. The former general warned of “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.” He added that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” One way or another, […]
In the past year and a half, the Bush administration has engaged in elaborate rhetorical gymnastics when addressing the use and authorization of torture by American forces and leaders. Under increasing fire for its conduct of the war in Iraq, the scandal of Abu Ghraib and the alarming implications of defenses such as the August […]
Journalist Robert Parry joins for a discussion on pundit consensus and the Iraq war. Also this week: what does the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Brand X case mean for the future of the internet and cable company monopolies?
The U.S. is violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That view, far from exotic or extreme, was expressed repeatedly by arms control experts and international officials at the month-long NPT review conference held at the U.N. in May. It is embraced by U.S. establishment figures such as former President Jimmy Carter and Kennedy-era Defense Secretary […]
One of the features of the newfound media interest in the Downing Street Memo is a profound defensiveness, as reporters scramble to explain why it received so little attention in the U.S. press. But the most familiar line–the memo wasn’t news because it contained no “new” information–only raises troubling questions about what journalists were doing […]
Despite the widespread violence in Iraq, CBS Evening News offered a different take on its June 2 broadcast: Things are getting better. Anchor John Roberts acknowledged that while the past month has seen tremendous bloodshed, “Some U.S. and Iraqi officials are hopeful the terror campaign may soon begin to ease.” That storyline was advanced by […]
John Burroughs of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy discusses last month’s negotiations over the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which received little coverage by the press. Also this week: there has been a recent resurgence in conversation surrounding the Watergate scandal. But how reliable is media’s picture of that time and the lessons it supposedly left for US journalism?
In the rush to condemn Newsweek‘s May 9 report about abuse of the Quran at Guantánamo, little attention has been paid to a technique the magazine used in reporting its original story: submitting articles to government officials prior to publication. According to Newsweek‘s accounts of the reporting behind the brief “Periscope” item that caused so […]
Failing to find weapons of mass destruction or an Al-Qaeda/Saddam Hussein connection almost two years after it invaded Iraq, the Bush White House fell back on its second-tier justification for the invasion: that occupying the country would start a domino-chain of democratization throughout the Middle East. In the wake of the January 30 Iraq elections, […]
Dan Noyes of the Center for Investigative Journalism talks Bush’s judges and what’s often missing from the media’s portrayal of this battle. Also on the program: a discussion with Greg Mitchell from Editor & Publisher magazine on the Pat Tillman scandal and what it says about media priorities.
Following FAIR’s call for more mainstream coverage of the “smoking gun memo”—the secret British document containing new evidence that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify its plan to invade Iraq—a steady trickle of news reports have appeared. But that coverage has been downplayed in general and is still completely absent from the nightly news. […]
Journalism professor Robert Jensen discusses the Newsweek Quran desecration story. Also this week: environmental reporter Karl Grossman on the weaponization of space.
Newsweek ran a sensational claim based on an anonymous source who turned out to be completely wrong. While one can’t blame the subsequent violence entirely on this report, it’s fair to say that credulous reporting like this contributed to a climate in which many innocent Muslims died. The inaccurate Newsweek report appeared in the magazine’s […]
NOTE: Please see the Action Alert related to this Advisory. Journalists typically condemn attempts to force their colleagues to disclose anonymous sources, saying that subpoenaing reporters will discourage efforts to expose government wrongdoing. But such warnings seem like mere self-congratulation when clear evidence of wrongdoing emerges, with no anonymous sources required– and major news outlets […]
On March 9, Dan Rather will step down after 24 years as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Media retrospectives of Rather’s career will likely refer to the long-running right-wing critique of Rather’s supposed “liberalism.” But the notion that Rather has used his CBS platform to disseminate left-wing propaganda over the last two decades does […]
“We can get five reporters a month to do news stories about your product. If you want to be interviewed by 10 to 20 reporters per month, we can arrange that, too. . . . Media Relations, Inc. has placed tens of thousands of news stories on behalf of more than 1,000 clients.—Media Relations, Inc. […]
