FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
In the weeks before the invasion of Iraq, a FAIR study documents, network newscasts were dominated by current and former U.S. officials, and largely excluded Americans who were skeptical of or opposed to an invasion of Iraq. Looking at two weeks of coverage, FAIR examined all 393 on-camera sources who appeared in nightly news stories […]
As the poet Robert Burns noted, it’s hard to see ourselves as others see us—especially if we rely on the mainstream U.S. press. Here’s a paragraph from an editorial in the Los Angeles Times—headlined “Lifesaving Trade Policies” (1/2/03): Yes, the $1.66 billion the Bush administration has earmarked for international development aid in fiscal year 2004 […]
Nothing makes a newspaper prouder than a juicy foreign policy scoop. Except, it seems, when the scoop ends up raising awkward questions about a U.S. administration’s drive for war. Back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors, known as UNSCOM, to spy on Iraq […]
When elements of the Venezuelan military forced President Hugo Chávez from office in April, the editorial boards of several major U.S. newspapers, following the U.S. government’s lead, greeted the news with enthusiasm.
Introduction Fear & Favor is FAIR’s annual review of incidents that reflect the range of pressures on reporters to use something other than journalistic judgment in deciding what goes in the news and what gets left out. The year 2001 presented special challenges in this regard. The horrific September 11 attacks on the World Trade […]
EXTRA! Update NEW YORK CITY—If the first casualty of war is the truth, any dispatch from Afghanistan was likely to slay it in its very first word. The dateline says: We are there, we saw it happen. But they weren’t. They didn’t. Poor Geraldo Rivera got slugged for pretending otherwise. A crossover from MSNBC to […]
Days after their son Greg died in the World Trade Center terror, Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez wrote a letter to the New York Times that counseled against violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us. It is not the way to go. […]
The crisis of September 11 touched on issues from Middle Eastern politics to skyscraper architecture, Islamic theology to the threat of unconventional weapons. It was a story, in other words, that most ordinary Americans could not easily interpret without help. FAIR has conducted a study to find out which experts the three major television news […]
On October 10, television network executives from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN held a conference call with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and apparently acceded to her “suggestion” that any future taped statements from Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group be “abridged,” and any potentially “inflammatory” language removed before broadcast. The question of how to […]
It’s hard to remember a time in U.S. history when public attention was more sharply focused on issues of domestic security, civil liberties and the role of U.S. intelligence agencies. A prime-time dramatic series on the CIA could contribute mightily to public understanding — if rigorously independent and unencumbered. Unfortunately, that’s not the approach CBS […]
Many news analysts and pundits lost no time conveying—sometimes with great enthusiasm—their eagerness to see the United States use its military might in anger.
On June 28, 1995, FBI agents swarmed the headquarters of Archer Daniels Midland, “Supermarket to the World,” in Decatur, Illinois. So began the sensational unraveling of the biggest price-fixing scandal ever, involving a secret FBI informant, a suicide attempt, top ADM officials being sentenced to prison and the largest criminal anti-trust fine in history. Throughout […]
In totalitarian countries, government propaganda officers wield great power. They’re authorized to use the media to stir up state-sanctioned passions and fears through the selective dissemination of information — sometimes factual, sometimes phony. If you think the United States has never employed propaganda officers, meet Otto Reich. He may soon be our country’s chief diplomat […]
The United States is seeking to make space a new arena of war—but you wouldn’t know that from mainstream media that limit coverage to U.S. plans for “missile defense.” The wider space military program is laid out in publicly available documents—easily accessible to media—such as the recent report of the “Space Commission” chaired by new […]
In January, the already bleak human rights situation in Colombia was reported to be in a state of “alarming degradation,” according to United Nations human rights observers (Associated Press, 1/20/01). A joint report from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Washington Office on Latin America (“Colombia Human Rights Certification II,” 1/01) found that “political […]
Diplomats and United Nations officials said today, officials and diplomats here said. Diplomats and officials here say the experts added. The diplomats and officials said some relief experts said diplomats said, it is widely assumed here among officials and diplomats. Diplomats from several countries said one diplomat remarked: Officials said diplomats said. Officials of the […]
CNN got nervous when reports in European publications (Amsterdam’s Trouw, 2/21/00, 2/25/00; Intelligence Newsletter, 2/17/00) revealed that PSYOPS (Psychological Operations) specialists from the U.S. Army had worked as interns at the cable network’s Atlanta news headquarters. The program was terminated after its existence was revealed in Trouw, and network president Eason Jordan appeared on Pacifica […]
Reports in the Dutch newspaper Trouw (2/21/00, 2/25/00) and France’s Intelligence Newsletter (2/17/00) have revealed that several officers from the US Army’s 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group at Ft. Bragg worked in the news division at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters last year, starting in the final days of the Kosovo War. In the U.S. media, so […]
In a 1998 article (4/23/98), New York Times United Nations correspondent Barbara Crossette critiqued the film Genocide by Sanctions, a documentary produced by a coalition of activist groups opposed to the U.N. sanctions on Iraq. Using footage of dying Iraqi children, the film sought to dramatize Iraq’s desperate humanitarian conditions under the U.N. embargo; more […]
A front-page New York Times article (9/12/99) about the precarious situation in East Timor in September began by reporting that Gen. Wiranto, Indonesia’s top military commander, “conceded Saturday that he had lost control of elements of his military” that were operating on the island. The article’s headline, “Jakarta Concedes a Loss of Control,” echoed this […]
