FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The Nation correspondent William Greider joins for a conversation about former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, whose new memoir seeks to put some space between himself and the Bush White House. Also on the show: The Iraqi government and a recent shooting in Baghdad with Anthony Arnove, author of the book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal.
This week on CounterSpin: A discussion on developments in Iraq with Phyllis Bennis, fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of a new report on Iraq, and Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch.com, which has been tracking the story.
Shifting coverage of the Census Bureau report on income and poverty, with Heather Boushey from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Also on the show: Is a Washington-backed coup in Iraq brewing? We’ll ask Scott Horton of Harper’s magazine.
This week on CounterSpin: Village Voice journalist Wayne Barrett joins to talk about his recent article, “Rudy Giuliani’s Five Big Lies About 9/11.” Also on the show: Michael Schwartz of Stony Brook University on the “benchmarks” the White House has abandoned, and what has happened since escalation of the Iraq War.
Government efforts to portray progress in the Iraq War were boosted by USA Today‘s August 13 front page story, “Major attacks decline in Iraq.” The paper’s report relied entirely on current and former military officials, with the key claim being that “large al-Qaeda-style attacks in Iraq have declined nearly 50% since the United States started […]
After the August 7 Democratic debate, MSNBC reporter David Shuster weighed in with what the cable channel called a “truth squad” segment, ostensibly intended to fact check various claims by the candidates. But the result had less to do with clarifying the facts than with protecting Bush from harsh criticism. In concluding his report, Shuster […]
The Nation‘s investigation into the U.S. occupation’s impact on Iraqi civilians (7/30/07) and a series of columns by a U.S. soldier published in the New Republic (2/5/07, 6/4/07, 7/23/07) have given media access to compelling new documentation of egregious behavior by U.S. troops in Iraq. The New York Times and Washington Post have responded by […]
New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt has sent out an email response (which appears in full below) to FAIR activists who responded to a FAIR action alert (7/13/07) about a report calling a firefighters’ union video critical of Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani “factually questionable.” But the reply, which mainly provides the self-justification of […]
To paraphrase Clark Hoyt, if you’re going to defend the performance of a news organization, you at a minimum need to get your facts right. In his second response to FAIR regarding the New York Times‘ review of the play Fallujah, Hoyt wrote: In restating its case, it introduced a new error—calling white phosphorus (WP), […]
(NOTE: Please see the further Activism Update regarding this alert.) On July 18, New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt responded to FAIR’s June 11 Action Alert “Incendiary Weapons are No Allegation.” FAIR’s action alert took issue with a New York Times review (5/29/07) of the British play Fallujah, in which reviewer Jane Perlez called […]
(NOTE: Please see the Activism Update regarding this alert.) When the International Association of Fire Fighters, the nation’s largest firefighters union, released a video on July 12 challenging the portrayal of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as a hero of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, New York Times reporter Marc Santora rushed […]
Mainstream media were all together in cheering the Bush White House’s renewed commitment to fighting AIDS. The only trouble was, the key numbers at the center of the conversation turn out to be not as they appear.
(NOTE: Please see the Activism Update regarding this alert.) Reviewing the London-based anti-Iraq War play Fallujah, New York Times reporter Jane Perlez wrote (5/29/07), “The denunciations of the United States are severe, particularly in the scenes that deal with the use of napalm in Fallujah, an allegation made by left-wing critics of the war but […]
At the Republican candidates’ debate on June 5, White House contender Mitt Romney remarkably claimed that weapons inspectors were barred from entering Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. But Romney’s error was little noted by the mainstream media. Asked if he thought it was “a mistake for us to invade Iraq,” Romney declared the question […]
If you missed the April 25 airing of the Bill Moyers documentary Buying the War, there’s good news: The full program and transcript are available online. As Moyers explained in the introduction: The story of how the media bought what the White House was selling has not been told in depth on television. As the […]
On April 8, the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes aired a segment about the “resounding success” of the French nuclear power program, suggesting that “emission-free” nuclear power might offer an easy solution to the problem of climate change. The report protected this dubious assertion from skeptical scrutiny by failing to quote a single bona fide critic […]
The stage had been set up in front of the reflecting pool below Capitol Hill, facing the length of the Mall and the Washington Monument. Just behind the stage, in a space set aside for media interviews, huddles of reporters moved scrum-like from the Rev. Jesse Jackson to actress Susan Sarandon to Rep. John Conyers […]
[Note: This piece is a sidebar to Can You Hear Us NOW?] The most mean-spirited portrayal of the protest as a Vietnam echo came from Fox’s Sean Hannity. “I see you brought Jane Fonda back for this one,” Hannity said to protester Anne Roesler, asking if she were proud of Fonda, whose picture was taken […]
This photo of mortally wounded Sgt. Hector Leija, taken by Robert Nickelsberg, was pulled from the New York Times website after being called “offensive” and contrary to new censorship regulations by a U.S. military official. A letter in February to the New York Times (2/3/07) from the commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq […]
ABC News is marking the anniversary of the start of the Iraq War this week by reporting on its major survey of Iraqi public opinion. But when it comes to one fundamental tally of the cost of the war—the number of Iraqis who have been killed by the war—top ABC anchors are minimizing the death […]
