FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Ira Forman set off a furor in the blogosphere this week when he reported that CBS‘s pick for senior VP of communications, Jeff Ballabon, had once suggested “that Democrats are inherently bad people.” (Forman—who is the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council—maintains that this is what Ballabon had stated during a debate between […]
Sean Hannity is a great American. You can hear it every day on his national radio show, where the standard caller greeting to the host is, “Sean, you’re a great American!” The catchphrase is so well-known, it’s been commercialized! And who is more patriotic than Hannity, who uses his daily radio and Fox News Channel […]
Today’s L.A. Times report (2/26/09) on the White House budget includes this curious warning: The document–which included broad goals and few line items–laid down controversial markers on almost every major issue facing the country. Among the immediate budget winners are the middle class and the poor, whose taxes will be eased. Among the losers are […]
You’d think that reporting on federal budget bills costing billions of dollars would be difficult. But it’s easy, really: All you have to do is remember that budget items involving animals or unusual foods are funny. ABC‘s Jonathan Karl has mastered the genre. Reporting on the ominous spending bill (World News, 2/24/09), he declared: “The […]
This AP “fact check” (2/24/09) of President Barack Obama’s speech is, as usual, a sad effort. You really need to have some threshold for calling “gotcha,” and some of these—maybe all of these—really don’t measure up. Obama says, “Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market,” […]
Jackie Calmes reports in the New York Times (2/23/09): The president signaled in his campaign that he would support addressing the retirement system’s looming financing shortfall, in part by applying payroll taxes to incomes above $250,000. But that would ignite intense opposition from Republicans, especially with the economy deep in recession. Liberal Democrats are already […]
With left-of-center columnists critiquing the Beltway obsession with bipartisanship even in outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, it’s no wonder that David Broder is upset (Washington Post, 2/19/09). He calls the idea that Obama should stop worrying so much about attracting Republican support “the worst advice he has received,” warning that without […]
Calling it “obvious” that “promises to get beyond partisanship are the most perfunctory sort of campaign rhetoric, almost as empty as the partisanship itself,” the latest from Thomas Frank (Wall Street Journal, 2/18/09) explains the corporate media’s fetish for bipartisanship: For the Beltway commentariat, however, transcending partisanship is the most meaningful of issues, more important, […]
Politico reported (2/16/09) that a new poll shows that support for the Fairness Doctrine has dropped. Unfortunately, the policy described in the poll question bears no relationship to the Fairness Doctrine as it actually existed. The Rasmussen polling firm asked respondents whether “the government should require all radio stations to offer equal amounts of conservative […]
In the same column (2/16/09) that he cites Sam Donaldson’s reputation as a “blowhard liberal,” the Washington Post‘s Howard Kurtz has an item in which he complains that “the Vogue cover story on Michelle Obama, by editor at large André Leon Talley, is nothing if not laudatory.” Kurtz writes: The Talley article mentions briefly that […]
Discussing the retirement of ABC‘s Sam Donaldson, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz writes (2/16/09): Donaldson’s detractors viewed him as a liberal blowhard, and there were certainly times when his mouth outran his brain. I would certainly count FAIR as being among Donaldson’s detractors, and we viewed him as someone who was frequently mistaken for […]
Salon critic Glenn Greenwald’s look (2/14/09, ad-viewing required) at the journalistic powerhouse that was a recent New York Times David Brooks-Gail Collins Internet “conversation” yields the Greenwald observation that “Brooks did an excellent job of explicitly demonstrating most everything that is relevant–and destructive–about the mentality of the standard Beltway journalist.” Greenwald quotes Brooks being “really […]
You see it all the time: You need 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. Not exactly. Under Senate rules—which can be changed by a majority vote—you need the consent of 3/5ths of the Senate to close debate on an issue; that’s 60 votes. To pass a bill, you need a majority of […]
There’s been a corporate media trope lately that the stimulus bill, despite Barack Obama’s assurances, contains “pork.” It’s not always clear what “pork” means, but the Washington Post today (2/13/09) had an example of the genre–headlined “Despite Pledges, Stimulus Has Some Pork”–that opens with a definition of what it means by the term. Unfortunately, it’s […]
A Tiny Revolution blogger Jonathan Schwarz (2/8/09) quotes from yet another “Time magazine article about Larry Summers and how incredibly brilliant he is”: Perhaps as early as March, they’ll launch their biggest lift with the beginnings of a plan to reform Social Security and Medicare, the two entitlement programs that, even before the economy collapsed, […]
After President Obama’s press conference last night, Fox host Bill O’Reilly saw one to scorepoints against the White House–by mocking Obama forrelying ona list of pre-approved journalists when he took questions. Unfortunately for O’Reilly, his guest at the time was former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, who had to point out that this was… well, […]
Mark Howard (News Corpse, 2/9/08) rebuts “complaints from Republicans, who accused the president of politicizing the Census” by announcing that the new Director of the Census–being a “far-right Republican running an agency for which he has shown contempt”–will have to “work closely with the White House”: “The Census has always been political…. George Bush installed […]
“Though seemingly forgotten by most TV talking heads,” it’s still fresh in Robert Parry’s mind (Consortium News, 2/9/09) how “it was only three years ago, when the Republicans had control of both the White House and Congress—and ‘filibuster‘ was a dirty word”: It was usually coupled with “obstructionist” amid demands that any of George W. […]
We noted recently Fox News‘ peculiar understanding of the Fair Use doctrine, which allows writers, artists and others to make reasonable use of copyrighted material so long as they don’t infringe on the copyright owners’ commercial rights; Fox interprets this to mean that critics should only be allowed to make use of Fox video if […]
Having been traveling, Salon.com‘s Glenn Greenwald (2/4/09, ad-viewing required) found himself “subjected to far more cable news over the last 24 hours than I typically endure in an entire month.” Some results from Greenwald’s impromptu casual survey: The consensus regarding Tom Daschle seems to be that his withdrawal was necessitated due to (a) Obama’s incessant […]
