FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
One of the problems with media “factchecking” is the notion that all things must be “checked” equally. If you factcheck a Republican and find three whoppers, your fact check of a Democrat better work real hard to find a comparable level of spin or dishonesty. Which is exactly how Associated Press reporters Matt Apuzzo and […]
There’s an interesting Politico story (8/22/12) about Andrea Seabrook, who until recently was a Capitol Hill reporter for NPR. She’s moved on to a new independent reporting project, but it’s what she said about her previous gig that’s most revealing: “I realized that there is a part of covering Congress, if you’re doing daily coverage, […]
Political reporters, for whatever reason, have always had a lot invested in John McCain. Reporters were enthralled by McCain the “maverick” 2000 presidential candidate, advancing the campaign’s theme that McCain was a different kind of Republican. There was never much to this act; McCain had a solidly conservative record before being lionized as a maverick. […]
Take my word for it. Diane Sawyer, ABC World News (6/21/12): And now to the ongoing master class in letting your hair down, by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.These past few months, we’ve been watching her swig a beer, brandish a scrunchie without apology, and makeup free and telling everybody she doesn’t care what they […]
The conservative National Review, which has had a longstanding attachment to racism (FAIR Blog, 4/11/12) which it has lately shown signs of regretting, now has a cover story (5/28/12) by Kevin Williamson that argues that the Democratic Party is now and always has been the party of racism, while the GOP has always been the […]
Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann are well-known in the Beltway. They work at big-time think tanks (Brookings and American Enterprise Institute), appear on television chat shows, and write books and op-eds that powerful people pay attention to. Lately, though, it seems they’ve become dangerous men. Mann and Ornstein recently wrote an op-ed in the Washington […]
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is doing what he does best–traveling the world. In today’s column (3/28/12) he finds that other countries’ political systems– Australia and New Zealand–are well to the left of our own: In New Zealand and Australia, you could almost fit their entire political spectrum–from conservatives to liberals–inside the U.S. Democratic […]
There seems to be a popular line emerging in the Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke controversy that says his comments are especially harmful because they distract attention from the real issues. Kathleen Parker (Washington Post, 3/4/12): Inadvertently, Limbaugh also helped advance the argument from the left that Republicans are waging a war against women…. He has given […]
If you want an example of how much corporate media love so-called moderate Republicans, look no further than Frank Bruni‘s New York Times column (3/4/12): Back in 1999, when I covered Congress, I had a kind of crush on Olympia Snowe. Many of us in the Senate press gallery did. Well, that’s good to know. […]
New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane wonders if the readers of the Paper of Record want to know if the politicians the paper covers are telling the truth.
George Will’s January 1 column in the Washington Post was a laundry list of familiar criticisms of progressives and Democrats—they worry too much about climate change, for instance. Another non-problem, in Will’s world, is student loan debt: Political logic suggests that this year Obama will try to rekindle the love of young voters with some […]
Last night (12/15/11), MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes were impressed by a new Pew poll–flagged by Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent–showing that a vast majority of the public believes that corporations and the wealthy have too much power. The picture one gets from the poll is pretty dramatic: The question that seemed most […]
There’s an old joke about how the pundit spectrum in corporate media debates goes from GE all the way to GM. On Sunday‘s Meet the Press, viewers got a chance to see that joke come to life. On the panel was conservative former GE CEO Jack Welch, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and […]
It is very unusual to see such direct criticism of the New York Times in the Times itself (9/27/11)–this is something to celebrate. To the Editor: Anyone who has spent a few days–or nights–in occupied Zuccotti Park near Wall Street this past week would have trouble recognizing what they’ve seen in “Gunning for Wall Street, […]
There’s a piece at the CBS website (9/21/11) by Robert Hendin marking Bob Schieffer‘s 20 years hosting the network’s Sunday morning show Face the Nation. Hendin, a senior producer for the show, writes: From the get go, Bob made his plans known. “Our aim is to going to be very simple here: to find interesting […]
The right is apparently up in arms over this photo of Michele Bachmann that appears on the cover of this week’s Newsweek: If someone wants to say this is an unflattering picture, fine. But Bachmann’s supporters are unlikely to find much in Lois Romano’s article to complain about. On the campaign trail, Bachmann’s “simple, black-and-white […]
NBC (Nightly News, 7/19/11) did some polling to see what the public thinks about the Republican and Democratic positions on the budget and debt ceiling : CHUCK TODD: Now, look, any sort of deal is putting pressure on the bases of both parties. For Republicans, a large majority of the country is telling Republicans get […]
Some in the press still seem to have trouble defining whatever it is that motivates the Tea Party movement. I noticed this in an L.A. Times piece last week (6/5/11): Americans possess a long-standing wariness of power and its potential as a corrupting influence, especially in the hands of large institutions. That instinct bred our […]
Seriously, another one of these? Like last year, maybe some of the reporters involved find it valuable for the people they cover to get to know them on a more personal level, away from all the tough questions and dogged investigations.
“Senators, congressmen and even President Obama have misquoted the Founding Fathers in recent years,” writes Washington Post reporter David A. Fahrenthold in a June 7 piece suggesting that there is a bipartisan trend of misquotation and misrepresentation of historical events. After citing Sarah Palin’s recent botched account of Paul Revere’s revolutionary ride, Fahrenthold implies that […]
