FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Last night (6/6/11), Fox News host Sean Hannity was talking with WorldNetDaily‘s Joe Farah: FARAH: Charles Rangel is still in the House. Barney Frank is still in the House. Bill Clinton is getting awards. Gerry Studds got a standing ovation from House Democrats. This is a guy who had sex with a congressional page, correct? […]
On Sunday’s episode of NBC‘s Chris Matthews Show (4/3/11), the panel actually talked about criticism of the mainstream media, with some citing the media’s Iraq War debacle as a major factor in the rise of blogosphere-based media criticism. The discussion got somewhat confused along the way, as this segued into a discussion of the entirely […]
Few pieces better illustrate the uselessness of so much corporate media political journalism than Kathleen Hennessey’s piece in the L.A. Times (4/4/11) on Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan. The piece is headlined “House Republican Budget Plan Would Revamp Medicare,” and the lead explains that the GOP budget proposal outlined by Ryan “includes an […]
Washington Post Dana Milbank (3/19/11) skewers the Republicans for their “emergency meeting” to defund NPR: This particular emergency involved the lower end of the FM radio dial. Republicans, in an urgent budget-cutting maneuver, were voting to cut off funding for National Public Radio. All $5 million of it—or one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of the […]
Sometimes the premise of an article is just all wrong. Like this from Monday‘s New York Times (see bold): As Republicans See a Mandate on Budget Cuts, Others See Risk By ADAM NAGOURNEY and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN WASHINGTON — In Congress and in statehouses, Republican lawmakers and governors are claiming a broad mandate from last […]
A New York Times profile (1/8/11) of author/economist Robert Reich was headlined “Obama the Centrist Irks a Liberal Lion.” It’s hard not to see where reporter Michael Powell comes down in the debate over Democrats moving to the right: Mr. Reich sees a parallel with his former boss, Mr. Clinton, and draws no comfort from […]
On CBS‘s Face the Nation (1/9/11), host Bob Schieffer declared: Democracy’s arguments have never been pretty, but technology has changed the American dialogue because we can now know of problems instantly. We expect answers immediately and when we don’t get them, we let everyone know in no uncertain terms. We scream and shout, hurl charges […]
Today in the New York Times Paul Krugman (1/10/11) suggests that we not pretend that “both sides” are responsible for toxic political rhetoric: Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: It’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to […]
Last night on Fox News (12/22/10), Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly attempted to defend GOP opposition tothe James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, whichwould providehealth care for 9/11 Ground Zero workers. In his final broadcast of the year (12/16/10), Comedy Central‘s Jon Stewart devoted the entire show to lambasting the Republican opposition.Stewart’s […]
On yesterday’s Chris Matthews show on NBC, the assembled journalists all seem to agree that Barack Obama’s decision to cut a tax deal with Republicans and come out swinging against the left was great news. Time‘s Mike Duffy: “These liberals may scream, but they’ve been screaming about Barack Obama since the beginning. This isn’t anything […]
As Peter Hart noted earlier, New York Times political reporter Matt Bai has a piece today (12/1/10) critical of Barack Obama for being “loath to publicly disown his base.” Bai writes of Obama: “Since he isn’t willing to break publicly with liberals, independent and conservative voters tend to see him as a tool of the […]
Beware: The dean of the D.C. press corps is disappointed. In his Washington Post column today (“Dodgeball for Democrats,” 11/18/10), David Broder leads off with this: When the rules of the House of Representatives forced the Democrats to confront a painful choice among their leaders, they did what Democrats are often inclined to do. They […]
New York Times reporter Matt Bai had a long piece Sunday (10/31/10)that argued that Tea Partiers are really the right-wing version of Bush-era MoveOn activists and bloggers (the “netroots”). Bai writes of “the larger forces that unify many self-styled activists on both the left and right,” and suggests that “the recent uprisings on both ends […]
David Broder–or an automated David Broderesque column-generator–bemoaned once again (Washington Post, 10/14/10) that “As the Gulf Between GOP and Democrats Widens, the Center Is Lost.” To illustrate this dire situation, Broder (or the Broderbot) cited congressional voting patterns: Bill Galston, the Brookings Institution’s resident political philosopher, was the first of the day to point out […]
Politico has a story about how congressmembers and their staffs are avoiding the Colbert Report that contains this anecdote: “My experience with that show is like herpes. It never goes away, and it itches and sometimes flares up,” said a former aide to Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, after his boss appeared on the show in 2006. […]
Matthew Yglesias (8/3/10) has a good takedown of senators John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and Tom Coburn’s (R.-Ok.) list of supposedly wasteful stimulus projects that generated an “exclusive” on ABC‘s Good Morning America (8/3/10): Jon Chait observes that McCain and Coburn also seem to have decided that anything relating to animals is necessarily waste. Hence a small […]
In his New York Times column today (7/19/10), Paul Krugman offers a prediction about the likely pundit response to the drubbing Democrats are expected to take in the November elections: What I expect…if and when the midterms go badly, is that the usual suspects will say that it was because Mr. Obama was too liberal—when […]
To hear some of the Beltway media tell it,on Sunday White House press secretary Robert Gibbs predicted that the Democrats could lose their congressional majority in the November midterms. The L.A. Times captured some of the sense of crisis (7/14/10), noting that party leaders also tried to improve the gloomy prognosis. White House Press Secretary […]
NPR‘s Brooke Gladstone (On the Media, 6/11/10) interviewed CNN‘s Ed Henry about the squirt-gun party at the vice president’s mansion that Henry giddily tweeted about: BROOKE GLADSTONE: If these events don’t influence coverage, why do you think the White House throws them? Do they just want to shoot you with a super-soaker? ED HENRY: Maybe […]
Three weeks ago, under the headline “Activists Seize Control of Politics,” Politico (5/19/10) was reporting that U.S. politics may have changed forever: The 2010 electorate has swallowed an emetic–disgorging in a series of retching convulsions officeholders in both parties who seem to embody conventional Washington politics. The anti-establishment, anti-incumbent fevers on display Tuesday are not […]
