FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Glenn Greenwald (8/27/09, ad-viewing required) of Salon‘s series of New Republic quotes morphing from condemning a perceived “anti-Lieberman jihad” to calling for “knocking off Democrats like Conrad and Joe Lieberman” charts the outlet’s “rapid and total reversal–one effectuated without the slightest acknowledgment that it even occurred.” Calling the change “just the accountability-free nature of Beltway […]
OpEd News has published an open letter from attorney Dana Jill Simpson (8/20/09) to “Mr. Murdoch and all the editors at the Wall Street Journal,” in which she expresses her wish to “thank you from the very bottom of my heart for running Karl Rove’s delusional article, ‘Closing In on Rove,’ on August 20, 2009″: […]
In a wide-ranging ZNet interview on both the history and future of U.S. media, Robert McChesney (8/11/09) gets to the kernel of reform activism: The media is one of the key areas in society where power is exercised, reinforced and contested. It is hard to imagine a successful left political project that does not have […]
Reporting for Associated Press (7/3/09), David Bauder has an update on CNN‘s insistence on “standing behind” Lou Dobbs, who has “become a publicity nightmare for CNN, embarrassed his boss and…on top of all that, his ratings are slipping.” Bauder asks outright: “How does Lou Dobbs keep his job” while plugging the conspiracy theory that Barack […]
AlterNet‘s Liliana Segura has traced (7/28/09) the “nasty little rumor” that “Barack Hussein Obama is not a legitimate president because he is not really an American citizen” from “the early days of the presidential race” to its current status as “a full-blown conspiracy theory” that does “nonetheless enjoy increasingly high-profile political support, and media coverage […]
In another example of how the racist record of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s top Republican questioner has gone down the memory hole, Associated Press had a whole story (7/19/09) about Sen. Jeff Sessions’ assertions that Sotomayor was too prejudiced to get his vote without mentioning that the Senate Judiciary Committee had rejected Sessions when […]
Under the headline “Future Nominations Are at Stake in Hearing,” New York Times reporters Peter Baker and Charlie Savage suggested that Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination is a given; the real battle among partisans and legal activists is “to define the parameters of an acceptable nomination in case another seat opens up during Mr. Obama’s presidency.” Interesting, […]
Editor & Publisher is running a wire item (Associated Press, 7/16/09) on the Richmond Times-Dispatch‘s recent front-page editorial and website video “expressing regret for supporting the state’s fight to maintain separate schools for blacks and whites in the 1950s.” The paper’s confession of its “central role in the ‘dreadful doctrine’ of Massive Resistance–a systematic campaign […]
Number of stories in the Nexis news database dated today that mentioned Sen. Jeff Sessions’ (R.-Ala.) questioning of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, in which Sessions accused Sotomayor of harboring ethnic prejudices: 69 Number of such stories that recalled that Sessions was rejected as a judicial nominee in 1986 in part because of his approving […]
Jennifer L. Pozner has a version of her new NPR commentary on the Women In Media & News website she founded (7/8/09), in which she asks you to “think carefully: Can you remember any passionate TV news debates about whether journalists or voters might want to get naked with former vice president Dick Cheney?” If […]
Furthering the story of “Washington Post executives–reeling…over a flier promoting a ‘salon’ for lobbyists to mingle with prominent newsmakers,” Politico reporters Michael Calderone and Andy Barr (7/4/09) think the suits at the Post might reasonably ask “Why us?”: The fact is the Post‘s clumsy effort to make money on its brand name and market its […]
Looking at a June 28 New York Times report that the “Honduran President Is Ousted in Coup,” A Tiny Revolution blogger Bernard Chazelle (6/28/09) writes that “from the byline alone, you know this is going to be good”: “Elisabeth Malkin, in Mexico City, with reporting by Simon Romero from Caracas.” To Chazelle this all “makes […]
Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research had one of the most informative pieces I’ve seen on the Iranian election, published on WashingtonPost.com (6/26/09). Weisbrot examines the actual Iranian vote-counting procedures, and concludes that in Iran, “large-scale fraud is extremely difficult, if not impossible, without creating an extensive trail of evidence.” Since […]
Spanish sociologist Pablo Ouziel has a new Consortium News essay (6/28/09) describing the consequences of how “we wake up in the morning to hear and watch the newest tragedy that has swept the world’s media attention”–whether it’s “the tragic crash of an airplane” or “the death of a star.” Meanwhile: Serious events and acts are […]
Salon‘s Greenwald (6/27/09, ad-viewing required) has taken a hard look at Washington Post and ProPublica journalists Peter Finn’s and Dafna Linzer’s report–“relying exclusively on three Obama officials speaking behind a veil of anonymity”–“that the White House is ‘crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.’” Finding it […]
Addressing Bush-era Department of Justice investigations, David Swanson (6/26/09) is asking OpEd News readers the provocative question, “Did you know the United States has in recent years prosecuted hundreds of people for political reasons?” This is a crime, or rather a crime wave, that has thus far been addressed primarily by ignoring it. You can […]
Blogger Jonathan Schwarz (A Tiny Revolution, 6/24/09) has noted that when “CBS ran a story about the latest batch of Nixon tapes made public… they included a section of a February 21, 1973 conversation with Billy Graham that showed Nixon at his psycho best,” addressing anti-Semitism thus: “This has happened to the Jews, happened in […]
Dirk Smillie’s Forbes interview (6/18/09) with veteran news analyst Andrew Tyndall includes the observation that “mainstream press–network newscasts in particular–have been criticized for overly favorable coverage of the Obama administration.” Tyndall takes the opportunity to make some important distinctions about this common allegation: There may be a personality bias, not a liberal bias. Since the […]
Blogger Jane Hamsher (FireDogLake.com, 6/19/09) thinks that Salon‘s “Glenn Greenwald says most of what needs to be said about the Washington Post‘s firing of Dan Froomkin,” on June 18, but has her own “insight into “the early rounds of this battle” over the left-leaning columnist, having “watched it ferment over the years.” Hamsher explains that […]
Doling out “a little positive reinforcement” when Fox News “actually gets something right,” Mark Howard of News Corpse (6/18/09) agrees with Sean Hannity’s declaration of “the death of journalism”–though disagreeing with the context of Fox‘s pronouncement, being their assertion that a scheduled ABC News broadcast “that would delve into the pros and cons of the […]
