FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
“We can get five reporters a month to do news stories about your product. If you want to be interviewed by 10 to 20 reporters per month, we can arrange that, too. . . . Media Relations, Inc. has placed tens of thousands of news stories on behalf of more than 1,000 clients.—Media Relations, Inc. […]
PBS has pulled an episode of the children’s show Postcards From Buster that includes children with lesbian mothers. The episode was yanked the same day that PBS received a letter from new Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings condemning the episode and asking PBS to “strongly consider” returning the federal money that went toward its production. […]
Proving that irony is alive and well post-September 11, a book deriding the national press corps for its suppression of conservative views has received enormous attention in that same “liberal” media. Bernard Goldberg’s Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News is long on name-calling and vitriol, but short on substance. “Delusional,” […]
American journalists probably feel more pressure about their coverage of Israel and Palestine than any other subject. That is true even of Extra!; despite having a readership that is overwhelmingly sympathetic to our progressive critique of the media, our Middle East coverage invariably elicits angry letters and complaints, sometimes resulting in canceled subscriptions. According to […]
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) bills itself as the voice of American agriculture—and often succeeds in getting the media to identify it as such. In an article about an EPA study of insecticides, USA Today (10/28/99) turned to an EPA critic at the AFBF, describing it as a group that “promotes farmers’ interests.” Similarly, […]
While the main proponents of the liberal media myth are conservative commentators and talkshow hosts (who themselves are the dominant opinion voices in the media), the ammunition for such arguments usually comes from one of three well-funded groups. Two of the groups–Accuracy In Media (AIM) and the Media Research Center (MRC)–are openly conservative, while the […]
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) must be breathing a sigh of relief. Their six weeks of courtroom combat with TV star Oprah Winfrey may have officially failed to silence her concerns about food safety, but in practice it came pretty damn close. Despite Winfrey’s legal victory, the bottom-line lesson for the rest of us […]
“The forces of terrorism are in a coalition, engaged in an information warfare campaign against Israel, a campaign in which the American news media is serving as the witting or unwitting ally of Arafat.” So House speaker Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) told the cheering audience at AIPAC’s (American-Israeli Political Action Committee) national convention (C-SPAN, 4/8/97). Democrats […]
On April 5, 1996, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit handed down its ruling in Hickman v. City of Los Angeles. Ray Hickman had argued that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave him a right to keep and bear firearms, and that this right was infringed by the city’s […]
As this issue of Extra! reaches subscribers, Californians will be going to the polls, voting not only for political candidates but on a variety of ballot initiatives. One of these initiatives, Proposition 188, was placed on the ballot by a group with the healthy-sounding name of “Californians for Statewide Smoking Restrictions.” But don’t let the […]
As president, Clinton will have to decide which election returns he’ll listen to—the voice of the people or the voice of the punditocracy. The latter is already calling for Clinton to abandon some of the promises he was elected on.
Recent media coverage of immigration has been dominated by anti-immigrant voices; immigrant and refugee rights advocates have been slighted. In this often one-sided discussion, no group has enjoyed more exposure than the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Retorm (also abbreviated as “FAIR,” not to be confused with the media watch group FAIR). Media outlets have […]
The Center for Media and Public Affairs, a conservative media research group, timed the release of its study of public TV programming to coincide with the congressional debate over public broadcasting reauthorization. The group’s report lends what appears to be empirical support to those who claim that PBS is biased to the left: “On the […]
Burger King capitulated to right-wing pressure by publishing a half-page ad in hundreds of newspapers (11/4-5/90): “Burger King wishes to go on recordas supporting traditional American values on television, especially the importance of the family…. We pledge to support such programs with our advertising dollars.” In return for the ad, Rev. Donald Wildmon’s Christian Leaders […]
