FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The day after the Boston Marathon bombing, 34 percent of newspaper stories used the word “terrorism.” With the Charleston church massacre, the comparable figure was 7 percent.
“Why is there so much anger?” If you were wondering that before you read the Washington Post’s “primer,” you’re probably still wondering.
The Washington Post calls Freddie Gray “the nation’s most prominent symbol of distrust in police.” The Post can’t call him a symbol of police violence, because as far as the paper is concerned, there’s no way to tell whether any police violence occurred at all.
On this day in 1942 (3/24/42), the New York Times reported on one of the most shameful chapters in US history: the internment of US citizens and immigrants in camps solely because they or their ancestors came from Japan, a nation with which the United States was at war. That wasn’t how the Times […]
As Arsalan Iftikhar suggested, Bobby Jindal does devote considerable effort to criticizing minority groups who have done less to fit the the American majority image. This strategy was on full display in Jindal’s softball interview with Fox News host Neil Cavuto.
On Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd tried to provide some historical context to the controversy over incoming GOP majority whip Steve Scalise’s speaking before a white supremacist group. He failed.
That so many black people are killed by law enforcement is a painful, difficult thing to face. That we don’t know how many people is a scandal in itself.
Not only does the melting pot cliché erase the presence of people in “undiscovered” neighborhoods, but it glosses over the structural reasons why they are now “gritty” and “forgotten.”
“Rush Limbaugh talks race relations.” You know, that Rush Limbaugh–the guy who once quipped, “Have you ever noticed how all newspaper composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”
“Black lives matter” is the rallying cry of the burgeoning movement against police killings. The Associated Press, covering that movement, has produced a perfect example of what journalism looks like when black lives don’t matter.
On Fox News Channel, the real “bad guy” in Ferguson was the victim Michael Brown. The New York Times softens language around police violence. And a commercial for a new movie is “news”–on the movie studio’s TV network.
If only police officer Daniel Pantaleo had been able to somehow control his own arm, Eric Garner would not have died.
Perhaps Richard Cohen is sensitive to people being called racist because he’s been called a racist by many observers–and not without good reason.
How Fox News covered the Ferguson grand jury announcement.
After the first few weeks of protests in Ferguson, Missouri, during which corporate media were forced to show the country and the world the extent of America’s militarized police state, those media largely moved on.
That so many black people are killed by law enforcement is a painful, difficult thing to face. Perhaps that’s why media try so hard to look away.
Sensationalized stories feed the perception that protesters are prone to use violence, and that harsh crackdowns are necessary in order to keep the peace. This is true even when, as is the case in Ferguson, protests are overwhelmingly nonviolent.
The front page of the New York Times dwells on how Democrats are playing on “racial fears” in campaign advertising. But are the ads actually unfair–or do they simply talk about issues the corporate media would rather not discuss?
The new issue of Time magazine declares Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul the most interesting man in politics. Maybe that says something about Time, or about the state of American politics.
For a piece that is crafted around the idea that white Democratic votes are really in play, it would have been helpful to point to some numbers–though it wouldn’t have much helped the piece. I
