FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Corporate reporters, in the main, saw little to question the idea that the fundamental problem facing men of color is “broken” families in need of a dominant male and that entrenched socio-economic disparities could be meaningfully addressed without systemic change.
This week on CounterSpin: A judge has ruled BP was guilty of willful misconduct and gross negligence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 people and dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. With Obama talking about expanding offshore drilling, you’d hope the media would take serious notice. We’ll talk about what that would look like with Antonia Juhasz, author of Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.
Also on the show: The Economist magazine recently apologized and retracted its review of ‘The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism,’ a review that faulted the author for portraying whites as slavery’s villains, and blacks as its victims. Yes. New York University history professor Greg Grandin will join us to talk about the Economist’s slavery problem.
Nicholas Wade’s embrace of the pseudoscience of eugenics raises questions about his tenure at the New York Times, and about corporate media vigilance when it comes to racism.
Watching coverage of the unrest in Ferguson on CNN last night (8/18/14), I was struck at the actual journalism I was treated to by CNN‘s Jake Tapper. It’s not every day corporate media is awestruck by the heavy-handedness of a militarized attack on civilians on US soil. But such was the case for Tapper, who […]
Some good–and not so good–media reactions to the police killing of Michael Brown. Plus pundits wonder what took Obama so long to bomb Iraq, and two papers try to raise doubts about the death toll in Gaza.
It would be wonderful if more Republicans–and, for that matter, more Democrats–were speaking out about police abuses and related issues. But treating one lawmaker’s op-ed as a sign of a fundamental shift on the right seems a bit of an overreach.
USA Today’s original headline: “Police Seek Order as Ferguson Furor Builds.”
The surprise has been the extent to which some media seem to be taking the outcry seriously, talking about the militarization of police–brought home by the rough treatment given to reporters–and the criminalization of black people.
Fox hosts rush to the defense of a local reporter who blamed a pervasive “anti-cop mentality” on “young black men growing up without fathers.”
Bill O’Reilly edited the New York Times editorial calling for marijuana legalization in order to make it easier for him to debunk.
To the extent that Anya Kamenetz’s tweet reflected “innocence,” it’s of a sort people of color and women can ill afford from journalists,
Nicholas Wade was a leading New York Times science writer for three decades. He left the paper weeks after the May publication of his book, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, a book many reviewers say is a full-throated defense of “scientific racism.”
NPR’s historic issue with its lack of diversity isn’t likely to be fixed by their new boss.
National GOP and Tea Party groups descending on Mississippi to scrutinize black voters seems like a pretty big story–but it also provides a confirmation of the charge that the GOP has a serious problem with racism.
Coverage of Las Vegas murders mostly failed to call the crimes “terrorism,” despite the alleged killers leaving behind a note that said “The revolution is beginning,”
Time columnist Joe Klein wants Democrats like Hillary Clinton to keep their distance from “minority groups who are itchy to file grievances” over things like poverty.
On the show this week: CNN goes to Iran nuclear expert… Benjamin Netanyahu? Plus new nonsense on Benghazi, and Meet the Press presents a discussion on affirmative action with mostly conservative white guys–showing media’s need for some affirmative action of their own.
An NBC roundtable on affirmative action–dominated by conservative white men.
Both the New York Post and the Daily News sensationalized, for the second day in a row, revelations that Al Sharpton was an informant for the FBI. Revelations first alluded to in 1988 by Newsday, to be specific.
A colossal wave of abortion restrictions have battered reproductive rights across the nation, leaving in its wake the greatest threat to choice in recent memory. Nevertheless, the corporate media have responded with a collective yawn, suggesting a deep-seated indifference toward the people these anti-choice provisions will harm the most—poor women of color.
