FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The April 17 New York Times ran a long front-page piece on the racism of John Tanton, founder of the anti-immigration organizations Federation for American Immigration Reform and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Reporter Jason DeParle included a good deal of damning information about Tanton (long documented here at FAIR—1/1/93—and by groups like the Southern […]
Last week, Washington Post reporter Dan Balz explained that Newt Gingrich was “an idea-spewing machine” and a “one-man think tank”–even warning that “a keen intellect can also translate into the appearance of intellectual superiority.” Well OK. A few days in Balz’s paper, readers learned that in a recent speech Gingrich called Barack Obama a “food […]
Donald Trump’s efforts to delegitimize Barack Obama by suggesting he’s not a native-born citizen, and questioning his qualifications for admissions to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, have drawn fire from prominent media figures like MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell (FAIR Blog, 4/29/11), CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer (CBS Evening News, 4/27/11) and even David Letterman […]
Newsweek‘s cover story this week is on the plight of college-educated white men aged 35-64. The magazine laments that “this hitherto privileged demo isn’t just on its knees, it’s flat on on its face.” The subhead of the piece asks, “Can manhood survive the lost decade?” Now, I have much sympathy for all who are […]
To make his claim that the right hasn’t been responsible for a terrorist act since 1995, O’Reilly even had to overlook at least two domestic terror acts apparently inspired by his Fox News colleague Glenn Beck.
Today the New York Times reports that an arrest has been made in connection with an attempted bombing at the Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Washington. As we pointed out here, the case has generated relatively little media coverage–in contrast to attempted domestic terrorism attacks (or even alleged plots) connected to Muslims. The […]
The owner of the Washington Redskins football team, Dan Snyder, is suing the local City Paper for publishing an unflattering cover image of him–namely, a photo doctored to include devil horns. That imagewasaccompanied by an article about Snyder’sbusiness practices. Rob Capriccioso of Indian Country Today points out (2/1/11) thatthe suit alleges the cover art is […]
As we approach the Monday holiday, we’re hearinga Pentagon lawyer suggest that Martin Luther King would support the war in Afghanistan. That makes it an ideal time torecall a 1995 column by FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and longtime associate Norman Solomon (Media Beat, 1/4/95). The full column appearsbelow, and is archived here. The Martin Luther […]
The Scott sisters (Gladys and Jamie) were serving doublelife sentences in a Mississippi state prison over the supposed role they played in an armed robbery that amounted to $11. At the end of 2010 their sentences were suspended by Governor Haley Barbour, provided that Jamie receive a kidney donation from her sister. The sisters’ ordeal, […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin122410 Trudy Lieberman and Lee Stranahan @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin122410.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Following a federal court ruling in Virginia finding the individual mandate provision of the 2010 healthcare act unconstitutional, there was some solid coverage of the Constitutional issues involved in a policy that will, if ultimately upheld, require every American to purchase […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin120310 Robert Naiman and Richard Prince @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin120310.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: WikiLeaks strikes again, this time with the release of 250,000 diplomatic cables that shed considerable light on how U.S. foreign policy is conducted. The headlines so far are about Iran’s weapons and the perilous situation in Pakistan. But one story hasn’t […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The FDA is on the verge of approving genetically engineered salmon in spite of opposition by the public, scientists and consumer groups. On November 15 the group Food & Water Watch released internal documents from Fish & Wildlife Service scientists expressing misgivings about the safety of the altered salmon […]
I clicked on the Washington Post website on Sunday and saw this: We Overreact to Prejudice Instead of Airing It Out By Kathleen Parker Only someone who’s pondered Barack Obama’s “fullbloodedness” and Elena Kagan’s distance from “mainstream” America (hint: She’s Jewish, and from New York!) can do this. Parker also wrote a memorable column about […]
Monday’s front-page New York Times piece, “‘Culture of Poverty,’ Long an Academic Slur, Makes a Comeback,” is about how it’s okay again for scholars to talk about the “culture of poverty” and to study “cultural” aspects of the subject. It’s a trend reporter Patricia Cohen suggests vindicates Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who popularized the term in […]
For the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, NBC anchor Brian Williams (Dateline NBC, 8/22/10) recalled the experience as his own boy’s adventure tale: You know, I’ve been around a lot of guns and a lot of dead bodies, and a lot of people shooting at people to make dead bodies. But you put them all […]
Martin Peretz, owner/editor of the New Republic, has come under fire recently for his anti-Muslim comments–leading to protests at Harvard, where Peretz is scheduled to be honored with an endowed chair in social studies named for him. Peretz’s bigotry has been well-known for years–and is not confined to Muslims or Arabs, though those may be […]
A recent FAIR study (Extra!, 8/10) looked at politically themed books reviewed by the New York Times Book Review and the C-SPAN show After Words and concluded that both outlets heavily favored white male authors and reviewers. The Times came off particularly badly in the study, which revealed 95 percent of the U.S. authors reviewed, […]
In the coverage of Hurricane Katrina’s fifth anniversary, you’ll find several obligatory mentions in the corporate media of the still-decimated Lower Ninth Ward, but you’d be hard pressed to find anything as direct or damning as what you find in independent media coverage–for example, this piece on Women’s eNews (8/29/10) by Kimberly Seals Allers, who […]
Seattle freelance videographer Jud Morris thought he saw news April 17 when he found a police officer standing over a man lying on the sidewalk, telling him, “I’m going to beat the fucking Mexican piss out of you, homey. You feel me?” and kicking him in the head. Morris captured the incident, including the next […]
When it comes to political books, the New York Times Book Review and the C-SPAN book show After Words share an exceedingly narrow view of whose books deserve review—and who is fit to discuss them. A FAIR study found that these important media venues for discussion of newly published books were overwhelmingly dominated by white […]
