FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
After a tour of the country last year, a United Nations special rapporteur (4/28/09) urged Washington to do more to address “the depth of racism [that] still permeates all dimensions of life of American society.” Not “questions of race,” not “past racism,” not “personal biases”—but present-day, institutional racism, as expressed in, for example, “racial bias […]
William Bennett at the Values Voter Summit (AlterNet, 9/22/09): I don’t know why more of the African American leadership doesn’t talk about Frederick Douglass…. Probably because of his deep devotion to Lincoln, and his deep devotion to this country. Frederick Douglass at the dedication of the Freedman’s Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (4/14/1876): It […]
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report (Fall/09) is calling attention to Pacifica Radio network member station KPFK for airing the Spanish-English show La Causa‘s “naked anti-Semitism.” According to the SPLC, the weekly program’s hosts, Augustin Cebada and Rafael Tlaloc, “are more than just passive enablers of anti-Semitic rhetoric: They actively promote conspiracy theories about […]
Former President Jimmy Carter’s statement (NBC, 9/15/09) that “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American,” has generated widespread discussion in the corporate media. But few of the many analyses of Carter’s remarks give you […]
“It is difficult to overstate President Obama’s unpopularity in most of Louisiana,” writes Campbell Robertson in a front-page New York Times article (9/11/09). Yet Robertson managed to pull it off. Robertson continues: “He lost handily to Senator John McCain here, picking up only 14 percent of the white vote. (The state is roughly two-thirds white.)” […]
Intern Katy Kelleher at the Jezebel.com blog (9/9/09) has made a worthy attempt at “unpacking all the different levels of sexism and racism that are operating subtly behind the scenes” in recent coverage of professional women’s tennis. On the new stardom of relatively diminutive and white Melanie Oudin, Kelleher remarks that “her accomplishments are definitely […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Corporate media promised to pay more attention to poverty and race after the Gulf Coast’s Katrina disasters in 2005, and for a short time they did a little more reporting. But where was the followup on this year’s August anniversary, when papers like the Washington Post and L.A. Times, […]
Printing a letter to the editor from Leila McDowell (8/26/09), the New York Times has “Another Look at Obama’s Speech to the NAACP”–from the group’s on vice president of communications. McDowell starts with the fact that the “Times distinguished itself from most major media by virtually ignoring the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, which was […]
Eva Paterson (Huffington Post, 8/28/09), president and founder of the Equal Justice Society, has a response to Glenn Beck’s assertion that “I want to point out the silence; no one has challenged these facts” after having been “smearing White House special advisor Van Jones for days on his show.” Being “the person who first hired […]
The Hispanic/Latino Anti-Defamation Coalition, along with the National Hispanic Media Coalition (8/11/09), “applauds” the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for being “the first elected body to take a stand against hate speech in media” by having approved unanimously a resolution urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to conduct a comprehensive investigation on hate speech in […]
News Corpse blogger Mark Howard (8/10/09) calls the fact that “industry sources are reporting that Don Imus is in talks with the Fox Business Network to simulcast his Imus in the Morning radio program” a “de facto admission by FBN that they have failed to attract an audience capable of sustaining the network.” Howard sees […]
In his latest “Dispatch from the Bolivarian Revolution”, blogger Eric Wingerter (BoRev.net, 7/18/09) asks, “Man oh man, how bad does AP reporting have to get before a group of Latin American studies professors from top U.S. universities decides they need to take out a FULL-PAGE AD in the Columbia Journalism Review to respond?” His answer […]
As news comes of “yet another horrific mass shooting by yet another disaffected man armed with ammo and a deep hatred of women“–this time “killing three women and injuring nine more” at a Pennsylvania health club–Jennifer Pozner (Women In Media & News, 8/5/09) notices that “the gunman’s stated intention to target only women is eerily […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Charter schools raise a lot of concerns for educators interested in the future of truly public education; the corporate press have tended more toward boosterism of charters and their high profile promoter, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. That’s the subject of a story in the current issue of Extra! […]
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 […]
The anti-racism Color of Change organization has sent out an email blast (8/30/09) warning that “more and more, right-wing talkshow hosts are bringing race-based fear mongering into the mainstream.” Still, they claim that “Fox‘s Glenn Beck just took it to another level” with his July 28 statement that “this president has exposed himself as a […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Some prominent feminist and liberal voices have recently lent their endorsement to the ongoing U.S. war in Afghanistan, based on the idea that the war is an effort to improve the lives of Afghan women and girls. That was a major argument at the war’s onset, but how does […]
The United Farm Workers have a new action alert (7/24/09) about “an education war going on in Texas” they note has “major national implications as Texas is such a major purchaser of textbooks and their state’s required curriculum drives the content of textbooks produced nationwide.” Specifically, “the Texas State Board of Education is currently preparing […]
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 […]
