FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Responding (11/13/08) to those “who would argue that the election of the first African-American president signaled the country has moved past the need to be concerned about racial equity,” PBS.org‘s Dori J. Maynard writes that it is true that some television networks put on air more African-American commentators during the campaign. Those additional voices, however, […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin112108 Kai Wright and Andy Worthington @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin112108.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The victory of Proposition 8 in California has, at least for the moment, put the brakes on gay marriage in that state. The post-election recriminations are flying, but the main story we’re hearing is that black voters turned out in droves—to […]
WeCanStopTheHate.org‘s latest push for “media networks… to separate themselves from hate groups and hate speech” quotes (11/14/08) National Council of La Raza President Janet Murguia saying that, with a recent race-motivated Long Island murder, “we have been brutally reminded about the consequences of leaving hate unchecked”: “The wave of hate that is seeping through our […]
Editor & Publisher‘s Greg Mitchell (11/8/08) notes conservative columnist Kathleen Parker’s “misty-eyed” writing (11/7/08) about the Obama victory: “The little speck of difference that kept us imperceptibly apart had been dissolved in a lovely instant of national consensus that race no longer matters.” But he notes that not so long ago, that “little speck of […]
Corporate media may have belatedly embraced the historic black power gestures of 1968 Olympic medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos, but sports media critic Dave Zirin tells (Nation, 11/7/08) of how a modern-day version by one NFL player drew immediate condemnation: [Denver Broncos receiver Brandon] Marshall’s plan was to score a touchdown on Thursday night […]
Professor and author Michael Eric Dyson provides a useful corrective (Los Angeles Times, 11/5/08) to a particularly damaging campaign media theme: Contrary to many critics, his election does not, nor should it, herald a post-racial future. But it may help usher in a post-racist future. A post-racial outlook seeks to delete crucial strands of our […]
Tim Rutten writes today in the L.A. Times (11/5/08): What is perhaps most remarkable about the changed America to which we woke this morning is how the president-elect’s race seems, in most ways, the least remarkable thing about him. In large part, that’s a tribute to the fact that Barack Obama declined every opportunity […]
On the occasion of Studs Terkel‘s death, veteran journalist Dave Lindorff recalls (OpEd News, 11/1/08) his own 1992 book tour in which “most of the program hosts had obviously not read more than the liner notes on the dust jacket” of his book on “for-profit hospital corporations that were buying up community hospitals all over […]
Too many things to say, really, about this New York Times online opinion piece by former Dole advisor Douglas MacKinnon. But hereâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s just one: Regarding the Obama phenomenon and the media fascination with him, a senior staffer for a rival Democrat primary opponent offered up this theory to me for part of the bias. This […]
Writing in Newsweek, Allison Samuels considers what Michelle Obama would mean to African-American women if she were first lady–and also the kinds of problems she’ll confront with the mainstream media: Whatever she does, I hope she doesn’t fall victim to critics with little point of reference. Take this month’s issue of Town and Country magazine. […]
After the Washington Post‘s David Broder weighed in with his thoughts on what he “learned” about John McCain in the course of the campaign–among other things, that it was a “falsehood” to suggest McCain was similar to George W. Bush–it was time for Post readers to find out what the Dean of the Washington Press […]
Elaborating on his Raw Story investigation of Colorado U.S. Attorney Troy Eid’s “Decision Not to Prosecute Obama ‘Assassination Plot’“, MediaBloodhound blogger Brad Jacobson writes (10/31/08) that Mark Hosenball, an investigative correspondent for Newsweek, is the only mainstream journalist that I could find on record who questioned Eid’s handling of this case. Yet not in the […]
This article is the overview of FAIR’s study, “Smearcasting, How Islamophobes Spread Bigotry, Fear and Misinformation.” A remarkable thing happened at the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) nominations in February 2007: The normally highbrow and tolerant group nominated for best book in the field of criticism a work widely viewed as denigrating an entire religion. […]
This article is the overview of FAIR’s study, “Smearcasting, How Islamophobes Spread Bigotry, Fear and Misinformation.” Visit the report’s special micro-site at www.smearcasting.com or click here to download the full report. In the 1990 Polish elections a whispering campaign suggesting that Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Roman Catholic, was a “secret Jew” attracted widespread […]
In his Altercation blog at Media Matters, Eric Alterman (10/28/08) points out the difficulty in critiquing the New York Post: It’s hard to tell whether the paper is being offensive or idiotic. Steve Serby in the New York Post: “Good for Tom Coughlin. Good for Coughlin for tightening the noose around Plaxico Burress.” Burress, a […]
Tom Brokaw, the interim host of NBC‘s Meet the Press, and NBC analyst Chuck Todd expressed bafflement on last Sunday’s Meet the Press (10/26/08) at how Latinos had “turned on the Republican Party” and their “friend” John McCain: TODD: I mean, this, this Hispanic–one of the things we–underreported story of the cycle is how Hispanics […]
Describing the latest in “its continuing effort to combat hate and bigotry,” the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee announces (10/22/08) it “has launched the ‘Mail Back the Hate’ campaign” to “counter the most recent attempt using the politics of fear as a tool to spread hate and division; the distribution of 28 million copies of “Obsession: Radical […]
In Michael Powell’s piece in the New York Times (10/22/08) on Barack Obama “changing his tempo,” I found this passage to be a little creepy: Mr. [Jim] Webb, a red-haired, proudly Scots-Irish pol with a John Wayne cadence, introduced Mr. Obama in Roanoke and began: He’s one of you. Mr. Webb offered a complicated formula […]
Via the Southern Poverty Law Center’s HateWatch, the Tucson Citizen‘s Anne T. Denogean says (10/14/08) it “isn’t too surprising” that the Pew Hispanic Center’s polling found, among other disturbing results, “one in seven Hispanics said they had trouble finding or keeping a job because of their ethnicity. One in 10 reported that their ethnicity made […]
The New York Observer‘s Felix Gillette brings our attention (10/20/08) to a new self-described “grassroots” website created after “NBC/MSNBC was criticized during the 2008 election for sexism in its coverage.” Founder Margot Friedman further explains that “picking a qualified woman and/or person of color to host Meet the Press would help repair some of the […]
