FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Anthony DiMaggio finds (ZNet, 10/19/08) “the massive attention surrounding ACORN” as much evidence of “media racism as it is their class prejudice”: In danger of losing its eight year hold on the Presidency, the Republican Party has become increasingly desperate in its attacks on poor and minority groups, who have registered in increasingly large numbers […]
First-time film director Michelle Garcia discovers (Women In Media & News, 10/13/08) how sexism affects media images of such underreported issues as the U.S. government “denying passports to Mexican-American–CITIZENS–whose birth were attended to by midwives”: [WIMN editor Jennifer L. Pozner] mentions the images and voices contained in the piece are not often widely seen. After […]
Fed up with corporate media neglect–and even abuse–of such issues, the New Routes to Community Health program has announced (Business Wire, 9/30/08) a “new model for improving the health of immigrants in the United States using media created by immigrants”: Eight diverse immigrant-led collaborations across the United States each are receiving $225,000 over three years […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin101708 Lori Minnite and Bethany Albertson @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin101708.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: From the reaction of quite a bit of the mainstream media, the community organizing group ACORN is poised to steal the election for Barack Obama. Scattered allegations of voter registration fraud have been the subject of wall-to-wall TV coverage, but what […]
Writing of FAIR’s new Smearcasters report on the Washington City Paper‘s website (10/13/08), Bobby Allyn finds that “searching U.S. newspapers on Lexis Nexis for ‘Obama,’ ‘Muslim’ and ‘smear’ generates 509 unique hits.” Allyn continues: There have been plenty of reports debunking the Obama Muslim allegation, but not enough about the racial subtext of “smearing” a […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin101008 David Cay Johnston and Isabel MacDonald and Steve Rendall @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin101008.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The bailout story turns again as Congress passes the White House’s bailout bill. Will reporters give up questioning the plan entirely now that it has that holy grail of “bipartisan support”? We’ll hear from one journalist who’s […]
Mike Janssen of In These Times (9/27/08) explains that, while the fact that radio is “cheap and ubiquitous… easily accessible to the poor, the illiterate and the low-tech,” may not be valued by massive conglomerates like Clear Channel, for many communities, radio still promises a way to spread news, share stories and support a cultural […]
Looking beyond particularly hateful media individuals like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Lou Dobbs, Joseph Torres of StopBigMedia.com (10/1/08) has some disturbing numbers to explain why, he says, “media have contributed to the racial divisions that still exist in this country by marginalizing people of color in its coverage”:
This article is part 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. The term “Islamofascism” came into common use after the September 2001 attacks as a favorite way for neoconservatives to describe the ideology of extremist and […]
This article is part 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 September 2007, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, named for the noted Lebanese Christian poet, became the country’s first public school focused on Arabic language […]
This article is part 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. Even the world of celebrity fashion is not spared by the Islamophobic smear machine. In May 2008, right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin accused celebrity chef Rachael […]
This article is part of FAIR’s study “Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Bigotry, Fear and Misinformation.” Bigots aren’t born, and hate doesn’t spring up on its own; as the song says, “You’ve got to be carefully taught.” The following list includes some of the media’s leading teachers of anti-Muslim bigotry, serving various roles in the Islamophobic […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin092608 Earth Jane Melzer and Sarah Anderson @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin092608.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Lose your house, lose your vote? A report from a new investigative journalism outfit says that Michigan Republican Party officials are planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to challenge voters on Election Day—targeting a largely poor, African-American pool […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin082908 Colette Pichon Battle and Leigh Dingerson and Derrick Evans @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin082908.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: All eyes have been focused on Denver and the Democratic National Convention. But while the political calendar suggests the story of the day is the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential nominee, it’s hard to […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin081508 Helena Cobban and Iyanna Jones @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin081508.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: “Russia bad, Georgia good” is the theme of much U.S. coverage of recent hostilities between those two countries and their battles over the breakaway Georgian territory known as South Ossetia. We’ll be joined by Helena Cobban of the website Just World […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin080808 Adam Serwer and Eric Boehlert @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin080808.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Playing the race card. John McCain expressed outrage after Barack Obama suggested his critics would use his race to dismiss his candidacy. Much of the media conversation about the back-and-forth seemed to support McCain’s claim that he was the victim. What […]
Corporate media have been absurdly receptive to the McCain campaign’s charge that Barack Obama “played the race card” by predicting that his opponents in the presidential race would try to use his race against him. The fact is that racialized attacks are a standard part of the Republican playbook—and the strategy has been employed by […]
It’s safe to assume that Barack Obama knew he could expect certain lines of attack when he decided to run for president: whispers about his religious beliefs, for example, or questions regarding his patriotism. And sure enough, those issues came up almost as soon as the campaign started. But it’s difficult to imagine that Obama—whose […]
The “liberal” media treated Buckley’s passing as the loss of a great intellectual and upstanding human being, with admiring obituaries that largely ignored a massive body of unfavorable material.
When post-election violence erupted in Kenya at the end of December, U.S. media quickly settled into a familiar story: African tribes were savagely tearing each other apart. Journalists described the events as “savage tribal killings” (L.A. Times, 1/2/08), “gruesome ethnic killings” (Washington Post, 1/6/08) and “tribal riots” (Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 1/3/08). “This is a […]
