FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Two months ago (FAIR.org, 12/21/21), I noted the striking contrast between vocal media outrage—ostensibly grounded in concern for Afghan people—over President Joe Biden’s withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, and the relative silence over the growing humanitarian crisis in that country, which threatens millions with life-threatening levels of famine. While influenced by drought and […]
As Afghan citizens have been plunged into a humanitarian crisis due in no small part to US sanctions, where is the outrage?
The opposition’s electoral defeat prompted some outlets to to publish sobering headlines, and others to double down on propaganda.
News outlets are ignoring the fact that, while numbers of Nicaraguan migrants have risen, so have those from almost everywhere else.
Western media have long developed a kind of shorthand that demands total impunity for US-backed politicians like Leopoldo López in Venezuela.
![‘Economic Warfare [Is] Designed to Starve the Cuban People Into Rebellion’](https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/James-Early.jpg-e1628710860183-440x253.png)
“We have no right to break the protocols of nations, and to interfere into the sovereignty and self-determination of other nations.”
Articles about Alex Saab’s case have ignored the powerful arguments that the sanctions are illegal under both US and international law.
The corporate press consistently downplayed one of the primary causes of Cuban unrest: the increasingly punitive US blockade.
Assaults on Choice Aren’t News (Here) Republican state lawmakers introduced more than 500 bills that would restrict abortion rights by mid-May—including some that would charge women who terminated their pregnancies with murder. But from the beginning of the year until May 16, NBC News didn’t once mention these attempts to roll back reproductive freedom. (They […]
As the US blockade becomes more asphyxiating to Venezuelans than ever before, corporate outlets have either turned their gaze somewhere else, or doubled down on misrepresenting sanctions.
By omitting the devastating impact of sanctions, corporate media attribute sole responsibility for economic and humanitarian conditions to the Venezuelan government, thereby using the misery provoked by sanctions to validate the infliction of even more misery.
Media are experts in using progressives’ empathy and compassion against them, presenting them carefully selected images and stories of suffering around the world, and suggesting that US military power can be used to alleviate it.
Please remind the New York Times that as a US paper, it has an obligation to cover the effects of US government policy on countries like Venezuela.
Misleading and inaccurate reports about Nicaraguan beef could have drastic consequences for that country when it is already struggling to deal with US sanctions, the pandemic and the aftermath of two damaging hurricanes.
“Historically, siege was considered an act of war; to undertake a siege against a foreign population was considered an act of war. And these sanctions are basically a form of siege against a civilian population, to extort some sort of political goal from their leadership.”
That Lebanon is enduring a major financial crisis was made clear; that US sanctions have contributed to the problem was obscured.
US media coverage has endorsed, downplayed or ignored the harm the sanctions will inflict on Syria’s civilian population, and the misery years of previous sanctions have already inflicted.
When it comes to advocating the overthrow of the US government’s foreign undesirables, you can always count on opinion pages to represent all sides of why it’s a good thing. And the millions of people who beg to differ? Well, they’re just out of the question.
