FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
NBC‘s Olympics broadcast last night included a profile of Grenadian runner Kirani James. The small island is peaceful now, viewers learned, thanks in no small part to Ronald Reagan’s decision to invade. Here’s the clip: (UPDATE: As you can see, someone at NBC is keeping tabs on YouTube, and they’ve taken this down twice. You […]
Coverage of national political campaigns is generally pretty bad–a parade of polls, horesrace analysis and fundraising tallies, with pundits doing their best at pretending they’re campaign strategists. Can it actually get worse than that? Maybe. NBC reporter Chuck Todd made that case with a full page article in the Washington Post on August 5 that compared […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin030912 Conn Hallinan and Tom Tresser @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin030912.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Journalistic access to the unfolding crisis in Syria is dangerous and sparse. But that hasn’t kept Western officials from insisting that the situation is black and white, with the Syrian regime of Bashir al Assad the bad actor, and rebel Syrian […]
No comment. NBC Nightly News (1/29/12) LESTER HOLT: And a sign of the times tonight on a football field in Hawaii. The NFL is relaxing its strict social media policy and allowing players to use Twitter to interact with fans during the Pro Bowl in Honolulu. There’ll be one designated computer on each sideline, no […]
“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”– A.J. Liebling Rob Davis of VoiceofSanDiego.org reports on the new owner of his local daily: Doug Manchester, the new owner and publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune, wants his new media outlet to be a booster. The newspaper’s new CEO, John Lynch, made […]
Fox Sports, covering a football game between the Chicago Bears and Atlanta Falcons (9/11/11), put up a bunch of headlines about Bears quarterback Jay Cutler’s knee problems: Cutler Leaves With Injury Cutler Lacks Courage Cutler’s No Leader “These are the actual headlines from the local papers in Chicago,” announcer Daryl Johnston declared. Wow, were the […]
When it comes to reporting on labor disputes, corporate media don’t exactly have a track record of even- handedness. (See, e.g., Extra!, 4/11.) Throw in a $4 billion media investment, and you’ve got a story ripe for misreporting: the recent dispute between the NFL Players Association and the owners of what Forbes magazine (9/13/07) called […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: As the corporate media would have it, the new Wall Street reform bill is the most “comprehensive” overhaul of financial regulation since the Great Depression, and a huge victory for President Obama who it is said squared off with Wall Street in order to deliver the “sweeping” reforms. We’ll […]
On April 8, 2010, the North Dakota State Board of Higher Education let stand its May 2009 vote to retire the University of North Dakota’s “Fighting Sioux” nickname and logo over the 2010-11 academic year. The decision marked the end of a bitter debate on the athletic use of Native American culture at the 13,000-student […]
For many people, the Olympics rank high on the Happy Meter, right up there with cuddly kittens and free beer. But those who take a closer look at the Olympics’ political-economic underbelly often end up seeing less feline and more freight train, a corporate juggernaut whizzing through town at taxpayer expense and leaving public debt […]
Thomas Rogers of Salon‘s Broadsheet (9/10/09, ad-viewing required) reports that world champion South African runner Caster Semenya recently “was tested (possibly without her consent) by the International Association of Athletics Federations” and “now the results of her gender testing have leaked, and, if the reports are to be believed, they show that she is, in […]
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 […]
Sports media critic Dave Zirin has posted on his Edge of Sports blog (7/6/09) about Wimbledon tennis tournament host All England Club having “blithely admitted that for women players ‘physical attractiveness is taken into consideration’ when it comes to court assignments” and how “several players, including some of these ‘easy-on-the-eye unknowns,‘ were upset with the […]
Journal-isms writer Richard Prince is highlighting (3/19/09) an article in the current issue of GQ headlined “You Think Your Job Sucks? Try Working for Lenny Dykstra”–the title of which might be an understatement, considering some of its reporting therein: A photo editor’s unflattering portrait of baseball-player-turned-financial adviser Lenny Dykstra as a racist, sexist and homophobe […]
For once, mainstream media have found an anti-government protest to embrace. When the Olympic torch arrived in San Francisco on April 9 and thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to decry human rights abuses by the Chinese government, journalists descended on the scene like ants at a picnic. CNN led the feeding frenzy. The […]
When women’s basketball star Sheryl Swoopes publicly came out of the closet on October 26, she became one of the first openly gay athletes in professional team sports, and by far the most famous. It was a groundbreaking step made all the more remarkable by Swoopes’ star power: The WNBA’s only three-time MVP and a […]
Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post joins to discuss The New York Times coverage of Judith Miller. Also on the show: Author Dave Zirin talks about his new book and attempts to answer the question– do sports and radical politics mix?
On June 6, a years-long civic battle over plans to build a combined NFL/Olympic stadium atop publicly owned rail yards on Manhattan’s West Side ended with a thud. After a hard-fought lobbying campaign that saw more than $42 million spent on both sides (Newsday, 6/16/05), New York state assembly speaker Sheldon Silver used his power […]
The World Series provided a heck of a photo-op for George W. Bush when he threw out the first pitch one night, aiming at a large TV audience. For the most part, the game that followed was a pleasure to watch — midway through a week that combined what’s best and worst about major league […]
In the 1930s, legendary hockey owner Conn Smythe was displeased by newspaper coverage of his Toronto Maple Leafs. Smythe’s solution: He approached Toronto Star publisher Joe Atkinson with a promise to take out $20,000 in advertising annually. In exchange, Atkinson would raise his hockey writers’ salaries by $20,000 — as a reward for more “honest” […]
