FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
After suggesting in a November 5 column that the U.S. consider subjecting terror suspects to torture, Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter is trying to change his story. Responding to a critical letter to the editor in Newsweek‘s November 19 issue, Alter claimed, “At both the beginning and the end of my column, I wrote that I oppose […]
Three separate terrorist attacks in Israel claimed at least 25 lives this past weekend, and subsequent Israeli army attacks on Palestinian areas have killed at least five people. The Palestinian group Hamas claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings, which it said were in retaliation for the November 23 assassination of the group’s senior West Bank […]
In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, our leading newspapers and news networks presented the views of one hawk after another. Active and retired generals, CIA officials and cabinet officials, congressional leaders and self-styled terrorism “experts” urged one form or another of violent retaliation. We should listen to such voices, but not theirs […]
It would be easy, and to some tempting, to say that it is America’s turn—that after years of American gloating over Islam’s attacks on Russia, that after the CIA’s goading of proxies like the Pakistanis to arm Islamic terrorists, that after the brutal destruction of Iraq in the war 10 years ago, it is well […]
The September 11 attacks were supposed to have changed everything—but you can’t tell it from reading the newspapers.
Since September 11, there have been at least three bias-related murders and reports from around the country of assaults and harassment targeting Arab- and Muslim-Americans. Homes, businesses, mosques and Muslim schools have been vandalized, children tormented, and students harassed on college campuses. Media have reported many of these assaults (e.g., USA Today, 9/20/01; San Francisco […]
A number of pundits and politicians offered Americans a simple solution to the helplessness and anxiety they were feeling in the wake of the September 11 attacks: Go shopping! Vice President Dick Cheney (L.A. Times, 9/17/01) described it as a way for ordinary citizens to “stick their thumbs in the eye of the terrorists and […]
On October 10, television network executives from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN held a conference call with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and apparently acceded to her “suggestion” that any future taped statements from Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group be “abridged,” and any potentially “inflammatory” language removed before broadcast. The question of how to […]
Displaying a remarkable faith in the power of violence, many media pundits blamed the destruction of the World Trade Center on the failure of the US government to behave aggressively enough after previous acts of terrorism.
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Congress is considering anti-terrorism legislation that could seriously weaken civil liberties in the U.S. Yet the three major networks’ nightly news shows have done little reporting on the issue. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warns that the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 includes provisions that could […]
In the wake of the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many media pundits focused on one theme: retaliation. For some, it did not matter who bears the brunt of an American attack: There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have […]
In January, the already bleak human rights situation in Colombia was reported to be in a state of “alarming degradation,” according to United Nations human rights observers (Associated Press, 1/20/01). A joint report from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Washington Office on Latin America (“Colombia Human Rights Certification II,” 1/01) found that “political […]
When would-be papal assassin Mehmet Ali Agca was pardoned by the Italian government and sent back to his native Turkey in June, a New York Times editorial (6/16/00) typified the prevailing U.S. media spin. The lead of the editorial described the commutation of Agca’s life sentence for the May 1981 papal shooting as “a reminder […]
On December 3, 1999, two white, U.S.-born men, Kevin Ray Patterson and Charles Dennis Kiles were arrested for allegedly plotting to blow up a TV tower, an electrical station and propane storage tanks in California, supposedly in hopes of sparking a Y2K-related militia uprising. Police say they found bomb-making equipment and illegal firearms in their […]
The Journal of Counterterrorism and Security International–a publication that features the work of freelance journalist Steven Emerson–released a press release responding to the magazine Extra!, which ran an article critical of Emerson’s reporting. The press release features the same kind of inaccurate and reckless charges that Extra! said were characteristic of Emerson’s work. Extra! is […]
Did self-styled anti-terrorism expert Steven Emerson help push the world toward nuclear war? On Sunday, June 28, a sensational story appeared in the British newspaper the Observer: “Pakistan was planning nuclear first strike on India.” The stunning revelation that South Asia was on the brink of thermonuclear war was credited to an unnamed “senior Pakistani […]
Two stories involving politically motivated crimes received substantial—and substantially different—media attention in October. On October 23, Dr. Barnett Slepian of Buffalo, New York, was shot by a sniper, apparently because the obstetrician was one of the few doctors in his area who performed abortions. On October 19, several unoccupied buildings at a Vail, Colorado, ski […]
A common theme in media analysis about terrorism is that the U.S. has been specially targeted because of its support for democracy and other lofty principles. The Chicago Tribune‘s R.C. Longworth, for example, made this observation on August 30: Most Americans see their nation and its ideals as benign and positive, and they assume that […]
After suicide bombers killed four people in a Jerusalem shopping district, the New York Times ran an elaborate chart as part of its coverage: “Making War on Israelis: A Deadly Rhythm Since Arab Autonomy.” The chart featured a time line marking each fatal attack on Israeli civilians since the Cairo Agreement established the Palestinian Authority […]
Two days after the crash of TWA Flight 800, the New York Times (7/19/96) ran a story headlined “Newspapers Were Wary This Time, and Didn’t Jump to Conclusions.” The Times argued that the memory of how much of the media rushed to blame Arabs after the Oklahoma City bombing (Extra!, 7-8/95) prevented any jumping to […]
