FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
[Note: This piece is a sidebar to Gullibility Begins at Home.] On January 11, 2002, the New York Daily News reported that immigrants and labor rights groups charged that hundreds of undocumented workers were hired to clean toxic World Trade Center dust out of buildings near Ground Zero with no training in hazardous waste disposal […]
Sheldon Rampton, research director of the Center for Media and Democracy, on the upcoming ABC docudrama The Path to 911. Also this week: Wayne Barrett discusses his new book Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11.
This week on CounterSpin: A new proposal to Iran and how this has changed the tone of media coverage, with Professor Michael Klare. Also on the show: Fawaz Gerges of Sarah Lawrence College discusses his new book, Journey of the Jihadist.
This week on CounterSpin: Ben Bagdikian on McClatchy consolidation and the future of journalism. Also on the show: Reporter Jack Fairweather joins to discuss the new issue of Mother Jones, which exposes yet another INC tall tale.
Slate.com editor and legal commentator Dahlia Lithwick discusses why damning recent reports on Guantánamo Bay have received minimal attention from news outlets. Also on the show: Sheila Gibbons, editor of the quarterly Media Report to Women, joins to talk about what needs to be done to improve representation of women in media.
This week on CounterSpin: Emily Whitfield of the ACLU discusses Amy Gharib prison and the Pentagon’s cover up. Also on the show: Is the so-called a la carte approach to cable TV a win for the public, or just another way for media giants to control the flow of information? We’ll ask of Kenneth DeGraff of Consumers Union.
When George W. Bush announced on February 9 that an Al-Qaeda plot against a building in Los Angeles had been “thwarted,” many television newscasts took the administration’s claims as fact. ABC World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson reported (2/9/06) that “President Bush today revealed some details of a terrorist plot that was foiled,” later putting […]
The story of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping is one that mainstream media have been slow to give the attention it deserves (Action Alert, 1/11/06; Media Advisory, 1/27/06). Now some journalists are pointing to public opinion to justify the news industry’s less-than-aggressive approach to this major constitutional scandal. But when NBC‘s Tim Russert and Chip […]
Writer Naomi Klein joins CounterSpin to talk about what’s missing from the current mainstream discussion of torture– namely, the history of US support for the practice around the world. Also this week: Rolling Stone contributing editor Eric Boehlert on the media and the Sami Al Arian saga.
On November 2, the Washington Post carried an explosive front-page story about secret Eastern European prisons set up by the CIA for the interrogation of terrorism suspects. While the Post article, by reporter Dana Priest, gave readers plenty of details, it also withheld the most crucial information–the location of these secret prisons–at the request of […]
Journalist Laura Rozen joins to discuss to scandal currently unfolding in Italy, and what this could mean for the White House. Also on the show: Hip hop journalist Jeff Change on the Village Voice merger and what this means for alternative media.
On October 9, Parade magazine—the Sunday newspaper supplement with a circulation of 34.5 million, making it the country’s most widely distributed magazine—published an inaccurate smear against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The smear, appearing in the Q&A column “Walter Scott’s Personality Parade,” was a response to a letter writer who wanted to know “where Fidel Castro […]
On his October 4 broadcast, Fox host Bill O’Reilly presented a segment about “political smear” websites that “will do and say pretty much anything to harm people with whom they disagree politically.” Ironically, O’Reilly used that very segment to launch his own smear. Guest David Kline said to O’Reilly: “I think there are a lot […]
In his September 27 online column, NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin responded to FAIR’s September 21 Action Alert regarding a Morning Edition report on terrorism that implied that only “extremist groups” perceived a connection between the recent London subway bombings and Britain’s involvement in Iraq. Below is Dvorkin’s response. A ‘FAIR’ Question One more issue from […]
NOTE: Please see the update to this alert. In a story about a U.N. Security Council resolution on terrorism and incitement (Morning Edition, 9/15/05), NPR reporter Corey Flintoff attributed to “extremist groups” the view that there was a link between the July 7 subway bombings in London and Britain’s participation in the Iraq War. In […]
In the past year and a half, the Bush administration has engaged in elaborate rhetorical gymnastics when addressing the use and authorization of torture by American forces and leaders. Under increasing fire for its conduct of the war in Iraq, the scandal of Abu Ghraib and the alarming implications of defenses such as the August […]
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has urged the U.S. government to create blacklists of condemned political speech–not only by those who advocate violence, but also by those who believe that U.S. government actions may encourage violent reprisals. The latter group, which Friedman called “just one notch less despicable than the terrorists,” includes a majority […]
Many pundits insisted that “partisanship” should play no part in the discussion of the July 7 terrorist attacks in London. But it seemed like business as usual in the right-wing media–as commentators used the attacks to score political points for their side and promote their pet agendas. On Fox News Channel‘s Special Report (7/7/05), Jeff […]
John Burroughs of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy discusses last month’s negotiations over the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which received little coverage by the press. Also this week: there has been a recent resurgence in conversation surrounding the Watergate scandal. But how reliable is media’s picture of that time and the lessons it supposedly left for US journalism?
In the rush to condemn Newsweek‘s May 9 report about abuse of the Quran at Guantánamo, little attention has been paid to a technique the magazine used in reporting its original story: submitting articles to government officials prior to publication. According to Newsweek‘s accounts of the reporting behind the brief “Periscope” item that caused so […]
