FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
If we have any hope of addressing the climate crisis, journalists have to move beyond debating its existence or importance, and start looking at both its causes—very concretely, looking at culprits—and its solutions.
To hear corporate media tell it, the most important promise—and the only one they will hold him accountable for—is one Biden never even made: to compromise with the GOP for the sake of compromising.
African leaders are in DC for a big summit, so CBS Face the Nation turns to noted Africa expert…Michael Bloomberg?
The Iran nuclear negotiations had the Sunday shows talking–but who are they talking to? And do they know what they’re talking about?
Neocon pundit Bill Kristol was wrong every which way about the Iraq War. So why’s he on ABC talking about stop and frisk?
You would think—or maybe hope—that journalists who have to appear alongside climate change deniers would find it a bit awkward. It used to be that media were faulted for creating false “balance” in coverage of climate change—quoting reality-based scientists in roughly equal measure with non-scientists who either don’t think there’s a problem or don’t think […]
FAIR’s recent study of the Sunday morning network shows documented a distinct right-wing bias in the guestlists. Republicans and conservatives were everywhere; progressives and people of color, not so much. Since the study was released, there left-leaning commentator/TV host Tavis Smiley has been on two shows, CBS‘s Face the Nation (4/22/12) and ABC‘s This Week […]
The Beltway press is remarkably fixated on two stories: A “scandal” over an $800,000 General Services Administration (GSA) conference in Las Vegas, and the unfolding saga involving prostitutes and some Secret Service and military officers in Colombia. The White House thinks both are bad, of course, but not worth the amount of coverage they’re getting. […]
On Sunday (12/18/11), ABC‘s This Week presented an installment of what it’s calling “The Great American Debates.” What it really was, though, was a perfect example of how corporate media adopt right-wing assumptions when framing a discussion. In this case, it was a debate over Big Government. The show’s opening sounded like a Tea Party […]
ABC This Week host Christiane Amanpour (11/6/11) kicked the show off with a pretty funny joke: Clash of the titans in Texas last night, as Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich met for the first of a series of one-on-one Lincoln/Douglas-style debates. Less funny was the show‘s very imbalanced roundtable discussion: So let’s bring in our […]
ABC‘s This Week (10/10/11) had a normally tilted panel on Sunday talking about, among other things, Occupy Wall Street. The show had three different types of conservatives (former Bush adviser Matthew Dowd, fixture George Will and columnist Peggy Noonan) along with Democratic pundit Donna Brazile. But then host Christiane Amanpour actually interviewed someone involved with […]
ABC This Week (9/25/11): CHRISTINE AMANPOUR: And coming up, Rick Perry on the ropes. PERRY: Yep, there may be slicker candidates and there may be smoother debaters, but I know what I believe in, and I’m going to stand on that belief every day. I will guide this country with a deep, deep rudder. AMANPOUR: […]
Reporter Jose Antonio Vargas wrote a moving piece for the New York Times magazine about his status as an undocumented immigrant. One hope is that his story might improve the tone and substance of media coverage of immigration; Vargas has suggested as much, at one point tweeting this message: Undocumented Immigrant trending. So let’s drop […]
There is growing Congressional opposition to the Libya war. Two House votes this month sought to challenge the White House policy—one of which passed by a wide margin. On Saturday (6/18/11) Charlie Savage reported in the New York Times that the Office of Legal Counsel’s advice to Obama was that he needed to comply with […]
Corporate media’s preference for”centrism” canoftentranslate intoreporting that casts two sides of a debate as equally belligerent or unwilling to compromise. ABC reporter Jonathan Karl‘s report yesterday on This Week (4/3/11) offers a perfect example of the absurdity of this worldview. His focuses was on the battle over the federal budget. On one side are Tea […]
A new study of the guest lists for the Sunday morning chat shows finds that the networks prefer lawmaker guests who are white, male, older and Republican. The study was publishedby the George Mason University School of Law’s Green Bag Journal, and got a brief write-up in the New York Times today (9/13/10). And that […]
Every Sunday on ABC‘s This Week there is a feature that names the U.S. servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan the previous week. Christiane Amanpour is the new host of the show, and the segment continues. But her critics see something sinister at work. This is how previous host Jake Tapper generally introduced the list: […]
The Afghanistan documents posted by WikiLeaks were obviously the big story of the week. So how did the network Sunday shows react to these disclosures, which have the potential to open up a real debate about the Afghan War? NBC‘s Meet the Press interviewed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen. ABC‘s […]
When ABC announced that CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour would take over as host of their Sunday chat show This Week, there were rumblings about how different things would be. Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales wrote a nasty hit piece on Amanpour in which he worried thattheshow focuses on “inside-the-Beltway palaver, an area where Amanpour […]
Back in May FAIR wrote about the problems with a new factchecking project, where the PolitiFact website evaluates ABC‘s This Week. As we said then, this is theoretically a fine idea; the problem is that, in practice, what PolitiFact decides to analyze is almost as important as what is said on the show. A completely […]
