FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The contrast between the two reports is striking: While Kerry’s report avoided providing specific details to back up its claims–“in order to protect sources and methods,” Kerry said–the UN report strove for maximum transparency.
The pundits’ message on Barack Obama’s talk of a “red line” on Syria is that they are concerned about the credibility of the president’s threats of violence–much more so than about the credibility of his evidence.
After Syrian mortar fire from Syria’s civil war reportedly strayed into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights last weekend, some U.S. journalists seemed confused about the political geography of the region. For instance, CBS Evening News reported (11/12/12) reported: Syria’s civil war has now touched Israel. For the second straight day, a shell from Syria landed in […]
You can learn a lot from reading the Corrections box in the New York Times–often because going back to read the story that is being corrected reveals more than the correction itself. On October 20, the Israeli navy intercepted another boat attempting to reach the Gaza Strip to deliver supplies in defiance of the Israeli […]
The Washington Post today: Diplomatic Efforts Unable to Derail Palestinians’ UN Gambit “Gambit” is the kind of word that seems intended to send a certain message–as if there some kind of sneaky maneuver at work here. That’s especially true when it is contrasted with “diplomatic efforts.” In this case, the paper is referring to efforts […]
The New York Times has a curious reference today concerning the White House’s strategy on a United Nations Security Council resolution critical of Israeli settlements: The new White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said Thursday that he would not say whether the United States would invoke its rarely used veto power in the Council. The […]
The U.S. has drawnup a new round of proposed sanctions against Iran that they intend to present before the U.N. Security Council. Thisis obviouslya rebuke of Brazil and Turkey for negotiating their own deal with Iran. The Washington Post refers to the countriesas “two junior Security Council members” that ” swooped in with their own […]
PBS‘s NewsHour‘s Gwen Ifill (9/15/09), quizzing Richard Goldstone on his U.N. fact-finding mission that found that both Israel and Palestinian fighters had committed war crimes in the Gaza conflict: The term “even-handed” is the problem that Israel has with the conclusions in the report. Your criticism of Israel seems so much harsher than that of […]
The day after George W. Bush nominated John Bolton as the new American envoy to the United Nations, the headline in the New York Times (3/8/05) was “Bush Nominates Weapons Expert as Envoy to U.N.” But calling him an “expert” might need a little explanation–and the Times should know this as well as anyone. In […]
With its policy in Iraq flailing, the Bush administration has lately made a great show of delegating authority over the country’s political future to the United Nations. For some dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, this is heresy. And for some reviled Iraqi exile politicians, notably Ahmed Chalabi, it is a threat. So perhaps it is not surprising that […]
Martin Bright of the Observer on American reporting on Iraq. Also: former 60 Minutes producer Barry Lando on the New York Times and misinformation.
In the wake of a FAIR action alert, the New York Times printed the following correction on Saturday, October 4: An article on Wednesday about renewed criticism of the Bush administration for its handling of intelligence before the Iraq war misstated the circumstances under which international weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998. They were withdrawn […]
Nothing makes a newspaper prouder than a juicy foreign policy scoop. Except, it seems, when the scoop ends up raising awkward questions about a U.S. administration’s drive for war. Back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors, known as UNSCOM, to spy on Iraq […]
Nothing makes a newspaper prouder than a juicy foreign-policy scoop. Except, it seems, when the scoop ends up raising awkward questions about a U.S. administration’s drive for war. Back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq for the U.S.’s own […]
U.S. media have been ignoring or downplaying an important dimension of the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East. On October 7, the United Nations Security Council voted 14 to 0 for a resolution condemning Israel’s “excessive use of force against Palestinians” and deploring the “provocation” of Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s September 28 visit to […]
On September 12, the New York Times ran a blatantly biased front-page article by U.N. correspondent Barbara Crossette about Iraq’s decision not to allow two teams of United Nations experts into Iraq to assess the effects of the sanctions. This article is only the latest example of Crossette’s alarming willingness to repeat increasingly shrill—and largely […]
Since January 1999, the Washington Post has spun a tall tale about the 1998 collapse of U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq and the U.S./British airstrikes that followed. Not only has the Post rewritten Iraqi history, but the paper’s new version of events contradicts its own coverage from the time of the airstrikes. Despite running several […]
The same day the Washington Post was hyperventilating about the U.N. being excessively candid with its own reporter (1/7/99), the New York Times advanced the UNSCOM-spying story with a front-page article by Tim Weiner. Weiner’s piece went further than the previous day’s story in the Post, reporting that “American spies had worked undercover on teams […]
In the wake of the Gulf War, a New York Timeseditorial (4/15/91) claimed that since the end of the Cold War, the U.N. Security Council is “no longer paralyzed by Soviet vetoes.” The comment shows that Cold War propaganda lives on: For years, it hasn’t been the USSR that has been paralyzing the Security Council, […]
