FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Defining George W. as a Non-Bush Jon Meacham in Time (7/1/13) tried to refurbish the Bush “brand name” in preparation for a possible presidential run by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: Jeb long ago internalized and then lived out his family’s guiding precepts. Bushes move to new parts of the country; they work hard; they […]
The cover of Rolling Stone (8/13), featuring a self-portrait of Dzhokhar Tsaernav taken weeks before the Boston bombing, has fueled a strong backlash. Discussing the cover, Fox News‘ Lisa Daftari (7/18/13) said: In the aftermath of 9/11, if you look back over a decade ago, this country had an awakening, an understanding, that we have […]
When Jeremy Scahill called out a CNN reporter for an error, she eventually corrected her mistake on the air. That’s good– and more outlets should be doing the same. Unfortunately the “non-correction correction” is more typical–or, as in the case of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, a media figure will simply ignore the issue.
The latest FAIR Action Alert asks readers to contact MSNBC and USA Today for corrections of misreporting in their coverage of Iran. Read the alert here and, if you send the outlets a letter, please share it in the comments section below.
“Democrats on one side, Republicans on the other” is the way conventional Beltway reporters seem to see the world–and it’s reflected in their reporting on political events. On the front page of USA Today (6/7/13), Susan Page has a piece wondering if the unfolding scandals surrounding the White House and surveillance will threaten the president’s […]
In a courtroom base near Tacoma, Washington, Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales will plead guilty today to killing 16 civilians–most of them women and children–in an Afghan village on March 11, 2012. A little more than a year later, U.S. media seem to have not much interest left in the Bales case.
USA Today‘s front-page headline (5/31/13): Churches Sever Scout Sponsorship The online headline, over Bob Smietana’s piece on the reaction of church groups that sponsor Boy Scout troops to the Scouts’ announced plan to accept gay Scouts was longer but no less sweeping: Religious Regretfully Sever Scout Sponsorships That’s bad news for the Scouts, since as […]
Benghazi, the Justice Department seizing AP phone records, and the IRS targeting Tea Party groups: Much of the Beltway press corps–which has pushed the Benghazi story for months–is seeing the Obama presidency in a state of near free-fall. But what’s actually happening?
The controversy over the attacks at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, is a great test of the right’s tired claim that the corporate media have a liberal bias. If that were true, then this “scandal” would exist almost entirely on Fox News Channel and conservative talk radio.
The front page of the New York Times had a very definitive headline on Syria and chemical weapons–but when you read the actual story, a much more ambiguous picture emerged.
Seeing a photograph of USA Today founder Al Neuharth above the fold in the edition of his newspaper that reported his death calls to mind a rather famous story about Neuharth’s outburst at a 1983 USA Today editorial meeting.
“TERROR RETURNS” ran across USA Today‘s front page (4/16/13) in inch-high letters. Below, the story it referred to had a smaller headline: “That Post-9/11 Quiet? It’s Over.” Rick Hampson and Chuck Raasch’s story began: The blasts on Boylston Street were felt across the nation, shaking and sometimes shattering a fragile hope—formed slowly in the years […]
If USA Today is presenting an objective record of the Chavez years, how on Earth did he win so many elections? By that score, Venezuela must also have an especially ill-informed populace–or maybe Venezuelans know a different reality.
Reporting positive polling for the Keystone XL pipeline, USA Today reports, “The numbers come amid continuing efforts to clean up a major new oil spill in Arkansas.” But “come amid” is another way of saying “entirely unrelated to.”
Household wealth is on the rebound, USA Today reports–but mostly because of the stock market. Which means it means next to nothing to the vast majority of us.
“Outspent and lately out-hustled by highly organized gay rights organizations,” USA Today reports, “opponents have struggled to get their story out.” That’s a curious premise, given that “their story” is the law of the land, and that’s why we’re talking about it in the first place.
There was a pair of pictures on the front page of USA Today today, meant to illustrate a story about President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories. It actually illustrated the very different ways Israelis and Palestinians are depicted in U.S. media.
With the Keystone climate protests in Washington bringing climate change back into the media, we’re hearing a lot about how the Keystone pipeline will, at the very least, mean that we’ll be getting our oil from a nice country.
USA Today’s point in covering this weekend’s anti-choice “March for Life” is is to note that, 40 years after the Roe v. Wade decision, the country is divided on abortion rights. That’s an odd way of describing a 24-point spread in public opinion
When we draw comparisons between a particular event and other similar tragedies, it is not to say that they all matter equally, but to remind ourselves that we’re conditioned to feel that some matter quite a bit more than others.
