FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
This USA Today headline (6/16/10) seemed like the kind of thing one might stop to read: Top Officer Sees Military Caution as Backfiring The lead: Commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan have been reluctant to launch more secret operations because of an excess of caution about violating military rules and international law, a top Army officer […]
The front page of USA Today tells us (6/8/10):: Oil Spills Escalated in This Decade Experts: Red flag wasn’t heeded By Alan Levin USATODAY The number of spills from offshore oil rigs and pipelines in U.S. waters more than quadrupled this decade, according to government data. The trend could have served as a warning for […]
Continuing in the fine media tradition of treating dead civilians mostly as a problem for the people who kill them, USA Today offers readers this (4/16/10): Deaths of Afghan Civilians Double Accidental killings hurt NATO effort By Paul Wiseman USATODAY KABUL â┚¬” Deaths of Afghan civilians by NATO troops have more than doubled this year, […]
While FAIR Blog complained earlier (3/30/10) that coverage of the Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal was overlooking Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s involvement in the story before he became Pope Benedict XVI, yesterday two prominent op-eds focused on this history. Unfortunately, both op-eds present a highly selective version of Ratzinger’s role. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat […]
One of USA Today‘s regular op-ed features is a “right-left” conversation between conservative columnist Cal Thomas and “liberal” Democratic strategist Bob Beckel in which they seek “Common Ground”—the name of the op-ed feature—on “issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot.” Last week (3/25/10) Thomas and Beckel tackled the issue of “Bias and Fox News“—and really, what […]
Under the headline “Social Security Races to ‘Negative’: Rash of Retirements Push Fund to Brink,” USA Today‘s February 8 front page presented an alarmist view on a story that is regularly misreported in the corporate media (Extra!, 7-8/95, 1-2/05; FAIR Action Alert, 10/19/07). Reporter Richard Wolf leads with this warning: “Social Security’s annual surplus nearly […]
Under the headline “Va., N.J. Give GOP Reason to Celebrate,” USA Today‘s front-page election report (11/4/09) featured this quote from GOP strategist Frank Donatelli: The warning is that if you’re in a moderate district, or you’re in a moderate-to-conservative state, you should think twice before you rubberstamp Obama’s agenda. Well, there were two districts choosing […]
This week, ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya returned to Tegucigalpa–though not to office. Unfortunately, press accounts are still misreporting the story behind his ouster, relying on those who supported the coup to supply the explanation for their actions. Some of the most misleading coverage has appeared in the Associated Press dispatches that have run in […]
Ousted President Manuel Zelaya has returned to Honduras, though not to office.Unfortunately, press accounts still manage to mangle the story behind his ouster, relying on those who supported the coup to explain what happened. In today’s New York Times (9/22/09): At the time of his removal, Mr. Zelaya was planning a nonbinding referendum that his […]
USA Today ‘s left/right op-ed feature today is a doozy– a “debate” on escalating the Afghan War between regulars Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel. The headline gives it away: Time to Dig In, Not Bail Out Forget left or right. Forget politics. Think “war on terror.” Bob and Cal agree that now is not the […]
Conservative Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana unveiled his long-awaited health reform proposal yesterday, the results of weeks of negotiations among the Senate Finance Committee’s so-called “Gang of Six”–three Democrats from the right-wing of their party and three moderate-to-conservative Republicans. The bill (unsurprisingly) does not include a public option andcouldend up leavingmiddle-income Americans paying too […]
Former PR agent Wendell Potter’s stories of how he helped the health insurance’s industry’s campaign “to discredit Michael Moore and his film Sicko” calls to mind just how successful that campaign was. Corporate media coverage of the debate raised by the film’s expose of the for-profit insurance system went out of its way to demonize […]
Looking at last week’s “whole series of bad reports on the state of the economy,” Dean Baker of Beat the Press and the Center for Economic and Policy Research tells readers of London’s Guardian (6/1/09) if they think “these reports might have led to gloomy news stories,” such assessments are to be found “not in […]
USA Today had a remarkable headline (4/29/09) on a story about Pennsylvania’s Sen. Arlen Specter switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party: Leaving GOP, Specter Gives Dems a Boost in Stifling Dissent The headline writer does not seem to understand the meaning of the word “dissent,” which is the expression of opposition to reigning […]
We’re not in the habit of linking to Accuracy In Media–and here’s an Extra! article that explains why–but I thought this piece, by the apparent though unacknowledged daughter of USA Today founder Al Neuharth, deserved an exception. Writing in response to a USA Today column by Neuharth (3/20/09) celebrating his six adopted children, Rosamunda Neuharth-Ozgo […]
People dislike the Afghan war more than ever, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll; 42 percent of Americans now think invading that country was a mistake. For some reason,the paper’sfrontpage write-up of the poll (3/17/09) quotes two experts: John Naglof the Center for a New American Security and Thomas Donnellyofthe American Enterprise Institute. Both […]
That’s what USA Today seems to think–and it’s a message that CNN anchor Lou Dobbs unsurprisingly latched on to as well. The factoid was born at the right-wing Center for Immigration Studies, which released a report saying that 300,000 construction jobs created by the stimulus package would go to undocumented immigrants. That report found its […]
USA Today‘s “Obama’s War” cover story today (2/18/09) is long by that paper’s usual standards, but can’t seem to find any space for critics of the plan to send 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Quoted in the piece: –Barack Obama —Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution –political scientist Richard Eichenberg of Tufts University –White House […]
Two newspaper stories today provide a false account of the context of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The Washington Post: Hamas and its allies have fired thousands of rockets into Israel in the past eight years. The pace accelerated after the Islamist movement, which won Palestinian elections in 2006, routed forces loyal to the rival […]
One might not expect much from a USA Today editorial headlined “How to Turn Obama’s Success Into Gains for Black Boys,” but it’s hard to get past the first two graphs without feelingill: You can see the message on brick wall murals in inner cities: Yes we can. You can hear it in the music […]
