FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
After a FAIR Action Alert (12/2/11), the CBS Evening News has changed its count of civilian deaths–citing a new figure that is roughly twice their original count. On December 1 the CBS Evening News reported: It is estimated that more than 50,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the war. As FAIR pointed out, this was […]
A December 1 CBS Evening News report about the Iraq War managed to mislead viewers about the start of the war and severely diminish the loss of civilian lives. Reporting on the handover of the U.S. military headquarters to Iraqi forces, anchor Scott Pelley announced: What began in 2003 as an effort to overthrow Saddam […]
More than 140 U.S. military women have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the military has officially placed nearly 50 of these deaths in the ambiguous “non-combat” category (Democracy Now!, 7/23/08). Some women’s veterans and advocacy groups, such as VETWOW (Veteran Women Organizing Women), say at least 20 of these non-combat deaths are suspicious, and […]
Back in March, we wondered when U.S. corporate news outlets would find U.S./NATO killing of Afghan kids newsworthy. Back then, it was nine children killed in a March 1 airstrike. This resulted in two network news stories on the evening or morning newscasts, and two brief references on the PBS NewsHour. On November 25, the […]
International efforts to ban cluster bombs fell apart late last week. If you were reading about this in the New York Times, you might have been led to believe that the United States was pushing to get rid of the weapons—instead of the opposite. Here’s the lead sentence from a story in Saturday’s paper (11/26/11): […]
Much of the corporate media coverage of a new UN report on Iran strongly asserts that Iran is close to building nuclear weapons. But the International Atomic Energy Agency report does not actually arrive at that conclusion, and many critics contend that the speculations that are in the report are misguided. A USA Today piece […]
The New York Times (11/13/11) had a Sunday Style section profile of ABC Pentagon correspondent Martha Raddatz that started off on a bad note—only to get much worse. First the bad: If there has been a glamour beat in television news in recent years, it may well be war correspondent. Starting with the original “Scud […]
Richard Engel on NBC Nightly News (10/21/11), speaking about the end of the Iraq War: The training wheels off, Iraq will have to succeed or fail without American troops on the ground to guide the way. That’s quite a metaphor—invading and occupying a country for eight years as “training wheels.” Engel’s report includes this reference […]
As one would expect, corporate media reacted to the developments in Libya by turning to one of their favorite sources: Republican Sen. John McCain. He was on CNN this morning (and last night as well), and odds are that he’ll be on a Sunday show. McCain’s line on Libya is that the White House should […]
NBC Nightly News (10/7/11) marked the 10th anniversary of the Afghan War on October 7 with a segment that linked the war to the Occupy Wall Street protests. As anchor Brian Williams put it in the introduction: Tonight protesters remain in the streets of a dozen U.S. cities, angry over what’s happened to their lives […]
As Somalia sank deeper into famine in late summer, with 63 percent of southern Somalia’s population at risk of starvation, U.S. media coverage focused on stories of misery and resilience. Measuring children’s emaciated arms and describing the scraps of dignity people struggled to maintain in refugee camps substituted for investigation of causes, or discussion of […]
The New York Times (12/4/09) calls the American drone program “one of Washington’s worst-kept secrets.” This is particularly true for people in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan that border Afghanistan, where the low humming sound which gives them their local name—machay, meaning wasps—is very familiar. Since the drone program in Pakistan began […]
Over the course of the Iraq War, many U.S. media outlets have managed to misconstrue Iraqi public opinion about the presence of U.S. troops. As early as 2004, as FAIR (6/2/04) pointed out, research showed that the Iraqi public wanted U.S. troops out: According to a new poll from the Iraq Center for Research and […]
Al-Qaeda, bin Laden, never imagined that the 3,000 people who lost their lives that day would inspire 3 million to put on the uniform and harden the resolve of 300 million Americans. They never imagined the sleeping giant they were about to awaken. — Vice President Joe Biden at September 11 commemoration (9/11/11) Actually, that’s […]
In the era of the “War on Terror,” the United States has embarked on two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a NATO-led “humanitarian” bombing of Libya that almost immediately morphed into a war for regime change, and undeclared drone bombing campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Launching these wars has been fairly easy for […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin081911 Jim Hightower and Glen Ford @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin081911.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: ‘Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be elected president of the United States, please pay attention.’ That was late columnist Molly Ivins’ advice near the end of the George W. Bush era. But lo and behold another […]
Allegations of Libyan civilian deaths as a result of NATO bombing have often been covered in the corporate media as an opportunity to scoff at the Gadhafi regime’s unconvincing propaganda (FAIR Blog, 6/9/11). But dramatic new allegations that dozens of civilians were killed in Majer after NATO airstrikes on August 8 have been met with […]
The New York Times has a long piece (8/12/11) looking at the question of how many civilians in Pakistan are killed by CIA drones. The agency doesn’t even speak about the program on the record, except to make the far-fetched claim that no civilians have died in the past year or so. The article, written […]
August 6, 2011, when 38 soldiers, including 30 U.S. troops, were killed when their helicopter was shot down, was the “deadliest day” of the Afghan War, several media outlets told us: David Muir (ABC World News Saturday, 8/6/11): “It was the deadliest day of the war in Afghanistan, 30 Americans, 22 Navy SEALs lost.” David […]
There is no shortage of pundits like Robert Samuelson who demand cuts to Social Security and Medicare, usually in the name of balancing the budget. These political decisions are usually labeled “hard choices” in media discussions–as if politicians who favor making people pay more for their healthcare or cutting their retirement funds are only bravely […]
