FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
From one of today’s New York Times stories (2/16/10) about the NATO/U.S. campaign in Marja, Afghanistan (emphasis added): The heavy civilian toll highlighted the stressful and confusing nature of the fighting, especially in Marja, and of the difficulties inherent in conducting military operations in a guerrilla war, where insurgents can hide easily among the population. […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Journalists are lining up to tout the Tea Party movement’s relevance and strength, but show little interest in probing its deep contradictions or finding out what actually makes the activists tick. That’s why they can describe as populist a movement closely, if fitfully, allied with the corporate-dominated GOP. In […]
“The Western world that slaughtered Iraq and Iraqis, through 13 years of sanctions and seven years of occupation, is now turning its back on the victims. What has remained of Iraq is still being devastated by bombings, assassinations, corruption, millions of evictions and continued infrastructure destruction. Yet the world that caused all this is trying […]
Sam Husseini (1/15/10) recalls a great media quote from one of Martin Luther King’s most powerful sermons, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church (4/30/67): Been a lot of applauding over the last few years. They applauded our total movement; they’ve applauded me. America and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery. And I stood before […]
A late December NATO attack in eastern Afghanistan reportedly killed nine people–or, according to NATO, nine militants. According to Afghans, nine young civilians. The first round of reporting showed that some outlets, as usual, were willing to take the U.S./NATO line at face value–so long as that line was delivered anonymously, as in the December […]
In mid-October, hundreds of thousands of Vietnam-era veterans got some good if grim news: The Veterans Administration announced it was adding three more diseases to the 11 others it automatically presumes to have been caused by exposure to Agent Orange, the dioxin-laced herbicide spread by the U.S. military across much of South Vietnam to deny […]
The New York Times’ treatment of Iranian and Israeli nuclear programs in recent months is a clear example of the systematic double standard the “paper of record” displays in international coverage (Extra!, 8/09). The Times has devoted tremendous space and resources to covering Iran’s nuclear program. Even though, as the Times itself explained (9/26/09), there […]
The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank (12/6/09) thinks there’s something wrong with left-wing critics of Barack Obama. As his lead put it: Some parishioners in the Church of Obama discovered last week that their spiritual leader is a false prophet. Milbank starts with Michael Moore, who wrote an open letter urging Obama not to escalate the […]
Time columnist Joe Klein (12/3/09) was not altogether impressed by Obama’s announcement of a 30,000 troop escalation in Afghanistan (an “iffy proposition,” as Klein put it). But Klein’s main point was that Obama should have justified the war differently: “Once you have made the decision to go, or to redouble your efforts, you must lead […]
In this world, it’s the public that’s skeptical of an endless pursuit of victory, with a majority of respondents in recent polling saying they oppose the war.
A meeting of the minds between NBC host Chris Matthews and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius (Chris Matthews Show, 11/29/09): IGNATIUS: The long period of analysis, very deliberative, robs this of passion. This is–he was going to be a wartime president now, and he has to sell the country on the idea that our young […]
Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, doing press for his new TV show on “conspiracy theories,” made got some attention from (among others) Eric Roper at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Roper alludes toa “curious comment Ventura made in the Los Angeles Times this weekend”– that MSNBC canceled his short-lived show when they found out that he opposed […]
On October 27, the Washington Post reported the resignation of Matthew Hoh, a top U.S. civilian official in Afghanistan, in protest of the continuation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. In his letter of resignation, linked to on the Post website, Hoh wrote, “I fail to see the value or the worth in continuous U.S. […]
Washington Post columnist David Broder rounds up some “non-partisan” budget experts– one of whom, oddly enough, was John McCain’s Social Security adviser during his 2000 campaign — to agree with him that the Democrats’ healthcare bills are too expensive. He closes with this: The challenge to Congress — and to Obama — remains the same: […]
One of the odder outbreaks of outrage from conservative pundits is the horror expressed at the idea that people accused of being connected to the September 11 attacks would actually be put on trial. Here’s Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson (11/18/09) on Attorney General Eric Holder’s “destructive” decision to prosecute Khalid Mohammed and other 9/11 […]
The Washington Post reports its latest polling on the Afghanistan war, and once again have managed to put together a baffling question that seems intended to muddy up the debate over a troop surge. The lead and headline (“Poll Finds Guarded Optimism on Obama’s Afghanistan Plan”) stress the idea that the public still seems to […]
From ABC World News, 11/11/09: CHARLIE GIBSON: We understand he’s raising new questions about a number of plans that are in front of him. What new questions are there to be asked after all this time? MARTHA RADDATZ: Well, you would think he’d be through with the questions, Charlie. Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times (11/15/09): […]
CNN‘s Lou Dobbs (11/9/09) on the Fort Hood shootings: I think we should point out, too, for the first time in my memory in eight years, we have seen quickly CAIR step up on the day of the shootings, the largest representative of the Islamic faith step up, and condemn the shootings instantly. CAIR is […]
The Los Angeles Times (11/2/09) gives readers a mostly upbeat account about the use of unmanned drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan—weapons that have killed hundreds in Pakistan in recent years. But Times reporter Julian Barnes tells us their popularity with U.S. military officials has “changed the nature of the current policy debate in Washington.” The […]
The Obama administration, having increased the number of troops in Afghanistan by 21,000 in March, is engaged in a contentious internal discussion about whether to send an additional 40,000 more. There is growing anger over Afghan civilian deaths, and July and August were the deadliest months for U.S. soldiers since the U.S. invaded in 2001 […]
