FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Fox News Channel‘s Bill O’Reilly and CBS talk show host David Letterman had a well-publicized showdown on Letterman’s program in early January, so it came as no surprise that their next face-to-face on October 27 would be similarly heated. After the interview aired, O’Reilly accused Letterman of dishonesty for accurately saying O’Reilly had lied on […]
The situation in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly dire for both Afghan citizens and the more than 20,000 foreign troops occupying the country. Violent attacks continue to rise. Suicide bombings, unheard of before late 2005, are more and more common, with the resistance in Afghanistan literally importing tactics from Iraq. In fact, the first stop in […]
This week on CounterSpin: Journalist Daniel Davies joins for a discussion on a recent study by The Lancet, which found that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as a consequence of the war. Also on the show: The FCC’s war on “indecency,” with Peggy Charren.
Arianna Huffington of Huffingtonpost.com joins the show to discuss Bob Woodward’s new book and poses the question: Is this just a weak attempt by Woodward to salvage his reputation? Also this week: Sarah Anderson of the Institute of Policy Studies analyzes corporate media’s embrace of retailing giant Wal-Mart.
A new FAIR study finds that the NewsHour fails to provide either balance or diversity of perspectives—or a true public-minded alternative to its corporate competition.
On August 14, the New York Times addressed one of the significant worries for U.S. media outlets covering the Israeli bombing and invasion of Lebanon: Civilians in Lebanon were the primary victims, dying in far greater numbers than Israeli military personnel and civilians combined. (Amnesty International estimated that the fighting killed about 1,000 civilians in […]
[Note: This piece is a sidebar to “Lives in the Balance.”] On August 8, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote, “Arabs have often argued that Americans have a double standard in the Middle East: We are more solicitous of casualties in Israel than in Gaza or Lebanon. I think they’re right, for a variety […]
In 2005, Kenneth Tomlinson, chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—and thus the person in charge of disbursing federal public broadcasting funds—sparked controversy with his aggressive push to move PBS and NPR to the right. In a series of public statements, Tomlinson, armed with a dubious study of PBS shows he commissioned from a right-wing […]
This week on CounterSpin: Despite the recent significant decision by Congress to pass legislation that recognizes some forms of detainee abuse as torture, the media is focused on all the wrong things. Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights joins the show to discuss the situation. Also on the program: Hannah Sassaman of Prometheus Radio Project about the FCC and its habitual suppression of research on media ownership.
Journalist Robert Parry joins the show to bring us the latest on the coverage of the Plame Wilson affair. Also this week: John Stauber discusses the recent decision by The Washington Post to bring a Bush loyalist to its op-ed page.
After FAIR issued an action alert (9/8/06) pointing out the New York Times‘ revision of recent Iraq War history, the Times published a correction (9/12/06) on its website. The correction read: An article that appeared on NYTimes.com for part of the day on Sept. 5 incorrectly described President Bush’s statements about Iraq’s chemical and biological […]
(NOTE: Please see the Activism Update regarding this alert.) In a New York Times article (9/5/06) on George W. Bush’s September 5 speech concerning terrorism and Iraq, reporters David Sanger and John O’Neil included a striking revision of Bush’s reasoning for going to war: The possibility that Saddam Hussein might develop ‘weapons of mass destruction’ […]
This week on CounterSpin: An extended interview with long-time author, activist and linguist Noam Chomsky.
During his August 21 press conference, George W. Bush responded to a question about the Iraq War by saying that “sometimes I’m happy” about the conflict. But many readers and TV viewers never heard the remark, since journalists edited the statement to save Bush any possible embarrassment. Bush’s unedited comment was as follows: Q: But […]
Professor and author Stephen Zunes joins the show to discuss Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, and the other underexplored aspects of this evolving crisis. Also this week: UC Berkeley linguist Geoff Nunberg shares about his new book, Talking Right, and the language of politics.
On July 24, Human Rights Watch reported that Israel was using cluster bombs “in populated areas of Lebanon,” which it said “may violate the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law.” But despite the extensive media coverage of the current conflict in the Middle East, almost no U.S. outlets are reporting on these […]
[Note: this piece is a sidebar to Move Over—Over and Over: Media’s rightward push for Democrats] Political reporters looking to identify a new obstacle standing in the way of Democratic electoral success often find it online, where party activists and progressives congregate around liberal blogs and websites. Writing under the headline “Blogs Attack From Left […]
Columnist Norman Solomon joins the show to discuss the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. Also this week: Jamal Dajani shares about LinkTV’s award-winning program Mosaic, which seeks to spotlight Arab and Muslim perspectives on the current Mid East violence and news more generally.
In the wake of the most serious outbreak of Israeli/Arab violence in years, three leading U.S. papers—the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times—have each strongly editorialized that Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were solely responsible for sparking violence, and that the Israeli military response was predictable and unavoidable. These editorials […]
On July 19, FAIR issued an Action Alert criticizing CBS Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer’s shallow and dismissive commentary on the current crisis in the Middle East. CBS Public Eye ombudsman Vaughn Ververs responded to FAIR’s alert on Public Eye‘s website in a July 20 post titled “We’ll Just Have to Agree to Disagree.” […]
