FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The Pentagon can be expected to claim that its bombing campaign against Iraq is accurate. But without independent verification, reporters should be skeptical about these claims about “precision” bombing. Recent reports on NBC News illustrate the opposite tendency. Correspondent Bob Faw (3/20/03) described a Florida town as “a community which very much endorses that surgical […]
A lack of skepticism toward official U.S. sources has already led prominent American journalists into embarrassing errors in their coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, particularly in relation to claims that proof had been found that Iraq possesses banned weapons. On March 20, the second day of the invasion, U.S. military sources initially described […]
George W. Bush’s March 17 speech has been boiled down to one blunt statement: “Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing.” Headlines the next morning focused on this message: “President Tells Hussein to Leave […]
Of all 393 sources, only three (less than 1 percent) were identified with organized protests or anti-war groups.
Despite daily reports about the “showdown” with Iraq, Americans hear very little from mainstream media about the most basic fact of war: People will be killed and civilian infrastructure will be destroyed, with devastating consequences for public health long after the fighting stops. Since the beginning of the year, according to a search of the […]
On February 24, Newsweek broke what may be the biggest story of the Iraq crisis. In a revelation that “raises questions about whether the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] stockpiles attributed to Iraq still exist,” the magazine’s issue dated March 3 reported that the Iraqi weapons chief who defected from the regime in 1995 told […]
In reporting on Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5 presentation to the United Nations Security Council, many journalists treated allegations made by Powell as though they were facts. Reporters at several major outlets neglected to observe the journalistic rule of prefacing unverified assertions with words like “claimed” or “alleged.” This is of particular concern […]
While teams of U.N. experts scouring Iraq have yet to find any hidden caches of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, some U.S. journalists seem to have already turned up their own smoking guns. Whether out of excess zeal or simple carelessness, the media’s intensive coverage of the U.N. inspections has repeatedly glided from reporting the […]
Responding to a FAIR activism campaign, HBO recently added a message to the end of its movie Live From Baghdad, clarifying the scenes that seemingly endorsed the fraudulent stories about Iraqi soldiers removing Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The film, a fictionalized account of CNN‘s coverage of the Persian Gulf War, leaves viewers with the impression […]
(NOTE: Please read the update to this alert.) The fraudulent story of Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990 is depicted as if it were true in Live from Baghdad, the HBO film premiering on the cable network this Saturday that purports to tell the story behind […]
An issue as serious as the Iraq crisis deserves the highest possible degree of accuracy from the press. U.S. media coverage, however, is marked by frequent misstatements and distortions of reality– some of which have been made repeatedly, even after being pointed out by critics. Here are a few examples of commonly repeated errors: 1. […]
(NOTE: Please read the update to this alert.) National Public Radio and the New York Times arrived at the same conclusion about the anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. this weekend: The turnout was disappointing. But neither report matched reality. The Times account on October 27 was vague, reporting that “thousands of protesters marched through Washington’s […]
On her October 7 broadcast, CNN‘s Connie Chung took a U.S. congressmember to task for doubting George W. Bush. After Rep. Mike Thompson (D.-Calif.) told Chung that there seemed to be no evidence that Iraq posed an immediate danger to the people of the United States or its allies, the anchor responded, “Well, let’s listen […]
Activists contacting major media outlets regarding their coverage of Iraq seem to be having an impact on the coverage of this timely issue. On September 30, FAIR issued an action alert documenting the limited coverage of a major anti-war demonstration in London. The demonstration merited only passing mentions in the Washington Post and New York […]
“The U.N. orders its weapons inspectors to leave Iraq after the chief inspector reports Baghdad is not fully cooperating with them.” — Sheila MacVicar, ABC World News This Morning, 12/16/98 “To bolster its claim, Iraq let reporters see one laboratory U.N. inspectors once visited before they were kicked out four years ago.” —John McWethy, ABC […]
(Note: Please read the recent update to this alert.) Last Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London to protest military action against Iraq, rallying in what the London Independent called “one of the biggest peace demonstrations seen in a generation” (9/29/02). Yet neither the Washington Post nor the New York […]
Nothing makes a newspaper prouder than a juicy foreign-policy scoop. Except, it seems, when the scoop ends up raising awkward questions about a U.S. administration’s drive for war. Back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq for the U.S.’s own […]
Asking tough questions of those in power is one of a journalist’s most important jobs– especially when a country may be going to war. But PBS‘s Jim Lehrer failed to challenge Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a September 18 interview on the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer“– even when Rumsfeld made factually inaccurate assertions. For […]
In the midst of the 1998 standoff over Iraqi weapons inspections, an almost frantic editorial ran in the Washington Post (8/28/98). Brimming with urgency, the editorialists declared that 22 days have now passed without United Nations inspections of Saddam Hussein’s weapons-making capabilities. That is 22 days during which he could work unimpeded to develop chemical, […]
An August 8 USA Today article that described how Saddam Hussein is “complicating U.S. plans to topple his regime” repeated a common myth about the history of U.S./Iraq relations. Reporter John Diamond wrote that “Iraq expelled U.N. weapons inspectors four years ago and accused them of being spies.” But Iraq did not “expel” the UNSCOM […]
