FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
In the lead-up to NATO’s Kosovo bombing campaign in 1999, U.S. media coverage took a propagandistic tone—blaming a long-standing, multifaceted conflict almost entirely on the Serbs, or even solely on one man, Slobodan Milosevic. At the time, FAIR pointed to the region’s complex history of ethnic confrontation, including the chronic turmoil of the 1980s, when […]
Of the many myths that mushroomed from the carnage of the Vietnam War perhaps none is more specious than the fable about how a bold, aggressive mainstream media turned America against the war. As the pundit class sinks into a new quagmire debating former Sen. Bob Kerrey’s Vietnam mission, it’s a good time to dissect […]
The United States is seeking to make space a new arena of war—but you wouldn’t know that from mainstream media that limit coverage to U.S. plans for “missile defense.” The wider space military program is laid out in publicly available documents—easily accessible to media—such as the recent report of the “Space Commission” chaired by new […]
Despite the chorus of international condemnation that followed last week’s large-scale airstrikes on targets in Iraq, not a single word of criticism or dissent could be found anywhere in the New York Times‘ February 17 coverage of the attack. U.S. and British planes struck five Iraqi air-defense targets February 16 while patrolling their self-declared, internationally […]
Concern has been mounting rapidly throughout Europe over the effects of depleted uranium (DU) munitions used by NATO in Bosnia and Yugoslavia during the 1994-95 and 1999 wars. At least 12 soldiers—six Italian, five Belgian and one Portuguese— who served in the Balkans have died of leukemia or other forms of cancer; several Italian, Spanish, […]
Even as skepticism over the proposed $60 billion national missile defense (NMD) system emerges in the headlines, the general assumption continues to be that sooner or later missile defenses will work. Just days after President Clinton’s decision to defer a decision on deployment to the next administration, the New York Times (9/4/00) was quick to […]
On June 2, the U.N.’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced that its 11-month assessment found no reason to open a criminal investigation of NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). Five days later, Amnesty International released a report, “‘Collateral Damage’ or Unlawful Killings?,” finding that NATO had […]
As longtime supporters of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ important mission of defending press freedom, FAIR wrote the following letter to the CPJ to protest its exclusion of the 16 Radio-Television Serbia (RTS) employees killed by NATO from its annual list of journalists murdered because of their work. The letter was signed by a number […]
Reports in the Dutch newspaper Trouw (2/21/00, 2/25/00) and France’s Intelligence Newsletter (2/17/00) have revealed that several officers from the US Army’s 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group at Ft. Bragg worked in the news division at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters last year, starting in the final days of the Kosovo War. In the U.S. media, so […]
Since January 1999, the Washington Post has spun a tall tale about the 1998 collapse of U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq and the U.S./British airstrikes that followed. Not only has the Post rewritten Iraqi history, but the paper’s new version of events contradicts its own coverage from the time of the airstrikes. Despite running several […]
The WTO protests in Seattle may be remembered as the time when the words “pepper spray” first entered the vocabulary of the American public. From November 30 through December 3, as police took on demonstrators outside the World Trade Organization meeting at the Seattle Convention Center, you couldn’t turn on a TV or open a […]
A front-page New York Times article (9/12/99) about the precarious situation in East Timor in September began by reporting that Gen. Wiranto, Indonesia’s top military commander, “conceded Saturday that he had lost control of elements of his military” that were operating on the island. The article’s headline, “Jakarta Concedes a Loss of Control,” echoed this […]
After the bombing of Yugoslavia, the U.S. media held up the safe return of Albanian refugees as proof of the success—and righteousness—of NATO’s war. How the bombing had affected the region’s chances for long-term stability was rarely discussed. The important thing, according to most mainstream pundits, was that the “Western world” had shown it wouldn’t […]
On June 24, Israeli air raids on Lebanon killed at least nine Lebanese civilians and destroyed major bridges and power plants, plunging much of the country into darkness. In retaliatory strikes by the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah against northern Israel, two Israeli civilians were also killed. This was by far the most intense violence between […]
Journalism best serves the common good when it focuses attention on social problems that its audience can help to solve. But establishment media outlets like the New York Times are often far less interested in the ills caused by the U.S. government than they are in the sins of distant regimes–especially those that have been […]
In the debate over whether the war in Yugoslavia was a success, the papers of record criticized NATO tactics, but NATO’s basic claim-that the Kosovo War was just, and improved the region’s chances for peace, stability and democracy-went almost unchallenged. The criticism in the New York Times and Washington Post took place against the backdrop […]
As NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia neared its conclusion, the press began debating whether or not the war was a success. Many mainstream commentators and reporters were critical of NATO’s tactics, but NATO’s basic spin on the war—it was a just war waged against genocidal evil, and it has improved the region’s chances for peace and […]
Media commentators have been asserting that the Kosovo peace plan adopted June 3 by the Serbian Assembly vindicates NATO’s airstrikes on Yugoslavia. A New York Times editorial (6/4/99) claimed the plan, if genuine, shows that NATO’s “sustained bombing has been more effective than many critics allowed” and represents a “victory for the principles of democracy […]
—New evidence has emerged confirming that the U.S. deliberately set out to thwart the Rambouillet peace talks in France in order to provide a “trigger” for NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia. Furthermore, correspondents from major American news organizations reportedly knew about this plan to stymie the Kosovo peace talks, but did not inform their readers or […]
In May, there was a huge break in the story of the recent U.S. missile attack on Sudan. But you’d hardly know it from reading the U.S. press. In a tremendous reversal on the part of the U.S. government, the Treasury Department decided to unfreeze the assets of Saleh Idris, the owner of the El […]
