Convincing the Young to Blame the Old, Not the Rich
Rather than talking about how the rich raise the cost of our healthcare, the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell wants us to be upset at seniors.
WaPo Tallies Police Killings—but Holds Back Some of the Numbers That Count
The Washington Post’s tally of fatal police shootings in 2015 is a journalistic accomplishment. But it’s hard to escape the feeling that the Post framed its report to minimize its remarkable findings.
WaPo Gets Iran Missile Story Exactly Backwards
The point of Tehran’s current missile tests is to develop weapons that are militarily effective with conventional payloads.
WaPo Touts the ‘Independence’ of the Banker-Dominated Fed
The Washington Post’s ability to treat the Fed as a neutral party is striking when the evidence is so overwhelming in the opposite direction.
Common Dreams: Washington Post Promotes Dickensian Marketing Experiment on Poor Children
Adam Johnson’s piece on the Washington Post’s “emotional pornography” was reprinted by Common Dreams.
Washington Post Promotes Dickensian Marketing Experiment on Poor Children
In America, as a rule, we shame the poor, ignore the poor, blame the poor for being poor, mock the poor and do little to nothing to protect the poor. Increasingly, however, a new trend has emerged: using the poor as props in shoddy “inspirational” viral content.
WaPo Attacks Unions for Seeking Higher Wages for Their Members
The Washington Post’s Charles Lane argues that the United Auto Workers supports outsourcing. His smoking gun is that if the union had agreed to lower pay for its workers at the Big Three, then they might shift fewer jobs to Mexico.
Pro-GMO Washington Post Columnist Moonlights for Agrichemical Money
As it a conflict of interest for columnists to make money on the side from industries they cover? The question arose from documents obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by my group US Right to Know, a nonprofit that promotes transparency in the food system. Investigating ties between agrichemical companies, their PR […]
WaPo’s Rotten Reporting on Denmark
When you see a piece in elite US media headlined “Why Denmark Isn’t the Utopian Fantasy Bernie Sanders Describes,” you probably have a sense of what you’re in for.
Pentagon Must Be Thankful for the Turkey Washington Post Gave Its Readers
By reporting the civilians killed by the official enemy while concealing those killed by US airstrikes, the Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung is doing unpaid volunteer work as a Pentagon PR agent.
Bezos’ Stake in Uber Goes Under the Radar at Washington Post
The Washington Post’s sole owner, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is a major shareholder in Uber. While the Post occasionally mentions this glaring conflict when covering Uber, a large majority of its Uber-related articles make no mention of the boss’s stake.
Washington Post’s (Very) Rough Guide to Denmark
The Washington Post decided to correct the positive image of Denmark that Sen. Bernie Sanders and others have been giving it in recent months. But some of the assertions in its piece are either misleading or inaccurate.
Soundbites November 2015
Lesson From Greece: ‘Don’t Fear the Media’; WaPo’s Word Problem Hides Palestinian Victims; Afghan Hospital Bombed by the Country That Must Not Be Named; PolitiFact Fumbles Facts on Iran Deal; Does NYT Mislead About Voting and Class? Depend On It; ‘Let’s Talk About the Real Issues.’
Buckraking on the Food Beat: When Is It a Conflict of Interest?
In an age of shrinking newspaper budgets, it’s common for editors to rely on freelance writers–and for freelancers to add to their incomes with side projects. But is it a conflict of interest for a columnist who covers food and agriculture to take money from agrichemical industry interest groups? The issue arose in a September […]
George Will’s Freedom to Be Unequal Depends a Lot on Government Coercion
The moral is that the government is part of the economy, whether George Will likes it or not.
Washington Post Reduces Palestinian Victims to a Word Problem
To focus on the violence done to Israelis by Palestinians to the near exclusion of Israeli violence against Palestinians is a grotesque distortion of journalism.
Washington Post Won’t Let Journalistic Integrity Stand in the Way of Scaring You Away From Sanders
The Washington Post’s difficulties in separating its news and opinion pages showed up again in a piece by David Fahrenthold that warned the public against Sen. Bernie Sanders’ agenda in his presidential campaign.
Major Papers Reject the Opt-Out Option
Three papers offered arguments that closely align with the rhetoric of corporate education reform, focusing on the plight of low-income students of color while ignoring the realities of how testing affects such populations.
The Washington Post and the Federal Reserve Cult
According to Federal Reserve Board cultists, the Fed sets interest rate policy solely for the good of the country. Those of us who live in the reality-based community know that the Fed is hugely responsive to the interests of the financial sector.
Missing From Reports of Yemeni Carnage: Washington’s Responsibility
Reports left out the information that made this particularly relevant to the papers’ mostly American readership: The US government is actively backing the air war in Yemen that killed those civilians.
