FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
By the tone of some of the media coverage, you might have thought Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a plan to slash military spending yesterday. On the front page of USA Today (1/27/12), under the headline “Panetta Backs Far Leaner Military,” readers learn in the first paragraph: The Pentagon’s new plan to cut Defense spending […]
There’s a news article in the Washington Post today (1/26/12) that really captures that paper’s view of the way the world works, and how it ought to work. Headlined “After Earthquake, Japan Can’t Agree on the Future of Nuclear Power,” Chico Harlan’s piece begins: The hulking system that once guided Japan’s pro-nuclear-power stance worked just […]
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote a baffling column today (1/24/12) praising part of Newt Gingrich’s political persona—not the bad stuff, but the man “of big ideas,” as he put it (italics his). Cohen gives one example: Out of nowhere, he has exhumed Saul Alinsky, whose fame is limited to university sociology departments, and yet […]
Last month the group Just Foreign Policy alerted readers to a Washington Post feature that was headlined “Iran’s Quest to Possess Nuclear Weapons.” The Post changed the headline, and ombud Patrick Pexton weighed in with a column (12/7/11) saying that the IAEA report does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it […]
In theory, presidential campaigns are a valuable opportunity for journalists to evaluate candidates’ positions on important issues so citizens can make an informed choice. Actual media coverage is different, of course. And it’s striking how some media voices diminish the importance of what the candidates are saying, treating it as meaningless theater that need not […]
We’ve been seeing a lot of this sort of thing lately–this time from Elizabeth Wurtzel on TheAtlantic.com (1/9/12): All the reasons Romney is disliked are all the reasons he would be an excellent president. Let’s start by recognizing that principled politicians are highly overrated–consider Jimmy Carter as Exhibit A. Despite our pretensions to pretension, we […]
The usual criticisms of the Iowa caucuses–that the votes of a small, demographically unrepresentative slice of America gobble up too much airtime–are basically correct. As David Sirota noted in Salon (1/3/12): The same journalism industry that pleads poverty to justify cutting big city newspapers’ editorial staffs, gutting coverage of state legislatures and city councils, and […]
Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel has a column in the Washington Post today (1/3/12) outlining the three important election issues to watch–and one of them is about how the press covers the process: Third, the media’s obsession with false equivalence: How the election is covered will almost certainly have a measurable impact on its outcome. […]
Washington Post reporter Nia-Malika Henderson reports today (1/3/12) that Republican candidate Ron Paul really says some weird things out on the campaign trail. His appearances start out normal… And then, for the next 45 minutes or so, he outlines a view of the world so bleak it would make Chicken Little sound like an optimist. […]
George Will’s January 1 column in the Washington Post was a laundry list of familiar criticisms of progressives and Democrats—they worry too much about climate change, for instance. Another non-problem, in Will’s world, is student loan debt: Political logic suggests that this year Obama will try to rekindle the love of young voters with some […]
The Washington Post‘s Scott Wilson has a piece (12/13/11) looking back on the Iraq War, where he writes of the “arc of the American experience in Iraq” being “from hope to barbarity, from swaggering invasion to quiet departure.” When it comes to the rationale for the entire war, things get a bit fuzzy. Like we […]
The Washington Post‘s series of candidate profiles continues. Today it’s Ron Paul’s turn. In Joel Achenbach’s main piece (12/15/11), readers learn, in the lead paragraph, that Paul is not the standard presidential candidate–he lacks the factory-built appearance of Mitt Romney or Rick Perry. He’s thin, bony, a bantam rooster. Thankfully, the rest of the piece […]
In today’s Washington Post (12/13/11), Jerry Markon reports on the news that the White House “will wade into the increasingly divisive national debate over new voting laws.” But the article’s explanation of the concept of “voter fraud”–the ostensible rationale for these Republican efforts to restrict voting–leaves a lot to be desired. Markon writes that liberal […]
The Washington Post launched a series of Republican presidential candidate profiles on Sunday (12/11/11). First up was Mitt Romney, and right away you sense there’s something a little off here. Here’s the headline and subhead: The Problem Solver Mitt Romney doesn’t want to talk about feeling voters’ pain. He just wants to get to work […]
The Republican Party is in something of a bind. Many oppose White House efforts to extend–and perhaps increase–a Social Security payroll tax cut next year. This might sound strange, since if conservatives are supposed to be fond of anything, it’s tax cuts. So they have some explaining to do. They’re given a valuable assist when […]
Many big papers have rules about when reporters can use anonymous sources. It should be rare, and the information generated should be important and difficult to get without granting a source the privilege to speak anonymously. Of course, reality is different–as Janine Jackson documented in the new issue of Extra!. Anonymous sources supposedly aren’t allowed […]
Sam Husseini asked a tough question of a member of the Saudi royal family at a National Press Club event—which got him into some trouble with folks at the Press Club. (Good news—his suspension has been lifted.) Part of what motivated Husseini to question Turki al-Faisal was the fact that a representative of such a […]
Huffington Post reporter Jon Ward did what reporters should do when covering political campaign ads. He told readers, at the top of his story, that the new Mitt Romney ad was based on a lie: The 60-second Romney ad quoted Obama as saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” It […]
Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s new TV commercial is based on a lie. Will reporters say so? The ad starts with a Barack Obama quote: ”We’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades.” To which Perry responds: ”Can you believe that? That’s what our president thinks is wrong with […]
The general line in corporate media coverage of the so-called “Supercommittee” tasked with coming up with a long-term budget plan is that both sides aren’t willing to budge: Republicans won’t agree to raise taxes, and Democrats want to protect “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare. While some might find the idea of Democrats standing up […]
