FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The Washington Post (8/18/10) profiles some of the “conservative writers and bloggers critical of Islam” that have been fueling the national uproar over the proposed Muslim community center that would sit two-and-a-half blocks away from Ground Zero. Michelle Boorstein looks at figures such as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, and reports that “while some have […]
Former Israeli soldier and current writer for the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg has a long cover story (9/10) on the “better than 50 percent chance” that Israel will launch air strikes against Iran by next July, with the aim of taking out the alleged nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic. Based on roughly 40 interviews with […]
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs generated a huge controversy by slamming the “professional left” for being too critical of the Obama administration. People who compare Obama to Bush”ought to be drug tested,” according to Gibbs. Responses to the Gibbs remarks can be found almost anywhere you look–Glenn Greenwald’s post provides perhaps the most thorough […]
In an article (8/10/10) on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony to an Israeli panel investigating the May 31 raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, the Washington Post gets the facts wrong on crucial history and context relating to the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Joel Greenberg writes: Netanyahu said that the naval blockade, imposed by […]
In Howard Kurtz’s latest column (8/2/10), the Washington Post media reporter bemoans the new media atmosphere as a “search-and-destroy culture” that is “as likely to vilify journalists as political and corporate leaders.” Kurtz counts himself among those vilified journalists, citing recent criticism over his defense (7/22/10) of Fox News‘ handling of the Shirley Sherrod debacle: […]
As Steve Rendall explained here last week,the recent Washington Post editorial (“Colombia Proves Again That Venezuela Is Harboring FARC Terrorists”) doesn’t really back up its argument that there is some sort of Venezuelan conspiracy to aid the Colombia rebel group FARC. “That Venezuela is backing a terrorist movement against a neighboring democratic government has been […]
The Washington Post‘s latest attack on Venezuela comes in an editorial headlined: “Colombia Proves Again That Venezuela Is Harboring FARC Terrorists.” The editors don’t say why a point already proved needs be proved again, but before offering the new evidence, they recount the old claim that laptops captured by Colombia from FARC guerrillas have clearly […]
The stories in today’s Washington Post tell you everything you need to know about the media establishment’s reaction to the Wikileaks Afghanistan documents: WikiLeaks Disclosures Unlikely to Change Course of Afghanistan War By Greg Jaffe and Peter Finn …The documents’ release could compel President Obama to explain more forcefully the war’s importance, military analysts […]
Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger sent a memo to staffers on July 8 with the subject line “How Social Media Impacts Your Professional Life,” suggesting new rules for journalists’ private expressions of opinion. So far, the memo seems to have only been discussed on a German language media blog (Ruhr Barone, 7/22/10). Jumping off from the […]
The lesson of the Shirley Sherrod story would seem to be a simple one:A conservative blogger with a history of promoting inaccurate, racially chargedstories published another one, and people in the media (not to mention the White House) fell for it–again. But New York Times reporter Matt Bai wrote a piece in the paper’s Week […]
The Washington Post‘s blockbuster story (7/19/10) by reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin on the bloated, secretive and largely privatized national security apparatus established after the September 11, 2001, attacks is making a lot of noise, and for good reason. The Post describes a “top-secret world” that has become “so large, so unwieldy and so […]
As France’s lower house of parliament approved a ban on wearing full-face Islamic veils such as the burqa or niqab, many U.S. news outlets left out a key voice in their reports: the Muslim women in France who are actually affected by the ban. Several major outlets, including the New York Times (7/14/10), Washington Post […]
New York Times reporter Isabel Kershner (7/15/10) writes a news analysis of why “peace talks” between Israel and the Palestinians are at a virtual standstill, despite the “upbeat atmosphere” in Washington following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama’s recent meeting. When she attempts to contextualize the “peace talks,” Kershner throws in this misleading history: […]
Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker (umm, PULITZER Prize–winning columnist) got a lot of feedback about her recent column (“Obama: Our First Female President,” 6/30/10) suggesting that Barack Obama is kind of girly. She carefully pointed out that she was “not calling Obama a girlie president. But . . . he may be suffering a rhetorical-testosterone deficit […]
There’s been an awful lot written about the Washington Post and David Weigel. The short version of the story: Weigel was hired by the Post to do blogging/Internet reporting on the conservative movement. This bothered some on the right, since Weigel’s left-libertarian politics made them think he was out to get them. Weigel evidently had […]
In the wake of the Rolling Stone/Stanley McChrystal controversy, one might think that there could finally be some space to have a debate about the Afghanistan war–especially considering that the magazine article was really about fundamental questions about the war itself (FAIR Media Advisory, 6/25/10). The Washington Post (6/27/10) ran one of its often–terrible Topic […]
It’s not that surprising that some in the corporate media, driven either by admiration for ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal or disdain for Rolling Stone‘s scoop, have rushed in to defend or explain away his behavior. In Saturday’s Washington Post (6/26/10), anonymous military sources tell the newspaper that the comments from McChrystal and his staff were […]
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald has an illuminating post (6/27/10) that argues that the Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg, with his “self-praising, desperately insecure need to tout his own wisdom, knowledge and expertise, while demeaning those who are not admitted to his Special Club…is a perfectly illustrative face of the American establishment media.” Responding to Goldberg’s assertion (Atlantic, 6/25/10) […]
With Gen. David Petraeus back in the media spotlight after being tapped to take control of the Afghanistan war following General Stanley McChrystal’s fall from grace, the corporate media are trumpeting the “successful” surge in Iraq (Extra, 9/10/08) that Petraeus oversaw and are looking to him as the man to turn around the Afghan war. […]
At the end of 2009, the Washington Post published an article that was produced by the Fiscal Times. As FAIR noted in an Action Alert (1/6/10): The article, headlined “Support Grows for Tackling Nation’s Debt” (12/31/09), was a product of the Fiscal Times, described in an accompanying note as “an independent digital news publication reporting […]
