FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Washington Post reporter Paul Kane proffered what blogger Matthew Yglesias aptly called a “full-throated defense of journalism-as-stenography.” Kane had been criticized by Media Matters that he had quoted Sen. Olympia Snowe (R.-Maine) as saying that Barack Obama’s use of the filibuster-avoiding budget reconciliation tool would make it “infinitely more difficult to bridge the partisan divide” […]
Richard Cohen’s Washington Post column today (4/14/09) is about how the new George W. Bush Policy Institute should focus primarily on Bush’s managerial errors: Conventional wisdom holds that the bungling of the Iraq war was a consequence of ideology run amok. Maybe. But it was also an example of awful management. Whether you supported the […]
Is it possible for the Washington Post to be embarrassed by George Will? After a series of erroneous claims in a column about climate change, Will is at it again today (4/2/09), laughing off the use of compact fluorescent lightbulbs as a poor fix for a nonexistent problem: Reducing carbon emissions supposedly will reverse warming, […]
Long a critic of the Washington Post‘s habit of pushing of “its editorial position in the news section” when operating as “a strong proponent of reducing Social Security benefits,” Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 3/31/09) has a new example of what he dubs the Post‘s “Jihad Against Social Security”: In keeping with this practice, it […]
Quoting Washington Post/CNN media “critic” Howard Kurtz slamming Headline News for “talking about this constantly on cable for more than a week” and “feasting on this terrible situation,” Brad Jacobson (Media Bloodhound, 3/30/09) also cites Kurtz railing against media obsession with octuplet mother Nadya Suleman on CNN: “The media were demonizing her….all the while capitalizing […]
Responding to a Washington Post op-ed in which one Martin Feldstein “explains how Obama’s proposed limitation on the deductibility of charitable contributions by upper-income taxpayers is a horrible idea,” Jonathan Schwarz (A Tiny Revolution, 3/25/09) asks What does Feldstein have to say about the tax code change? Well: In effect, the change would be a […]
Listening to “budget hawk” media figures who urge President Obama “to commit to spending cuts and/or tax increases” because they are “upset that the deficits projected for 2013 or 2019 are too large,” Dean Baker (TPM Café, 3/25/09) finds it especially annoying to hear the whining from this group of deficit hawks since their whining […]
Considering the fact that, “while the Obama administration says that the problems of the region cannot be solved by military means, the basic approach is reliance on heightened military means,” FAIR associate Norman Solomon (Huffington Post, 3/24/09) thinks that “we desperately need a substantive national debate on U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Solomon […]
Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald has an explanation (3/23/09, ad-viewing required) for why he thinks that Howard Kurtz’s belief that the image of corporate reporters as “just a bunch of cozy Washington insiders” is not “that big a deal”—because “there’s such a built-in adversarial relationship between the press and the pols”—constitutes “an extremely funny joke today, showing […]
Media Bistro‘s Christine Delargy quotes (3/23/09) at length from a letter to the Washington Post questioning the “lack of diversity on WaPo‘s Sunday editorial pages”: Sunday’s editorial pages are presumably the most-read of the week. They should represent the most critical and varied thinking of the week and set the standard for editorial pages. Help […]
The Washington Post editorial page produced a remarkable editorial on Saturday (3/21/09) headlined “Victory in El Salvador.” It’s not surprising that the Post would try to argue that the victory of left-wing FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes was not another sign that the region’s politics are shifting to the left. No, in fact it was […]
Wondering at the “remarkable class solidarity” displayed by U.S. elitists, Robert Parry (Consortium News, 3/22/09) hypothesizes that “this may help explain why the Washington Post‘s editorial writers penned three editorials last week decrying the populist outrage over the AIG bonuses“: The first editorial on March 17, entitled “Bonus Blowback,” purported to share the public’s outrage […]
Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 3/17/09) weighs in on Richard Cohen’s defense of Jim Cramer, accusing the Washington Post columnist of “continuing the stream of excuses for the financial media’s failure to warn of the economic crisis.” Baker sees “an effort to imply that the issues involved were very complex” lying “at the center of […]
As “the American foreign policy community worked itself into something resembling a frenzy over the appointment of Charles W. ‘Chas’ Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council”–because “at stake was, if not a direct policy battle of huge consequence, a real struggle over the range of viewpoints that will be permitted in an official government […]
Many observers praised the Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart for his hard-hitting interview with CNBC‘s Jim Cramer. Columnist Richard Cohen (Washington Post, 3/17/09) begs to differ. Actually, Stewart was “wrong” to go after Cramer, Cohen wrote—it was a “cheap shot at business media.” His main argument is that Stewart charged that Cramer “knew all the time […]
Veteran journalist Robert Parry (Consortium News, 3/15/09) has a message for anyone left who, when they “hear the name Washington Post,” might “still think of… brave journalists facing down a corrupt president”–“today’s version of the newspaper would be a sad disappointment, a betrayal of a noble past”: Over the last three decades, the Post has […]
A Washington Post piece this weekend by Scott Wilson (3/14/09) centered around this “gotcha”: In his inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.” It hasn’t taken long for the recriminations to return–or for the […]
In the wake of Charles Freeman’s withdrawal from consideration for a top intelligence post, the Washington Post today published and editorial headlined “Blame the ‘Lobby’“: For the record, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee says that it took no formal position on Mr. Freeman’s appointment and undertook no lobbying against him. If there was a […]
In his regular Salon feature (3/10/09, ad-viewing required), Glenn Greenwald is having a hard time stomaching corporate media pundits’ righteous “lectures to other countries”: The Washington Post‘s Fred Hiatt today condemns the Obama administration generally and Hillary Clinton specifically for “continu[ing] to devalue and undermine the U.S. diplomatic tradition of human rights advocacy.” Hiatt is […]
This column by Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl has received some well-deserved criticism, largely for its peculiar claim that reforming the U.S. healthcare system is a lot like invading Iraq. What jumped out at me was this supposed parallel between George W. Bush and Barack Obama: After September 11, Diehl wrote, “The […]
