FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
October 22, 2004 On September 30, a FAIR action alert urged the Associated Press and Washington Post not to exercise “false balance” in their reporting on the exaggerations and deceptions coming from the major presidential candidates. By straining to include an equal number of Bush and Kerry statements to “fact check,” news outlets give the […]
George F. Will, columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group, devoted his column on March 4, 2003 to the thoughts of press baron Conrad Black. After spending two paragraphs describing complaints about George W. Bush’s preparations for the invasion of Iraq, Will wrote: “Into this welter of foolishness has waded Conrad Black, a British citizen […]
(Note: Please read the recent update to this alert.) Last Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of London to protest military action against Iraq, rallying in what the London Independent called “one of the biggest peace demonstrations seen in a generation” (9/29/02). Yet neither the Washington Post nor the New York […]
In the midst of the 1998 standoff over Iraqi weapons inspections, an almost frantic editorial ran in the Washington Post (8/28/98). Brimming with urgency, the editorialists declared that 22 days have now passed without United Nations inspections of Saddam Hussein’s weapons-making capabilities. That is 22 days during which he could work unimpeded to develop chemical, […]
George W. Bush’s June 14 commencement address at Ohio State University was a sign of a “revived” presidency, according to Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank (6/15/02). “Bush basked in the adulation of 55,000 people who treated him to waves of standing ovations in Ohio Stadium as he received an honorary doctorate,” he wrote. “If there […]
A Washington Post report on a lawsuit by the Miami Indian tribe to regain ancestral lands in Illinois (2/13/01) severely trivialized the genocide and ethnic cleansing faced by Native Americans. Post reporter William Claiborne, attempting to put the dispute in context, wrote: As in similar Indian property claims that have been growing in number across […]
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 […]
On January 6, the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman revealed in a front-page article, sourced to “advisors” and “confidants” of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, that Annan had “obtained what he regards as convincing evidence that United Nations arms inspectors helped collect eavesdropping intelligence used in American efforts to undermine the Iraqi regime.” A similar story […]
The strategy of Pennsylvania is designed to keep Mumia Abu-Jamal silent until he can be silenced permanently.
Ben Bradlee is gradually surrendering authority at the nation’s second-most influential newspaper. The change may not bode well for those who find the Washington Post already too close to governing elites.
FAIR’s new study– “Lost in the Margins: Labor and the Media”– surveys coverage of U.S. workers and their unions in 1989. Based on various methods of analysis– including a minute-count of nightly network news shows and a questionnaire circulated among the country’s leading dailies– the study concludes that “the lives of 100 million working people […]
For years, the anti-abortion movement has pressured the media to adopt its terminology and worldview. Recent months have shown this pressure is working. In the renewed war over abortion coverage, the pro-choice side is on the defensive. The first shots were fired by Richard Harwood, the Washington Post‘s conservative “ombudsman.” On March 25, Harwood’s […]
Don’t get too far from the establishment. —Walter Lippmann to Katharine Graham File Lippmann’s remark under the category of superfluous advice. Graham and the company of which she is “chairman”—she lists herself in the D.C. phone book as “Graham, Philip L. Mrs.”—have never entertained a thought of straying from the establishment. In 1933, when Graham’s […]
