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FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.

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Articles about: Youth
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July 11, 2008
Robert Dreyfuss on Obama’s foreign policy, Amanda Marcotte on ‘pregnancy pact’ story

Robert Dreyfuss on Obama’s foreign policy, Amanda Marcotte on ‘pregnancy pact’ story

[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin071108 Robert Dreyfuss and Amanda Marcotte @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin071108.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Barack Obama’s image as a harbinger of change has many hoping his election will bring change in foreign policy. He certainly differs from George Bush on the need for diplomacy. But what about issues such as the projection of American power […]

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July 1, 2008

Pope Gets Pass on Church Abuse History

When Pope Benedict XVI visited the U.S. in April, Fox News anchor and managing editor Brit Hume spoke of the Catholic leader in language that was more worshipful than journalistic (Fox News Sunday, 4/20/08): And he turns out to have about him sort of a beatific sweetness that I think is enormously important for a […]

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March 1, 2007

Perilous Reporting

When journalist Debbie Nathan accidentally viewed child porn last May, it set off a chain of events that ensnarled her, New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald, and Salon.com into a messy tangle of child porn law and accusations of libel and censorship. Nathan, a freelancer, did some of the first reporting on people falsely convicted […]

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December 1, 2006

The Smell of Success

In August, the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program—popularly known as “welfare reform”—turned 10 years old, sparking a rash of articles looking back on how the new law’s emphasis on time limits and “work activities” requirements has fared. But even with recent figures showing poverty on the rise, by and large news media treated […]

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October 1, 2006

More Dangerous Than Anyone Thought

Earlier this year, I asked my undergraduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to evaluate a barrage of news stories declaring that “teen drivers are more dangerous than anyone thought” (Paula Zahn Now, 1/18/06) in response to an American Automobile Association study warning that crashes involving 15- to 17-year-old drivers killed 31,000 people […]

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June 1, 2006

Stossel’s ‘Stupid’ Schools

If there were a John Stossel School of Journalism, reporters-intraining would be taught a simple template for any story: Free markets are good. Unions are bad. When consumers get to “choose,” everyone wins; if governments try to regulate, everyone loses. No matter what the assignment, a Stossel-trained reporter would be instructed to merely plug in […]

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November 1, 2000

Raving Junk

1980: The Washington Post‘s front-page profile (9/28/80) of “Jimmy,” a black eight-year-old junkie, ignited pandemonium. Mayor Marion Barry ordered police and teachers to inspect children’s arms for needle holes. Despite a $10,000 reward and intensive searches, neither Jimmy nor any other child addict was found. “Jimmy” did not exist, Post reporter Janet Cooke later confessed. […]

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March 30, 2000
PBS Responds to FAIR Activists on Commercials

PBS Responds to FAIR Activists on Commercials

FAIR released an action alert on March 15 (“The Commercialization of Children’s Public Television”) that asked members of our e-mail list to write to PBS about the inclusion of advertisements in what is supposed to be non-commercial programming for children. Here is PBS‘s response to those letters, followed by FAIR’s analysis of it: ***** Thank […]

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January 1, 1999

Drive-By Journalism

Other than ultra-quotable crime experts such as Princeton’s John (“adolescent superpredator”) DiIulio and Northeastern University’s James Alan (“teenage crime storm”) Fox, few individuals have contributed more to the inflammatory and systematic misportrayal of teenage crime in American than Rolling Stone magazine’s contributing editor Randall Sullivan. Sullivan’s fact-lite, anecdote-laden style specialized in blowing up extremely rare, […]

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January 1, 1998
Superscapegoating

Superscapegoating

Criminalization of youth of color by the media is not a new problem. But lurid press reports of teen “superpredators” have recently spawned federal legislation that may soon extinguish the rehabilitative intent of the juvenile justice system.

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March 1, 1996
Wild in Deceit

Wild in Deceit

In previous decades, American politicians and social scientists predicted waves of violence stemming from “impulsive” blacks, volatile Eastern European immigrants, “hot-blooded” Latin Americans, and other groups “scientifically” judged to harbor innately aggressive traits. In each case, the news media joined in vilifying whatever temporarily unpopular minority that politicians and pseudo-science had flocked to blame. And […]

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November 1, 1995

The Sassy/’Teen Merger: Invasion of the Magazine Snatchers

Amid teenage girl magazines’ standard fare of earnest advice about boyfriends, self-esteem and cosmetics purchases, Sassy was always a stand-out. Take how Sassy dealt with the issue of flirting. The cover of the September 1994 issue might not have stood out on the newsstand—”How to Flirt Like an Animal” was the main story. But rather […]

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March 1, 1994

Bashing Youth

“Unplanned pregnancies. HIV infection and AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases. Cigarettes, alcohol and drug abuse. Eating disorders. Violence. Suicide. Car crashes.” The 21-word lead-in to a Washington Post (12/22/92) report sums up today’s media image of the teenager: 30 million 12- through 19-year-olds toward whom any sort of moralizing and punishment can be safely directed, […]

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March 1, 1994

Teaching Censorship

In civics classes, high school students are taught that the First Amendment is the foundation upon which political freedom stands. But in their journalism classes, they are frequently taught the opposite lesson, as Hazelwood, a late ’80s Supreme Court ruling that gives principals the power to review and censor high school newspapers, continues to have […]

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January 1, 1993

How Seventeen Undermines Young Women

Harvard professor Carol Gilligan, studying the psychological development of teenage girls in 1988, found that they experience a major drop in self-esteem as they reach adolescence. Only 29 percent of teenage girls said that they “felt happy the way I am,” as opposed to 60 percent of nine-year-old girls. Gilligan suggests that this adolescent crisis […]

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September 1, 1991

TV in the Classroom

The increasing tendency of television throughout the ’80s to exploit young viewers reached some kind of breakthrough with Whittle Communications’ Channel One. For the uninitiated, Channel One is a television news program targeted to teenagers, and beamed to school classrooms around the country via satellite. Whittle offers this program to school systems, along with the […]

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