FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Stephen L. Carter has a piece over atNewsweek that points out that Barack Obama hardly differs from George W. Bush when it comes to war; as the subhead explains: “How does Barack Obama differ as a commander in chief from his swaggering predecessor? A lot less than you might think.” Now that’ssomethingyou don’t hearvery often […]
The Scott sisters (Gladys and Jamie) were serving doublelife sentences in a Mississippi state prison over the supposed role they played in an armed robbery that amounted to $11. At the end of 2010 their sentences were suspended by Governor Haley Barbour, provided that Jamie receive a kidney donation from her sister. The sisters’ ordeal, […]
A letter in the new issue of Time magazine offers an alternate suggestion for Person of the Year (the magazine chose Facebook‘s Mark Zuckerberg):
According to NPR ombud Alicia Shepard (12/30/10), one very persistent letter writer named Henry Norr managed to get NPR to correct an error made several times by different programs–that WikiLeaks “published” the many thousands of State Department cables in its possession. The site has actually published few of them– less than 2,000. Shepard wrote: On […]
Sheryl Gay Stolberg has an article in the New York Times (12/26/10) about what President Obama’s trips to Hawaii say about him: “Mr. Obama’s disappearance behind the palm trees reveals much about his presidential style, and also his thinking about how to balance work and play.” She contrasts these trips to his birth state […]
Last night on Fox News (12/22/10), Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly attempted to defend GOP opposition tothe James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, whichwould providehealth care for 9/11 Ground Zero workers. In his final broadcast of the year (12/16/10), Comedy Central‘s Jon Stewart devoted the entire show to lambasting the Republican opposition.Stewart’s […]
Today’s Washington Post (12/21/10) brings a story by Janine Zacharia headlined, “Aid groups decry Israel’s Gaza constraints.” The lead: Despite recent moves by Israel to ease construction in the Gaza Strip, restrictions on building materials are hampering international humanitarian efforts while doing little to impede the Hamas-led government they are designed to weaken, aid and […]
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank derides WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for being “insufferable”–apparently because he emerged from prison talking about prison conditions.
Today’s New York Times (12/20/10) brings the latest from the WikiLeaks cables, an interesting piece about how Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) went to Honduras after the coup to praise the new government and hopefully arrange business deals for his friends. Unfortunately the Times bungles the story of the coup itself: Honduras had grabbed international headlines […]
In a column (12/19/10) devoted to attacking others for “the intentional manipulations of language to obscure truth,” Washington Post columnist and CNN host Kathleen Parker spends most of her time targeting Democrats over the tax cut debate: Democrats are equally guilty of obfuscation through language distortion. How many times throughout the tax bill debate have […]
In FAIR’s recent study of the PBS NewsHour, we found that discussions of the Afghan War were incredibly narrow–no opponents ofa war that isbroadly unpopular among the American public were allowed to make their case. Last night’s NewsHour (12/16/10) offered a chance to see that narrow sourcing yet again. The showfeatured areported segment on the […]
In the proud tradition of objective journalism, the New York Times included both positive and negative views of Afghan envoy Richard Holbrooke in its December 14 obituary: Some called him a bully, and he looked the part: the big chin thrust out, the broad shoulders, the tight smile that might mean anything. To admirers, however, […]
The earmarks story is a peculiar genre of journalism wherein you focus on how much government spending is directed to legislator-specified projects–generally without pointing out what a tiny fraction of total spending this is, or that without the earmarking this money would be spent anyway, on some project chosen by the executive branch. Then you […]
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman attempts to offer up some measure of support for WikiLeaks today (12/15/10): I read many WikiLeaks and learned some useful things. But their release also raises some troubling questions. I don’t want to live in a country where they throw whistleblowers in jail. That’s China. But I also don’t […]
ApparentlyRichard Holbrooke’s final words were, “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”This is being highlighted in a big way on the Drudge Report, which meansmedia people will be talking about it. Revealing, in an entirely different way, was this part of a Washington Post story (12/14/10) about the state of the Afghan War post-Holbrooke: […]
On yesterday’s Chris Matthews show on NBC, the assembled journalists all seem to agree that Barack Obama’s decision to cut a tax deal with Republicans and come out swinging against the left was great news. Time‘s Mike Duffy: “These liberals may scream, but they’ve been screaming about Barack Obama since the beginning. This isn’t anything […]
The Dean is happy. Washington Post columnist and “dean” of the Beltwaypress corps David Broder was one of the few people (not counting Republicans) who stood up to applaud Barack Obama’s tax deal. Under the I-am-not-making-this-up headline “Centrist on the Rise,” Broder (12/9/10) congratulated Obama, who has”separated himself from the left of his own party […]
The big news in the U.S.-guided Israel/Palestine talks is that a renewal of a so-called “settlement freeze” in the West Bank is basically dead. Ethan Bronner has a post-mortem of sorts in the New York Times (12/9/10), where he describes the backdrop for the previous round of negotiations: The Israelis had insisted that the only […]
In AlterNet‘s article “Is Amazon Evil?” (12/8/10)–reprinted from the Boston Review (11-12/10)–the description of the economics of e-books is seriously dubious. Reporter Onnesha Roychoudhuri writes: If Amazon had asked publishers what they thought about locking in e-book prices at $9.99, it would have been subjected to a chorus of outrage. That’s because the math behind […]
CNBC‘s Erin Burnett discussing the tax deal on the Today show yesterday (12/7/10): “With capital gains and dividend taxes staying low, the half of Americans that own stocks get a benefit there as well.” Oh, really? Here’s some figures from the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities (1/30/06): Over half—54 percent—of all capital gains and […]
