FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Just because he wears cowboy boots and drops his G’s doesn’t mean he’s a dummy. Perry may be a small-town boy who went to an ag school (Texas A&M University), but he’s an extremely cagey and strategic politician who has been among the state’s most successful governors at getting what he wants. Put another way: […]
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman (11/9/11) went to India in order to appreciate how the grassroots movement to stamp out political corruption there is superior to Occupy Wall Street. Still, he sees a common thread: The world’s two biggest democracies, India and the United States, are going through remarkably similar bouts of introspection. Both […]
ABC This Week host Christiane Amanpour (11/6/11) kicked the show off with a pretty funny joke: Clash of the titans in Texas last night, as Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich met for the first of a series of one-on-one Lincoln/Douglas-style debates. Less funny was the show‘s very imbalanced roundtable discussion: So let’s bring in our […]
The November 1 broadcast of ABC World News couldn’t have been any clearer about what’s happening in Greece: Their pampered, early-retiring workforce is stealing from Americans. Anchor Diane Sawyer explained: If you were watching your stocks today, you saw a nosedive. The Dow down nearly 300 points, so, what changed? Well, blame it on the […]
Washington Post correspondent Juan Forero has a piece today (11/4/11) that attempts to compare the Greek economic crisis with other similar debt crises, particularly in Latin America. Unfortunately, he draws some misleading conclusions. Forero’s point is that there’s a lot about Greece’s problems that are reminiscent of troubles in Argentina and Uruguay just a few […]
Remember how the media all turned negative on Steve Jobs so soon after his death? Me neither. But don’t tell the New York Times. Today (11/03/11) the paper has a piece by Alex Williams pondering the speed with which the glowing tributes turned into something else–i.e., when “bloggers began their assault.” That assault, by Williams’ […]
NBC’s Chris Matthews Show (10/30/11): CHRIS MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Bob, tell me something I don’t know. BOB WOODWARD: That the White House has a secret plan to win the election and it’s complex and it’s secret, but it–look, Barack Obama wants to win so badly, as I understand it, everything in the White House is […]
On the Meet the Press roundtable on Sunday (10/30/11), talk turned to Steve Jobs. And, as one might expect from the avalanche of hero worship that accompanied news of his death, the chatter concerned how we might all one day live up to Jobs’ legacy. Here’s host David Gregory, speaking to Tom Brokaw: Tom, it’s […]
In Wednesday’s New York Times (10/26/11), Michael Gordon wrote a piece headlined “Papers From Iraqi Archive Reveal Conspiratorial Mind-Set of Hussein,” about some Iraqi archives that give an inside-the-bubble picture of Saddam Hussein’s rule. Not surprisingly, Hussein comes off as paranoid, incompetent and so on. Gordon begins the story noting that Hussein was troubled by […]
With the bad news we’ve been talking about on the public broadcasting front, it’s worth pointing out a bright spot: On Monday (10/24/11), Charlie Rose featured a discussion of Occupy Wall Street with Chris Hedges and Amy Goodman. Goodman made an important point about media coverage of the protests: CHARLIE ROSE: Does it have anything […]
A New York Times story today (10/28/11) by Jennifer Steinhauer on the state of bipartisanship in Washington noted: Outside of a few recent flashes of light–the passage of three trade bills this month, and an agreement on patent reform–there have been no big bipartisan jobs initiatives in this Congress. The idea that trade deals with […]
The New York Times has a fascinating new poll out today (10/26/11); too bad the paper doesn’t emphasize the most newsworthy findings. The headline is: New Poll Finds a Deep Distrust of Government That’s based on the poll’s finding that the public doesn’t have much faith in government. But paragraph four offers a more striking […]
When he’s not sharing his thoughts about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is apparently unveiling a tax plan. It’s a flat tax, with a few other details explained by the Washington Post (10/26/11): Perry also would reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent; eliminate taxes on dividends […]
Last night by many reports the police crackdown on the Occupy Oakland encampment was severe: Tear gas and flash-bang grenades were used to disperse a crowd trying to retake the park. Reading about the events in the nation’s capital, though, and you got a different impression. The Washington Post–no stranger to minimizing the Occupy protests–ran […]
No matter where you live, local TV newscasts tend to be pretty awful: a mash-up of crime, spectacle and celebrity–along with sports and weather. According to an item in the Hollywood Reporter, though, ABC has told its local affiliates not to cover one celebrity in particular: actor Johnny Depp. The actor is doing interviews to […]
There’s an old joke about how the pundit spectrum in corporate media debates goes from GE all the way to GM. On Sunday‘s Meet the Press, viewers got a chance to see that joke come to life. On the panel was conservative former GE CEO Jack Welch, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and […]
Conservative writer/commentator David Frum—the man responsible for writing the Bush “axis of evil” speech—has been doing left/right debates for the public radio show Marketplace. Until now, that is. This week (Marketplace, 10/12/11), Frum came to the conclusion that while he’s still conservative, he doesn’t do a good job representing the right-wing position in that kind […]
There’s quite a controversy brewing over freelance radio host Lisa Simeone for her participation with an activist group occupying a park in Washington, D.C. It’s a worth a look at how this unfolded– especially since it appears to have cost her one of her jobs. A report at the Roll Call website (10/18/11) noted that […]
An article in the new issue ofNewsweek (10/24/11)–“Obama’s Big Green Mess: How the White House lost its Eco-Mojo”–presents White House policy as a series of failures. It starts off with federal inspectors finding serious problems with various weatherization projects. That’s just the tip of the iceberg–from Solyndra to stimulus, things aren’t looking good. But writers […]
With all the chatter about the inevitability of Mitt Romney winning the Republican nomination, it might be useful to recall the last time the media were sending the same message about an early favorite, at least according to the national polls: Democratic Nomination Preferences Oct. 4-7, 2007 Gallup Poll Candidate % Support Hillary Clinton 47 […]
