FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Politico reported (2/16/09) that a new poll shows that support for the Fairness Doctrine has dropped. Unfortunately, the policy described in the poll question bears no relationship to the Fairness Doctrine as it actually existed. The Rasmussen polling firm asked respondents whether “the government should require all radio stations to offer equal amounts of conservative […]
Regular Huffington Post media critic Marty Kaplan finds something especially “discomfiting” (Jewish Journal, 2/16/09) about recent stimulus bill coverage and “what it says about the role that the media have carved out for themselves in American public life”: If the job of the press were to help the public understand what’s really important, and to […]
FAIR associate Norman Solomon (Creators Syndicate, 2/14/09) tells why he’s concerned the potential lifting of the government ban on press photography of war casualties’ coffins isn’t “particularly good news”: I wrote in my book War Made Easy that ambiguity is part of the process that we bring to the media-consuming table: “Visual images may be […]
The author of an upcoming “people’s history of the Bolivarian Revolution entitled We Created Him,” George Ciccariello-Maher tells (CounterPunch, 2/15/09) an eerily “familiar” tale of one unnamed political leader who, after being “in power for nearly eight years,” no longer feels the need to comfort his opponents, and his discourse radicalizes as his view of […]
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok (HateWatch, 2/13/09) gives a review of Ann Coulter’s lengthy history of “sliming everyone and everything she disagrees with” before disclosing that, “despite denouncing school desegregation as a ‘spectacular’ failure, Coulter has generally avoided bolstering white supremacist hate groups. Until now, that is”: In her latest foaming-mouth tome–Guilty: Liberal […]
The New York Times‘ Travel section featured a February 8 piece by Ned Martel headlined, “In Grenada, Leaving the Past Behind,” where the reporter refers to the 1983 U.S. invasion of the tiny Caribbean nation. A more accurate headline might have read, “Leaving the Facts Behind.” Here’s how Martel summed up the invasion story: In […]
You see it all the time: You need 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. Not exactly. Under Senate rules—which can be changed by a majority vote—you need the consent of 3/5ths of the Senate to close debate on an issue; that’s 60 votes. To pass a bill, you need a majority of […]
There’s been a corporate media trope lately that the stimulus bill, despite Barack Obama’s assurances, contains “pork.” It’s not always clear what “pork” means, but the Washington Post today (2/13/09) had an example of the genre–headlined “Despite Pledges, Stimulus Has Some Pork”–that opens with a definition of what it means by the term. Unfortunately, it’s […]
Media Matters writer Eric H. Hananok notices (2/10/09) something fishy about an airing of the Fox News show Happening Now in which host Jon Scott introduced an overview of the government stimulus bill’s development thus: “We thought we’d take a look back at the bill, how it was born, and how it grew, and grew, […]
Expressing “concern that these deals could break FCC rules about commercial clients within news programs,” the New York Daily News‘ Richard Huff reports (2/10/09) a local scandal related to the WPIX/Channel 11 Pix Morning News program that “features a local restaurant chef whipping up a meal and often an anchor talking about a chance for […]
A Tiny Revolution blogger Jonathan Schwarz (2/8/09) quotes from yet another “Time magazine article about Larry Summers and how incredibly brilliant he is”: Perhaps as early as March, they’ll launch their biggest lift with the beginnings of a plan to reform Social Security and Medicare, the two entitlement programs that, even before the economy collapsed, […]
Writing that Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein’s tough questioning of President Obama was a healthy “confrontational question,” Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly‘s Political Animal blog thinks that (2/10/09) “more importantly, as Ezra [Klein at the American Prospect] noted, it was ‘confrontational from the left rather than from the center.’” Benen then looks at stimulus […]
Today’s lead New York Times story (2/1/09)–subheaded in the print edition “Scant Details, and Wall Street Reacts With a 4.6 Percent Plunge”–is a classic example of the fallacy of treating stock market prices as a kind of opinion poll. Reporters Stephen Labaton and Edmund L. Andrews wrote: “The initial assessment of the plan from the […]
After President Obama’s press conference last night, Fox host Bill O’Reilly saw one to scorepoints against the White House–by mocking Obama forrelying ona list of pre-approved journalists when he took questions. Unfortunately for O’Reilly, his guest at the time was former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, who had to point out that this was… well, […]
Mark Howard (News Corpse, 2/9/08) rebuts “complaints from Republicans, who accused the president of politicizing the Census” by announcing that the new Director of the Census–being a “far-right Republican running an agency for which he has shown contempt”–will have to “work closely with the White House”: “The Census has always been political…. George Bush installed […]
Washington Post TV writer Lisa de Moraes’ report (2/6/09) on a Barack Obama speech planned for networks’ cherished prime-time hours gives plenty of room to TV executives’ grievances–namely, Obama is going on national TV to talk about the economic crisis–during primetime, when some of their best shows are on! “His economic stimulus package apparently does […]
Media Matters‘ Jamison Foser (2/6/09) has “one fact that should be made clear in every news report about the stimulus package working its way through Congress, it is this: Government spending is stimulative“–and Foser provides evidence that, “unfortunately, many of the reporters who have shaped the stimulus debate don’t seem to understand that.” After quoting […]
“Though seemingly forgotten by most TV talking heads,” it’s still fresh in Robert Parry’s mind (Consortium News, 2/9/09) how “it was only three years ago, when the Republicans had control of both the White House and Congress—and ‘filibuster‘ was a dirty word”: It was usually coupled with “obstructionist” amid demands that any of George W. […]
Remembering how, “for days, the mainstream media talked endlessly about… Michael Vick. Dogfighting. Blood sport,” OnlineJournal.com writer Missy Comley Beattie (2/9/09) recalls being “utterly dismayed that so many people who expressed outrage over Vick’s crime, seemed to pay little or no attention to the killing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Which leads Beattie to […]
Chronicling how “media continue to do more to misinform the public than to inform them” about the current economic crisis, Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 2/8/09) spots “the absolute worst in journalistic practices” when “a front-page Washington Post article explains the Obama administration’s policy by telling readers that the ‘approach reflects Treasury Secretary Timothy F. […]
