FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
The invaluable Electronic Intifada website has a Shervan Sardar analysis (1/8/09) of “the first three days of the Israeli offensive from 28-30 December,” during which time he finds editorials and op-eds from five major U.S. papers overwhelmingly adopted the official U.S. and Israeli government talking points on the conflict–even where this version was clearly contradicted […]
Following up on the well-documented phenomenon wherein corporate news outlets justify their mode of getting “conservatives to dominate their shows, booking them as guests far more often than progressives” by using “the rationale… that Republicans were ‘in power,’” ThinkProgress (1/28/09) now shows that “it appears that old habits die hard.” Even with a Democratic president […]
Credited by the London Review of Books (1/29/09) as the “former national director of the American Jewish Congress and of the Synagogue Council of America,” Henry Siegman’s list of official Israeli claims that “most of the Western media have accepted” includes “that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed” and “that Israel has […]
Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall (1/28/09) is bemoaning how “Republicans have been getting a lot of air time and minimal press criticism for a series of arguments about the stimulus that are in most cases transparently ridiculous”: For instance, I heard several House Republicans yesterday making the straight up argument that the renovation of […]
Economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 1/28/09) points to an embarrassingly simple contradiction in the premise of Washington Post staff writer David Cho’s worry that government plans to give cash to failing banks in exchange for current investors’ shares “could also precipitate a sell-off across the banking system as investors flee, fearing they could be […]
Far from holding the feet of the powerful to the fire, “liberal” Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is the very model of the establishment-protecting beltway hack. Glenn Greenwald walks us through Cohen’s history of cheering for the capital’s criminal class, with a focus on the columnist’s latest call to sweep torture under the rug.
Attacking the White House’s proposed economic stimulus plan (1/26/09), Rush Limbaugh explained that the issue pits his favored “supply-siders,” who see the holy grail in tax cuts, against what he repeatedly referred to as, at least what sounded like “kineesian economists,” who he described as partial to “government spending on shovel-ready projects of all kinds.” […]
In a top-of-the-show rant about the dangers of the Guantanamo detainees, Fox‘s Bill O’Reilly declared (1/25/09): Just hours after President Obama announced he was going to shut down Guantanamo Bay, the feds confirmed that a released Gitmo inmate, 35-year-old Sahid al-Shahiri, had resumed terrorist activities in Yemen. Now if this isn’t a warning, ladies and […]
A January 23 New York Times column by Bob Herbert distilled the message of Barack Obama’s nascent administration as “No more crazy wars.” FAIR associate Norman Solomon’s reaction (AfterDowningStreet.org, 1/26/09): “I wish.” Lamenting the current “narrowness of political vision–while news outlets are reporting that the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan is expected to ‘as […]
Jonathan Schwarz (A Tiny Revolution, 1/20/09) is linking to Glenn Greenwald’s Salon catch of John Barry telling Newsweek readers to not sweat “the core charge that the [Bush] administration ‘misled’ the legislature and the American public by faking evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.” Barry asserts any such accountability would be “vengeance, […]
Sometimes you don’t need to read more than a headline. Take today’s Washington Post: Senate Gets Reacquainted With McCain the Maverick OK, let’s read just a bit: Two and a half months removed from his defeat in the race for the presidency, colleagues say, McCain bears more resemblance to the unpredictable and frequently bipartisan lawmaker […]
Your daily dose of radio bigotry is brought to you by the super-hater team of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. Rush recently hosted Coulter on his radio show (RushLimbaugh.com, 1/16/09), where they got down to some of the racist banter they’re so famous for: Rush: Arianna [Huffington], you need a translator. Coulter: And George Soros! […]
Writing on Washington Monthly‘s Political Animal blog (1/21/09), Steve Benen quotes Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris of Politico rueing the lack of “evidence that [Barack Obama] is willing to challenge Democratic special interest groups“: “There are few examples of him making decisions during the campaign or the transition that offended his own party’s constituencies…. […]
Scott Horton of Harper’s (1/21/09) tells us of some big news on “the German television program Frontal 21, on channel ZDF“: In an interview there, “internationally renowned law professor” and “independent expert for the United Nations” Manfred Nowak, “the United Nations Rapporteur responsible for torture, stated that with George W. Bush’s head of state immunity […]
Unable to simply air the reality of George W. Bush’s immense unpopularity manifesting in a chorus of boos for his last public appearance as U.S. “president,” MSBNC newscasters (YouTube.com, 1/20/08) chide inauguration attendees for “bad form”–before eventually finding a camera shot to cut to instead showing the crowd cheering… for Obama. Hardly a new phenomenon; […]
Just when even the ultimately acerbic political critic Matt Taibbi began (New York Press, 1/14/09) “to lose faith in America’s ability to fall for absolutely anything,” he notes New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman, “resident of a positively obscene 11,400-square-foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains […]
Finding it “more than ironic” and even “disturbing and more than a little sad,” Norman Solomon (Creators Syndicate, 1/17/09) points out that “at the same time that the United States is inaugurating a new presidency that marks the crashing of a racial barrier at the White House,” the African-American-centric News & Notes–a show “actually staffed […]
Asking the deceptively simple question, “More Bank Bailouts: Who Gets the Money?”, Beat the Press blogger Dean Baker has another telling example (1/18/09) of biases in media corporations’ reportage on corporate economics: The Washington Post made reducing the pay of autoworkers by $4.00 an hour a central theme of its coverage (both news and editorial) […]
Comparing Tribune Co. raider Sam Zell to sea pirates of yore, longtime radio progressive Jim Hightower thinks (JimHightower.com, 1/18/09) Zell doesn’t come out too well–“the difference between pirate captains of old and modern-day corporate bosses is that pirates had ethics”: They fairly shared their loot, for example, with the entire crew. Contrast that with the […]
Recalling how “too often, government has tried to expand Internet access by giving public money to massive phone and cable companies” and only gotten “tax dollars squandered,” to the point that “Americans now face few market choices, and pay high prices for speeds that are far too slow,” the folks at Free Press are now […]
