FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
An L.A. Times brief proudly announces (1/8/09) that the paper’s former managing editor, Douglas Frantz, “has been chosen to be chief investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as it reorganizes under its new chairman, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).” Douglas Frantz…. Does that ring any bells? You won’t find any hint of it in […]
Editor & Publisher reports that the musings of Bono will begin appearing on the New York Times opinion pages this Sunday–the latest episode in a long media tradition of choosing Western celebrities to address issues concerning Africa, one of Bono’s pet projects. Given Bono’s record of cozying up to Western leaders on issues like debt […]
Another problem with getting your surgeon general pick from corporate media is that they’re likely to have corporate media’s typical biases against marijuana.
Peter Hart asked the New York Times: What should TV reporting of a civilian massacre look like, exactly? Well, I guess the Times thinks they should be covered this way: Extra!: How America’s Leading Paper Covered a Massacre …which is to say, they should be covered almost exclusively from the point of view of the […]
Writing today on the choice of CNN health correspondent Sanjay Gupta as surgeon general for the Obama administration, the Washington Post reported that if he is confirmed by the Senate, Gupta would provide the administration with a skilled television personality to help market what is planned to be a massive reorganization of the U.S. health […]
The New York Times today,reporting the shelling of a U.N. school that killed dozens of civilians, offered a typical formulation: With another day of gory news reports inflaming the Arab world…. What should TV reporting of a civlian massacre look like, exactly? And are other news reports ever held to this standard? Was U.S. media […]
For a change of pace from his incessant immigrant bashing, CNN‘s Lou Dobbs recently exclaimed over “unusual storms” and snow in Las Vegas, Southern California and Arizona’s mountains. This “unbelievable” evidence has Dobbs wondering: “So what are those folks talking about global warming?” Posting at Washington Monthly‘s Political Animal blog (12/19/08), Steve Benen describes how, […]
FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and longtime FAIR associate Norman Solomon have compiled their 17th annual list of “P.U.-litzer Prizes” (OpEd News, 12/18/08). Among this year’s “stinkiest media performances”: HOT FOR OBAMA PRIZE — MSNBC‘s Chris Matthews This award sparked fierce competition, but the cinch came on the day Obama swept the Potomac Primary in February–when […]
With the recent release of a tape recorded President Lyndon Johnson concerned that Richard Nixon’s people had avoided Vietnam peace negotiations for domestic political purposes, Paul Jay (Real News, 12/20/08)interviewsConsortium News‘s Robert Parry on “evidence of Nixon’s treasonous legacy and the media’s choice to ignore it”: PJ: So you would think this should be a… […]
Veteran publisher Tom Engelhardt’s rundown on the decimation of book publishers’ staff (TomDispatch, 12/17/08) compares “collapsing worlds” with newspapers–“a disaster area long before the greatest downturn ‘since the Great Depression’ hit”: The bad news about the news has been flooding in for years, even if it’s worsened under the weight of more general economic tough […]
I was intrigued to see this in a New York Times editorial yesterday (12/18/08): The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the “war on terror”–the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted […]
Useless caveat of the day, courtesy of the New York Times (12/19/08): Mr. Bush, one of the least popular presidents in recent history, if public opinion polls are accurateâ┚¬Ã‚¦ Yes, perhaps it’s all a mirage.
A major–and majorly disturbing–story of post-Katrina New Orleans is broken (12/17/08) by an independent reporter at the Nation who finds evidence of up to 11 black people shot by white vigilantes in one New Orleans neighborhood immediately after the hurricane. A.C. Thompson writes that over the course of an 18-month investigation, I tracked down figures […]
Associated Press TV writer Lynn Elber reports (12/18/08) the bad news that, “nearly a decade after the NAACP condemned a ‘virtual whiteout’ in broadcast TV, the civil rights group said major networks have stalled in their efforts to further ethnic diversity on-screen and off.” Even worse, television shows of the future could be even less […]
Crooks and Liars blogger Cernig posts (12/15/08) the video of George W. Bush responding to an ABC interviewer’s point that Al-Qaeda did not actually “take their stand” in Iraq “until after the U.S. invaded”: “Yeah, that’s right. So what?” The sad part is that Martha Raddatz’s correction of the inverted justification timeline shows what can […]
Discussing the failed auto bailout on CBS Evening News (12/12/08): KATIE COURIC: And it’s almost, meanwhile, turning to Washington, Bob, impossible to figure out just what happened to this auto bailout in the Senate. There’s all this finger pointing going on. What is your take? Can you explain it to us in simple terms? BOB […]
By way of suggesting that corporate media should make even more aggressive efforts to tie President-elect Barack Obama to a politician who called him a “motherfucker” for refusing to try to bribe him, MSNBC‘s Contessa Brewer remarks: I know that there are journalists who are taking a lot of heat for not being aggressive and […]
A just-released FAIR advisory documents the media’s lopsided debate in the lead-up to Obama’s Education secretary selection today. Across a wide range of national media outlets, FAIR provides evidence that only one side has for the most part been allowed to do the talking, marginalizing the most progressive candidate in the running for the post […]
Newsweek‘s Michael Isikoff (12/13/08) lays on the cloak-and-dagger prose when telling the tale of how, “in the spring of 2004,” former Justice Department wiretapper Thomas M. Tamm “slipped through the parade of midday subway riders, his heart was pounding, his body trembling,” to “call… the New York Times” and blow the whistle on “a highly […]
Glenn Greenwald has a Salon update (12/15/08, ad-viewing required) on corporate media apathy toward the U.S. Senate report finding George W. Bush and his highest appointees responsible for U.S. detainee “deaths caused by abusive treatment”–many of which “have been formally characterized as ‘homicides’ by autopsies performed in Iraq and Afghanistan”: This report was issued on […]
