FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Calling herself “more of an ally than an activist for transgender people,” Veronica Arreola admits (Women In Media & News, 11/16/08) to “not being on top of each nuance of the movement” but still is aghast “at most of the media’s reaction to [Thomas] Beatie’s second pregnancy”: It’s not the headlines that upset me; most […]
Fair Use infringement and talk-radio vitriol meet in a report (Bay City News, 11/13/08) on hate-jock Michael Savage‘s latest charming escapades: Conservative radio talkshow host Michael Savage has been sued in federal court in San Francisco by a liberal film group for making an allegedly baseless demand that YouTube Inc. take down one of its […]
WeCanStopTheHate.org‘s latest push for “media networks… to separate themselves from hate groups and hate speech” quotes (11/14/08) National Council of La Raza President Janet Murguia saying that, with a recent race-motivated Long Island murder, “we have been brutally reminded about the consequences of leaving hate unchecked”: “The wave of hate that is seeping through our […]
The Real News reports (11/15/08) on a censorious Canadian monopoly’s latest misdeeds: In early November, Canadian media giant Canwest Mediaworks dropped its lawsuit against Mordecai Briemberg, a lawsuit which alleged that he infringed on Canwest‘s trademark rights. The case pertained to the creation of a parody of one of Canwest‘s many papers, the Vancouver Sun. […]
The Huffington Post publishes male critic Jeff Cohen’s challenge (11/13/08) to “independent media outlets that contributed so mightily to the stunning election result”: With Democrats in control, will these outlets be guided by principle or just partisanship? Will they speak truth to power and expose corruption and injustice over the long haul–no matter who’s in […]
From the Washington Post yesterday–emphasis added: The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries. In recent months, the U.S. drones have fired missiles at Pakistani soil at an […]
The Washington Post editorial yesterday on Nicaragua begins: Through much of the 1980s, the United States waged a proxy war to prevent Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista party from consolidating a dictatorship in Nicaragua. In 1990, Mr. Ortega finally agreed to hold a presidential election, which he lost…. That history is false. Nicaragua held a […]
Media reformer Josh Silver‘s “Look at Media in 2009” (Huffington Post, 11/13/08) necessarily surveys the dire record of corporate news in ’08: The real problem is not the media favoring one candidate over another, but rather its utter failure to practice critical journalism. Turn on your television or radio, and it’s 24/7 horserace political coverage, […]
NPR Check‘s Mytwords finds it (11/13/08) particularly “telling that on the day after the release of a report on the ‘shattered lives‘ of released Guantanamo detainees,” National Public Radio‘s Morning Edition was “doing the awful work of convincing listeners that closing the prison camp will be a lot more complicated than they might have thought”: […]
Speaking out again now that the U.S. presidential election has been decided, Bill Ayers tells Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!, 11/14/08) exactly why his family “actually didn’t pay a lot of attention to” the ongoing media controversy over him: We recognized that there was this cartoon character kind of thrust up on the […]
In the upcoming December 1 issue of the Nation, Fatin Abbas extensively quotes Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina on “The Traps of Safari Journalism”: In his eloquent diatribe “How to Write About Africa,” published several years ago in Granta… Wainaina offers the following advice: “Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of […]
Observing (Creator’s Syndicate, 11/14/08) that “overall, the news media like winners, and an incoming president is the biggest winner of all,” Norman Solomon knows “the period between his opponent’s concession speech and the swearing-in has traditionally been a time of many media upsides without the burdens of actual incumbency.” As a result, despite the vast […]
Interesting catch by digby from Broadcasting & Cable (11/10/08), which was talking to Fox News chief Roger Ailes about what happens to Fox‘s ratings post-election: “I think cable numbers overall will drop, although there is a fascination with Obama,” says Ailes. But he sees light at the end of the tunnel: Historically, the dawning of […]
After giving a dubious account of the causes of the Democrats’ 1994 electoral disaster, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson (11/14/08) provides an inaccurate description of the Fairness Doctrine, which he calls a federal regulation (overturned by the Reagan administration in 1987) requiring broadcast outlets to give equal time to opposing political viewpoints. Under this doctrine, […]
Today’s Washington Post (11/14/08) explains that Obama’s economic advisers “span the policy spectrum:” They include free traders and “fair traders,” deficit hawks, Wall Street executives, corporate moguls and labor advocates. Why the different typographical treatment of free trade and fair trade? The implication is that “free trade” really is free, whereas “fair trade” is just […]
One interesting post-election story has been the treatment of Rahm Emanuel, a center-right Clinton Democrat who will serve as Obama’s chief of staff. While some Republicans claim Emanuel is too “partisan,” some media defenders argue that he’s not, since his politics are not all that liberal. Time magazine’s Karen Tumulty explains: The strongest signal of […]
In his Unclaimed Territory feature at Salon (11/13/08, ad-viewing required), Glenn Greenwald has more on mainstream journalists’ affinity for those “urging the new Obama administration to avoid any investigations or prosecutions of Bush lawbreaking”: This is what has been advocated by everyone from David Broder to top Obama adviser Cass Sunstein. There are few things […]
A Tiny Revolution blogger Jonathan Schwarz quotes (11/12/08) Iraq War booster Michael Hanlon writing on the Politico website that “it is important that Senator Obama hear from centrists on Iraq, and Susan [Rice] may not be such a person on that subject.” In response to the Hanlon assertion that former Bill Clinton official Rice “is […]
Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 11/12/08) wants to know “Where’s the Ridicule?” since “Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced today that he had abandoned… his plan to buy bad assets from banks and other financial institutions.” Now that Mr. Paulson has himself decided that the Troubled Asset Relief Program is not a good idea (for which […]
Nick Turse offers (Nation, 11/13/08) the latest contravention of the standard myth of strongly anti-war corporate media during the Vietnam era: “Pacification’s Deadly Price,” a joint investigation into the slaughter of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops during Operation Speedy Express, was the crowning achievement of [Newsweek Saigon bureau chief Kevin Buckley’s and stringer Alex Shimkin’s] […]
