FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Moving “beyond the use of the term Muslim as a pejorative” to ask “what did real Muslim-Americans think of the Chicago senator? And how did they vote?”, Newseek‘s Lorraine Ali (11/7/08) cites a 10-state survey that found “95 percent of Muslims polled cast a ballot” and “89 percent of respondents voted for Obama.” Ali sees […]
The New York Times published today a lengthy front-page article about new evidence from independent security observers that contradicted the Georgian government’s account of the conflict in the Caucasus this past August–an account that, as FAIR pointed out at the time (8/14/08), many in the U.S. media had repeated with little skepticism in their rush […]
The relentless speculation over who should be in Obama’s cabinet continued in the Los Angeles Times, where readers were clued in to the debate over naming Larry Summers Treasury Secretary: Obama faces conflicting advice from his close advisers, from Capitol Hill and from important Democratic constituencies. Some argue that, with the economy gripped by a […]
Today’s USA Today editorial: How Obama Can Be a Uniter If Barack Obama wants to show he meant what he said about bridging the blue state-red state divide, there’s an easy way do it: Ask the best of President Bush’s appointees to stay on and adopt some of Sen. John McCain’s better ideas. If Obama […]
Yesterday’s L.A. Times (emphasis mine): Analysts predict that a debate will unfold within Iran’s elite over whether the Islamic Republic or the United States should make the first move in any post-Bush dialogue. Some point to the injustices allegedly committed by the U.S. against Iran, such as the 1953 overthrow of the democratically elected government, […]
The U.S. election, to no one’s surprise, was of great interest to Iran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s letter of congratulations to Obama is being widely covered, though this passage in today’s New York Times jumped out: Mr. Obama has said that he would engage in aggressive diplomacy with Iran, and that he might offer economic incentives if […]
Howard Zinn pens a forceful response to what he terms Edward Rothstein’s “sour commentary” on Studs Terkel (New York Times, 11/2/08). Read Zinn’s defense here. For good measure, here’s FAIR’s take on the same, as heard on this week’s CounterSpin: Author and radio legend Studs Terkel passed away on October 31 at the age of […]
Dean Baker finds (Beat the Press, 11/5/08) a Wall Street Journal economy article fails to support its editors’ headline–which itself just happens to support their own ideology: [The November 6 Jon Hilsenrath] article… told readers in the first sentence that “the U.S. government is on course for an unprecedented borrowing binge in coming months that […]
An NBC affiliate’s report that “if the results differ by 1 percent or less” in a Virginia congressional race, “the losing candidate can formally request a recount in court” gets David Swanson wondering (AfterDowningStreet.org, 11/7/08) how this unquestioning language could possibly apply to the current voting process: The interesting question is, if they do a […]
Tom Engelhardt muses (TomDispatch, 11/5/08) on 2008 U.S. presidential election coverage as “a tsunami of entertainment, or was it distraction?”: An eternal election campaign. Two years of the most everything–the most money… the most ads… the most places (Internet, email, YouTube, Facebook, bloggers, text messaging, cell phones), the most jokes, the most appearances by candidates […]
Environmental reporter and activist Harvey Wasserman notices (Columbus Free Press, 11/6/08) that, “as the world media filled with the victory of Barack Obama, a defeat for atomic power in his own back yard sent a Solartopian message to the new administration”: Chicago-area… voters approved by well over two-to-one a referendum asking that “our elected officials […]
FAIR founder Jeff Cohen spots (Huffington Post, 11/5/08) a major factor in this election season that he thinks “is now so second-nature to us that we may overlook its transformative impact since just four years ago: the Internet and the progressive online boom”: The media terrain has changed dramatically since 2004, when Matt Drudge dominated […]
As FAIR’s magazine Extra! has noted (9-10/08, 11-12/07), it’s often hard to tell from reading the U.S. press that polls have consistently shown a clear majority of Iraqis favor a withdrawal of American troops from their country. Today the New York Times published two articles offering Iraqi perspectives on the significance of Obama’s electoral victory. […]
In the lead-up to the November 4 election, Fox News host Sean Hannity warned (10/26/08) that an Obama victory would represent “a complete liberal takeover.” He opined that a Democratic electoral victory would herald “an unchecked, ultraliberal government, passing the most liberal agenda under the most liberal president in U.S. history.” Citing the National Journal‘s […]
This Newsweek interactive feature that offers odds on Obama’s cabinet picks describes Lawrence Summers, who pushed for the policies that led to the financial crisis (Beat the Press, 11/5/08), as “A world-class economist, the former Harvard University president is valued for his deep experience in handling financial crises,” and calls Richard Holbrooke, whose impossible ultimatums […]
Salon has a grimly humorous collection (11/6/08, ad-viewing required) of idiocy intoned with supreme confidence by media pundits throughout the U.S. presidential campaign. Unsurprisingly, Fox News personalities are prominently represented. From Bill Kristol looking forward at the very beginning of the campaign and getting it entirely wrong (Fox News Sunday, 12/17/06): If [Hillary Clinton] gets […]
San Francisco Bay Guardian founder Bruce B. Brugmann posts (11/3/08) on his paper’s blog about how “the day before the historic vote on the Clean Energy Initiative (Prop H), under vicious multi-million attack by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle continued its campaign of decades to censor and marginalize the […]
Professor and author Michael Eric Dyson provides a useful corrective (Los Angeles Times, 11/5/08) to a particularly damaging campaign media theme: Contrary to many critics, his election does not, nor should it, herald a post-racial future. But it may help usher in a post-racist future. A post-racial outlook seeks to delete crucial strands of our […]
Free Press activists so instrumental in bringing public attention to the issue announce (11/4/08) that “the Federal Communications Commission voted to approve the unlicensed use of ‘white spaces‘–empty airwaves between television channels–to provide high-speed Internet access nationwide”: Nearly every market in the United States has available white spaces; in some communities, more than three-quarters of […]
THEN (CNN‘s Capital Gang, 11/6/04): MARK SHIELDS: Bob Novak, is 51 percent of the vote really a mandate? BOB NOVAK: Of course it is. It’s a 3.5 million vote margin. But the people who are saying that it isn’t a mandate are the same people who were predicting that John Kerry would win. When -the […]
