FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
As the editor of a magazine of media criticism, I make it a rule never to edit the words of someone we’re criticizing in such a way that our readers would understand the quote differently if they saw the original context. We don’t want people looking up what we’re criticizing and saying, “Oh—so that’s what […]
Reporting on former Chicago detective Jon Burge’s long-delayed arrest for “perjury and obstruction of justice” related to police torture in “the Area Two Violent Crimes unit on Chicago’s South Side,” American Prospect blogger Phoebe Connelly writes (Tapped, 10/21/08) of how “John Conroy (whose exhaustive reporting on the subject is worth a read) mapped out the […]
Free Press Campaign Director Timothy Karr reminds us (Communities United, 10/23/08) that “a huge decision is going to be made on Election Day that could change the lives of millions of Americans,” but is “not about Obama or McCain”: On November 4, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on whether to open unused television airwaves […]
Tim Redmond writes (10/22/08) of how “there aren’t many locally-owned independent newspapers left in America,” noting that “even the alternative press has become chain-happy…. In… most of the nation’s biggest cities, the once-upstart weeklies are owned by big national chains.” But, to the great benefit of Northern Californians, the San Francisco Bay Guardian that “Bruce […]
Declaring (10/22/08) that “it’s hard not to read all the editorial plaudits for [Colin] Powell as something of an indictment of the opinion writers complimenting his courage,” Lester Feder also chides his own CJR.org for relative silence until, in his Sunday appearance on Meet the Press, Powell cited the persistent right-wing “Barack Obama is a […]
Bill Scher of the Campaign for America’s Future has some strong media criticism on AlterNet (10/23/08), focusing on an L.A. Times piece by Stephen Braun (10/23/08) that claims, as the headline says, “Obama and McCain in Denial About Deficits, Economists Say.” “The article repeatedly assumes budget deficits as unequivocally bad,” Scher notes, even though “many […]
Beat the Press blogger Dean Baker (10/23/08) finds an instance of economic reporting so egregious it “calls for an extra long arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The offending occurrence: “NPR just reported on Morning Edition that the markets are plummeting because investors are realizing the seriousness of the damage caused by the credit crunch.” Baker sets ’em straight: The […]
After quoting New York City Councilmember Charles Barron “offering the simplest route to continued democracy: Do nothing…. The people have spoken twice [against extending mayoral term limits] already. Why not just leave things as they are?”, Tom Robbins tells Village Voice readers (10/21/08) that Barron’s simple questions were matched only by the New York Times‘ […]
FAIR contributor Mark Crispin Miller and David Swanson are among those signed onto an “Open Letter to the Media from the Media” that asserts (We Do Not Consent, 10/23/08) that “federal election results are unprovable, even though the media reports them as fact.” Citing how “electronic voting machines frequently produce results impossible in a legitimate […]
Russia writer Mark Ames notices (Nation, 10/22/08) that, a couple of weeks ago, the New York Times slipped in a story that completely contradicted a narrative that it had been building up for two straight months, one that was leading America into another war–a so-called “New Cold War.” The article exposed the awful authoritarian reality […]
The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression organization has named recently-freed reporter Sami al-Haj as a recipient of its 2008 International Press Freedom Award. The Indo-Asian News Service reviews the back story (10/23/08): Held at Guantanamo Bay for six years, Sami al-Haj was freed on May 1 this year. Never formally charged, he was pressured to […]
Analysts have projected that Barack Obama’s ad spending would this week “surpass the $188 million Mr. Bush spent in his 2004 campaign.” During the last two weeks of the election, the Obama campaign has budgeted $30 million for ads in contested states, according to MSNBC. Last week alone, he also spent about $12 million on […]
For over a week there have been huge indigenous protests against the Uribe government in Colombia, in which at least two protesters have been killed by police and more than 100 injured. Uribe denied that police were firing at protesters, until CNN got videotape that showed them doing exactly that. How is the New York […]
Writing at the Columbia Journalism Review‘s website (10/17/08), Elinore Longobardi points out the pure absurdity of Newsweek‘s persistence in the role of economic cheerleader: In the October 20 cover story, Fareed Zakaria… explains the problem: Two decades of easy money and innovative financial products meant that virtually anyone could borrow any amount of money for […]
Describing the latest in “its continuing effort to combat hate and bigotry,” the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee announces (10/22/08) it “has launched the ‘Mail Back the Hate’ campaign” to “counter the most recent attempt using the politics of fear as a tool to spread hate and division; the distribution of 28 million copies of “Obsession: Radical […]
Opening with the observation: Ralph “Nader, an independent, and [Bob] Barr, a Libertarian, are both on the ballot in 45 states. What they aren’t on: TV,” Glenn Garvin of the Miami Herald (10/21/08) gives props to a new FAIR release (10/21/08) that, in Garvin’s words, raises another argument that deserves even greater consideration–that elections should […]
As a new anti-“big government” documentary named IOUSA gets largely uncritical treatment from various newspapers around the U.S., the Center for Economic and Policy Research provides a typically valuable service in the form of a new report in which Dean Baker and David Rosnick give “a minute-by-minute viewers guide of the film to highlight potentially […]
Continuing to put U.S. media to shame by giving voice to leading U.S. intellectuals not heard in their own country’s corporate news, Real News Network founder Paul Jay interviews (10/22/08) author of the immensely popular A People’s History of the United States, historian Howard Zinn. Even after expressing intense skepticism of third-party candidates’ hopes for […]
Actual Fox News lower third, spotted today by Janine Jackson: “Obama Plan Treats Anyone Making Over $250,000 as Wealthy”
Providing a transcript of Andrea Mitchell perpetuating a “phony moral equivalency” on Meet the Press Sunday by calling Barack Obama’s newest campaign video “a remarkably negative ad,” Brad Jacobson (MediaBloodhound, 10/20/08) says Mitchell’s insistence that “Obama’s ads are somehow just as negative as McCain’s” has her “unintentionally entering Onion and Saturday Night Live territory”: With […]
