FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley has a piece (8/31/11) about Al Sharpton’s debut as an MSNBC host. It seems his show, like others on the channel, could use more of a debate: On Monday Mr. Sharpton followed the patented formula, bringing in two experts who agreed with him that recent efforts in North […]
Washington Post ombud Patrick Pexton dedicated his column this weekend (8/29/11) to addressing complaints about the skimpy coverage of Republican presidential contender Ron Paul. It’s hard to argue with the numbers he’s gathered: Still, the Post‘s coverage of Paul looks thin compared with its stories on Bachmann. In the past six months, the Post has […]
Fareed Zakaria cheers the Libya War in Time magazine this week for not following the Iraq model: It has been prosecuted with the memory of the Iraq war firmly in mind. Only this time the approach has been to view the last war as a negative example. The international coalition—and even the Libyan opposition—is doing […]
Jesse Jackson had some tough criticism for the Tea Party movement at a Martin Luther King event on Thursday. USA Today‘s Melanie Eversley covered his remarks, getting a Tea Party activist to respond to his criticism. The piece then added this, presumably in order to add some context: The group has faced criticism of being […]
There is little reason to care about what the polls say right now about who’s leading in the Republican presidential nomination. But the media obviously think otherwise, hence this headline in the Washington Post yesterday (8/25/11): Romney Loses GOP Front-Runner Status The “news” is that Rick Perry is leading in a new Gallup Poll. But […]
The New York Times‘ Katharine Seelye begins her report (8/24/11) on yesterday’s Virginia-centered earthquake with a dangerous inaccuracy: Of all the things there are to worry about, earthquakes are fairly low on the list for those on the East Coast. Actually, people on the East Coast should probably worry about earthquakes a lot more than […]
OK, that headline reflects one of the most common right-wing complaints against the Obama administration. (See Bill O’Reilly’s bullet point on Monday: “Increased federal regulations: Cutting into profits and causing banks to hoard, not lend money.”) That’s the right-wing argument, but it’s also the premise of some news reporting. Take this lead in today‘s USA […]
Today’s New York Times has a story by David Kirkpatrick and Rod Nordland running down the exaggerations and misinformation that have been spread throughout the Libya War. There’s been “spin from all sides,” they report. Gadhafi’s exaggerations are well-known, but this passage is rather striking: Still, the rebels have offered their own far-fetched claims, like […]
ProPublica‘s factcheck of seven economic myths facing the country makes some good points: Taxes aren’t going up, for instance. Some of the “myths” are a bit muddled: “The stimulus has been full of/free of fraud, waste and abuse.” Is someone really saying the latter? But overall the piece tries vainly to balance myths that will […]
On NBC Nightly News (8/16/11): ANDREA MITCHELL: Perry’s Texas swagger is his calling card, bred of a hardscrabble boyhood on the family farm and Aggie roots at Texas A&M. Perry’s chief claim to challenging President Obama is the Texas jobs record. Perry says his state produced 40 percent of all the jobs created across America […]
When a super-wealthy guy like Warren Buffett talks about taxing the rich– in the pages of the New York Times, no less– it gets the rest of the media talking. But that doesn’t mean that talk will get things right. Here’s one example from ABC World News (8/15/11): BIANNA GOLODRYGA (ABC NEWS): Much of Buffett’s […]
There was one moment in last Thursday’s GOP presidential debate that seemed to sum things up. The candidates were asked if they would agree to a long-term budget/deficit reduction deal that was tilted 10 to 1 in favor of spending cuts over tax increases. This would be an unbelievably favorable outcome for anti-tax Republicans. Every […]
The New York Times has a long piece (8/12/11) looking at the question of how many civilians in Pakistan are killed by CIA drones. The agency doesn’t even speak about the program on the record, except to make the far-fetched claim that no civilians have died in the past year or so. The article, written […]
Radio hosts author/social activists Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are on anti-poverty tour, trying to draw attention to issues that are neglected in most political discussions–and all but absent in corporate media. The good news, in theory, is that they’re getting some national TV attention. But this is one of those cases where you start […]
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has named his picks to the “super committee” charged with making deficit reduction recommendations. Reid named Washington Sen. Patty Murray and center-right Max Baucus, who the Post‘s Rosalind Helderman today (8/10/11) calls a “natural choice,” given that he chairs the Finance Committee. The New York Times is a little more […]
It’s an article of faith in mainstream media discussions of the budget: Social Security and Medicare are the “entitlements” driving our debt problems. That’s not really true, but that’s overwhelmingly the starting point for these discussions. Occasionally, perhaps by accident, someone questions that assumption. That’s what happened on NPR‘s Morning Edition on Monday (8/8/11), when […]
August 6, 2011, when 38 soldiers, including 30 U.S. troops, were killed when their helicopter was shot down, was the “deadliest day” of the Afghan War, several media outlets told us: David Muir (ABC World News Saturday, 8/6/11): “It was the deadliest day of the war in Afghanistan, 30 Americans, 22 Navy SEALs lost.” David […]
There is no shortage of pundits like Robert Samuelson who demand cuts to Social Security and Medicare, usually in the name of balancing the budget. These political decisions are usually labeled “hard choices” in media discussions–as if politicians who favor making people pay more for their healthcare or cutting their retirement funds are only bravely […]
Labor disputes are often about compensation– salary and/or benefits. Management claims its employees are actually doing just fine, workers say otherwise. 45,000 Verizon workers are on strike on the East Coast over salary, pension and health benefits and collective bargaining rights. One would hope that reporters would try to referee such disputes over compensation. In […]
If the White House encouraged Americans to prevent colds by wearing sweaters, one would hope that media outlets would point out that there’s no evidence that being chilly has anything to do with catching a cold. Likewise, if the Interior Department green-lights a plan to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean in order to […]
