FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Mike Janssen of In These Times (9/27/08) explains that, while the fact that radio is “cheap and ubiquitous… easily accessible to the poor, the illiterate and the low-tech,” may not be valued by massive conglomerates like Clear Channel, for many communities, radio still promises a way to spread news, share stories and support a cultural […]
Citing plentiful evidence that “John McCain has been supporting torture for years now… dragging world opinion of the United States into the gutter, making us less safe,” David Swanson uses an American Chronicle piece (9/28/08) to point out a different, “parallel universe”:
Women In Media & News blogger Miranda Spencer has “some good news for women in journalism: Longtime investigative environmental journalist Marla Cone, who spent nearly two decades at the Los Angeles Times, has just taken the helm as editor in chief at the online publication Environmental Health News.” Spencer gives the reinvigorated news site a […]
Founder and senior editor Paul Jay announces (9/25/08) the Real News‘ move from Toronto to Washington, D.C., to better “focus on money and corruption”: Taking on the industrial-military complex is what real change requires. Even former presidents and high administration officials have said so, but corporate television news treats such positions as marginal. Well, we […]
Looking beyond particularly hateful media individuals like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Lou Dobbs, Joseph Torres of StopBigMedia.com (10/1/08) has some disturbing numbers to explain why, he says, “media have contributed to the racial divisions that still exist in this country by marginalizing people of color in its coverage”:
In yesterday’s New York Times (10/1/08), Steven Erlanger had a piece looking at the French reaction to the U.S. presidential election. He quoted French writer Bernard-Henri Levy: Obama is, certainly, black…. But not black like Jesse Jackson; not black like Al Sharpton; not black like the blacks born in Alabama or in Tennessee and who, […]
The latest TomDispatch (9/30/08) features historian Ira Chernus ruminating on “How Forgotten Iraq May Elect the Next President”: Even before the present financial meltdown hit the news, the Iraq War had slipped out of the headlines and off the political stage. Now, as investment houses totter and bailout plans fill the headlines, it will be […]
CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo appeared on Hardball last night (9/30/08) urging passage of the federal Wall Street bailout. You may not know this about her, but she really doesn’t give a crap about Wall Street firms (despite a 15-year history of relentless touting)–she only cares about the little people:
David Swanson’s latest piece in OpEd News (10/1/08) chronicles the fight against corporate media that report on the economic crisis as if, Swanson paraphrases, “the stock market is the same thing as the economy”:
When New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg began to pave the way for tossing out term limits and running for a third term, the first place he went was to his fellow media moguls (New York Times, 8/23/08): Even as he publicly remains coy about his political future, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has quietly approached some […]
The New York Times‘ Jim Rutenberg had a follow-up piece on Friday’s debate headlined “The Next Day, a New Debate on Who Won.” The story described the McCain and Obama camps’ attempts at “influencing the public perception of who won an encounter that produced no clear winner or loser.” Except–is it really true that the […]
The Washington Post (9/28/08) gathered reactions from “foreign policy analysts and others” to last Friday’s debate on international policy, and what’s striking is how hawkish the Post‘s circle of foreign policy experts is. The lineup included Henry A. Kissinger–inevitably–and a bunch of hawks from right-wing think tanks and/or the Bush administration: Danielle Pletka of AEI, […]
Veteran reporter Robert Parry muses on his Consortium News website (9/27/98) that “perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect a U.S. presidential debate to deal – substantively and honestly – with wrongful actions by the American government”
Continuing to prove himself as tenacious as the Washington Post is doctrinaire, economist Dean Baker provides another example (9/28/08) of how the “Post editorial board occasionally just makes up numbers to advance its arguments”
The National Council of La Raza’s campaign to encourage “media networks and political candidates to separate themselves from hate groups and hate speech” targets (9/23/08) talk radio star Michael Savage
FAIR associate Norman Solomon tells Real News viewers (9/29/08) of lessons to be drawn from corporate U.S. media’s non-coverage of what was big news overseas during the run up to war on Iraqâ┚¬”ÂU.S. spies used the U.N. arms inspection process to identify future bombing targets and track Saddam Hussein’s movements
Reporters of integrity quitting their jobs over what amount to unidentified ads in local news has prompted journalist groups to condemn “broadcast outlets using video news releases that are produced by pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers to look like news reports.” Emily Udell of In These Times has (9/18/08) more on the matter:
L.A. Times media reporter Matt Welch (9/26/08) says it’s “no wonder John McCain ‘suspended’ his presidential campaign Wednesday to focus in a bipartisan manner on a grave national crisis,” considering how the same move during NATO’s 1999 bombing of Kosovo has been called “a masterful political stroke”:
In “Facts, Fables and Fibs” (9/18/08), Time reporters Michael Scherer and James Carney attempt to sum up the truth and falsity of presidential campaign claims with a gimmicky chart that places Obama and McCain commercials on a grid that separates ads into “Mostly True” and “Mostly False” on the one hand, and “Serious” and “Silly” […]
In the wake of a catastrophe on the scale of the destruction of the World Trade towers, one question is obvious: Why are fanatics so consumed by rage and hatred that they would give up their lives to kill thousands of civilians in the United States? Even before investigators identified Arab militants as the apparent […]
