Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

11/24/2020

Latinx Voting Surge Boosted Biden’s Victory—but That’s Not the Story Corporate Media Want to Tell

The fact that in a few places in Texas and Florida, the Latinx vote appeared to move toward the right hardly negates the fact that the overall Latinx vote grew tremendously, and those votes overall went by large margins to the Democrats. The bottom line, according to the exit poll data, is that Biden got more than 10 million more Latinx votes than Trump did in 2020, whereas Clinton got less than 6 million more Latinx votes than Trump in 2016.

The fact that in a few places in Texas and Florida, the Latinx vote appeared to move toward the right hardly negates the fact that the overall Latinx vote grew tremendously, and those votes overall went by large margins to the Democrats.

11/21/2020

Crying Wolf on Election Fraud Is OK at NYT—if Targets Are Official Enemies

Ultimately, for the New York Times, the legitimacy of crying election fraud is not based on whether it actually happened, but comes down to its political utility. While the Times denounces Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the election, when it comes to enemy countries, any accusation, no matter how baseless, is treated with respect and deserving of amplification.

https://fair.org/home/crying-wolf-on-election-fraud-is-ok-at-nyt-if-targets-are-official-enemies/

For the New York Times, crying election fraud then staging a coup is bad, and just like what dictators do—unless it is the US making dubious claims of electoral fraud against official enemies, in which case it is an honorable practice.

11/20/2020

Media’s Messaging Debate Eclipses Policies—and the Crises They Address

The burning question of the moment is how much and exactly what kind of government intervention is necessary to address the multiple crises that are, literally, killing people and the planet itself.

Yet the Washington Post covers the dissension in the House Democratic caucus not as a debate about the best policies to respond to the crises. Rather, it's entirely a messaging debate: whether Democratic politicians should stop mentioning progressive proposals like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and defunding the police, and whether talk of “socialism” was electoral poison.

In coverage of Democratic positions on healthcare and climate change, the overwhelming emphasis was on electoral strategy, and not on the problems these policy proposals were designed to solve.

11/20/2020

Ravi Gupta on Vaccine Infrastructure, Murtaza Hussain on Trump’s War on Yemen

Headlines are hailing imminent coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna we're told are safe, upwards of 90% effective, to be sent for FDA approval “within days.” It's understandable to want to see the discovery of a vaccine as signaling victory over pandemic worries, but one one global health official says it's more like "building a base camp on Mount Everest." What happens next has to do with vaccine infrastructure -- the systems in place for vaccines' manufacture and distribution. And our guest this week says that infrastructure is due for serious change.

The coronavirus crisis highlights the urgent need to reimagine our vaccine infrastructure.

11/20/2020

‘We Basically Made Recovery Much, Much Harder Than It Has to Be’

Transcript of Janine Jackson's interview with Josh Bivins on pandemic economics:

"There's definitely no silver bullet. There was not, like, one piece of legislation that passed at some point that so disempowered workers. It was just a steady, steady chipping away of anything that gave workers any leverage or bargaining power in the labor market. And so centering workers in a genuine recovery, and really trying to rebuild economic security, it's going to take movement on a bunch of fronts, some really important fronts.

"One is just: make returning to very low rates of unemployment for a very long time an absolutely key part of all policy. And, when you're recovering from recessions, that requires fiscal policy. It requires that relief-and-recovery. Once the economy gets up and running, that requires a Federal Reserve that’s not going to prematurely stomp on the brakes in the name of fighting inflation that might happen at some point in the future. Instead, we need to really let good recoveries ride for as long as they possibly can."

"Centering workers in a genuine recovery, and really trying to rebuild economic security, it's going to take movement on a bunch of fronts."

11/17/2020

New York's Jonathan Chait describes charter schools as “one of the most successful social policy innovations in decades, and…a lifeline of opportunity for hundreds of thousands of poor urban children”—without mentioning that his spouse works as a policy advisor to the charter school industry.

https://fair.org/home/new-yorks-chait-boosts-charter-schools-but-no-longer-mentions-spouses-policy-role-in-charter-school-industry/

11/16/2020

Drawing All the Wrong Lessons From Media’s Election 2020 Failures — FAIR

The self-flagellating argument, then as now, seems to be that if reporters would just spend more time excavating the psyches of Trump supporters without judgment, they might not underestimate his ability to turn out huge numbers of votes, even in the midst of what a casual observer might judge to be a catastrophic and abominable presidency.

But if the point is to not misjudge Trump’s popularity, the solution is not to single out Trump supporters in your reporting, but rather to seek out a cross-section of voters—including Biden supporters and the substantial segment of the electorate to Biden’s left.

https://fair.org/home/drawing-all-the-wrong-lessons-from-medias-election-2020-failures/

These stories, with their palpable fear of coming across as disrespectful or condescending, only make things worse, by creating an uncritical echo chamber for racist and xenophobic perspectives.

11/13/2020

Absolving Trump Means Erasing the Harm Done to Millions

There is no accountability to the millions of people who lost their lives, their loved ones, their homes, their jobs. Then as now, protecting the status quo involves marginalizing calls for justice, by portraying them as an "emotional" desire for "vengeance," better tempered by cooler heads.

The call to coddle Trump—like the same outlets' insistence that it would be mean to send bankers whose fraud derailed the economy to jail—is evidence of the total divorce between real people's lives and experiences, and the puppets and caricatures in media's narrative.

11/13/2020

Farcical Coverage of Julian Assange’s Farcical Hearing

The US government has shifted its arguments from the claim that Assange isn’t a journalist—making a specious distinction between his behavior and those of other media professionals—to asserting the US’s “right” to prosecute, under the 1917 Espionage Act, all journalists around the world who publish classified US information. These new US government charges could criminalize even receiving classified information, which is standard practice in journalism.

In the scarce coverage that does exist of this unprecedented case with immense implications for freedom of expression, one would hardly get the impression that the US and British governments are involved in an illegal conspiracy—in violation of their own laws—to punish Julian Assange for the “...

11/13/2020

Julie Hollar on Moving Democrats to the Right, Josh Bivens on Pandemic Unemployment

Seventy percent of republicans don't think the elections were free and fair, according to Politico. (A "stark rise," they note, perhaps unnecessarily, from the 35% that felt that way before Trump lost). There are surely multiple complicated reasons for that; one may be that they've been insufficiently disabused by corporate media that will rhetorically hold up Biden's votes alongside Trump's threats and delusions -- because both sides "see a path" to the White House.

The same press corps that for years "balanced" evidence of real voter suppression with empty claims of voter fraud -- as if it would be unfair to acknowledge that one side reflected reality and the other didn't, as if it weren't for them to say. Now, even within acceptance of a Biden victory, election results are being treated as a kind of rorschach, and in that circumstance, we know certain interpretations tend to carry the day.

Blaming the left has been the practice of elite Democrats and their media abettors for decades.

11/11/2020

‘Proposition 22 Is a Backlash to Victories Workers Have Had’

Transcript of Janine Jackson's interview with Rey Fuentes about California's gig economy vote:

"Their really irresponsible behavior when it comes to California law has been embedded in the DNA of these companies since their founding, and since they started operating in California. They've flouted employment law that has been on the books since 2010, 2012.

"Whenever each one of these companies started operating, they've decided that the workers were independent contractors, but under any conceivable state law test, these workers have been employees for the purposes of state law, which means they should be getting the things like basic minimum wage protections and overtime. And AB 5 just crystallized the conversation, and more important than anything else, AB 5 authorized public officials--like the attorney general, and city attorneys around California in large cities--to enforce these obligations.

"The companies have designed a web of private arbitrations which prevent workers from going to court, and really fairly adjudicating what are the results of their employee classification, or what wages they're owed. And so, because these companies have evaded enforcement in the past, the fact that AB 5 authorized public officials to enforce, and the fact that they started to bring lawsuits against these companies, is what created the urgency to pass Proposition 22, and to really spread so much misinformation about what the proposition actually contains."

https://fair.org/home/proposition-22-is-a-backlash-to-victories-workers-have-had/

"We've seen the most explosive and energetic worker organizing on the ground that has ever been present in the gig community."

11/10/2020

When Centrists Lose, Corporate Media Blame the Left

The reason Democrats lost House seats is obvious, the Washington Post writes: “The party in recent years has moved further left.” But before "recent years"--before the 2018 midterms--House Democrats had been in the minority for eight years, and 20 of the last 24 years.

Joe Biden hadn't even been declared the victor of the 2020 election before establishment Democrats, in the face of poorer-than-expected results in House and Senate races, began pointing fingers at the left—with corporate media giving them a major assist.

11/09/2020

‘These Lawsuits Are Incredibly Rinky-Dink’

Transcript of Janine Jackson's interview with Steven Rosenfeld on vote challenges:

"The number of ballots that they might be able to throw out— if they are even lucky to succeed, and we could say in a second why they might not be lucky—it’s really small, and it’s not likely to jeopardize or change the outcomes in these elections. It’s likely to generate a lot of doubt that could be blown up, like molehills into mountains, for their ongoing disinformation, but in terms of the litigation, it’s been incredibly small-minded and kind of sloppy."

https://fair.org/home/these-lawsuits-are-incredibly-rinky-dink/

"The number of ballots that they might be able to throw out...[is] really small, and it's not likely to jeopardize or change the outcomes in these elections."

11/06/2020

Exit Lines: Campaign Analysts Miss the Signal in the Noise

Campaign analysts love to write "man bites dog" stories--but they can end up obscuring all the dogs that were biting men.

The bottom line, obscured by demographic gee-whiz stories, is that Trump had a 15-point advantage among whites and a 46-point deficit with people of color.

11/06/2020

Steven Rosenfeld on Vote Counting, Rey Fuentes on Rigging the Gig Economy

The New York Times told us on November 5 that Joe Biden "sees a path to victory"; the reason it's just a path, we're to understand, is that Donald Trump is still mounting "challenges" to vote counts. Trump, of course, announced in advance that "as soon as that election is over, we're going in with our lawyers."

But Republicans didn't just start going in with their lawyers; in particular since the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, they've used the courts to provide cover for the kind of voter suppression they feel favors them. They've played these cards face up for so long, it's hard to see why anyone would credit Trump's current "legal" maneuvers as anything other than what they are: frank attempts to hold onto power, no matter what.

But here we are; and where we need a press corps that defends democratic functions unflinchingly, even if it's the president attacking them, what we've got is -- along with some strong, useful reporting -- a lot of normalizing inanity, like CNN's John Avlon telling viewers to "keep cool [and] remember that the right to vote is really the fight to vote." Come again?

https://fair.org/home/steven-rosenfeld-on-vote-counting-rey-fuentes-on-rigging-the-gig-economy/

Even after election 2020, corporate media fail to highlight the break between those who believe in the democratic project and those who do not.

11/06/2020

Media Still Refuse to Report the Real News: Trump Is Trying to Steal the Election

It’s surreal to watch journalists continue to engage in euphemism and indirection as Trump tries to execute a soft coup in real-time.

https://fair.org/home/media-still-refuse-to-report-the-real-news-trump-is-trying-to-steal-the-election/

  Although I’ve written (FAIR.org, 9/15/20) about US media’s refusal to forthrightly report that President Donald Trump is trying to steal the 2020 election—despite giving every indication that he intends to do so—it’s still surreal to watch journalists continue to engage in euphemism and...

11/04/2020

Hard as it would be for Democrats to reverse years of shunning progressive activism, positioning themselves above the fray and putting their faith in political norms and legal strategies—even though they have failed—it is even harder to imagine establishment media bearing witness to an all-out fight for democracy. So accustomed are they to legitimating presidential power, it will be as uncharacteristic of them to change course as it will be for Democrats to take action.

https://fair.org/home/media-fail-to-prepare-public-for-potential-trump-coup/

11/04/2020

Journalists Need to Be Clear About a Clear Threat to Democracy

This was written almost two months ago, but its message could not be more timely: Media need to make it clear that Trump is trying to steal the election.

https://fair.org/home/journalists-need-to-be-clear-about-a-clear-threat-to-democracy/

Newsrooms have an obligation to report that the most powerful person in the country is trying to subvert the election and retain power illegitimately, and a failure to blow the whistle on a clear threat to democracy is journalistic malpractice.

11/04/2020

Young Voices Largely Missing in Election Coverage

Most of the coverage surrounding young voters this election cycle centers around the struggles of voting during the coronavirus pandemic for college students, why young people don’t vote, or the ways that politicians are trying to connect with younger generations. There is one unfortunate commonality throughout these stories: We hear about young people, but we rarely hear from them.

Despite the increase of young people planning to vote, corporate media have largely forgotten about them in the weeks leading up to the election.

11/03/2020

‘We Have the World’s Largest System to Imprison and Exile Immigrants’

Transcript of CounterSpin's special episode on Trump and immigration:

"One of the issues that happens is when we use words like 'deportation' or 'detention,' they’re almost sanitized, right? What does that mean to people to be incarcerated, to be locked up, to be taken away from your family?

"I was talking to my colleague this morning about trying to stop the deportation of a man who the government is trying to deport back to Honduras. In the last 50 years, he’s only spent 12 days there. That’s not his home. And he has three children who are adults but are severely disabled and rely daily, minute to minute, on his care. And so there’s a deep cruelty to this system that would definitely be elevated by including the voices of people who’ve been directly impacted, and I think that’s a good place to start, that’s where we need to start."

"I think we also have to be wary of not taking advantage of this moment, because it’s unveiling what the system truly is meant to do."

11/03/2020

Corporate Media Reverse Reality by Blaming BLM Protesters for Everything

The “violence” did not begin when protesters began destroying property; this is a reversal of cause and effect. In actuality, the US “turns violent” every time Black people are brutally beaten down and murdered by the state.

Corporate media seemed to take every opportunity to vilify the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement by spinning the protesters—rather than the racist and authoritarian US regime they are protesting against—as the primary instigators of violence and theft, in addition to preemptively blaming them fo...