Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. http://www.fair.org
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FAIR fights censorship, challenges media’s conventional wisdom and champions independent journalism.

FAIR fights censorship, challenges media’s conventional wisdom and champions independent journalism.

Operating as usual

If Hezbollah were really up to its ears in drugs, there presumably would be no need to resort to such patently ludicrous...
02/04/2021
Jumping on the Hezbollah ‘Narcoterrorism’ Bandwagon

If Hezbollah were really up to its ears in drugs, there presumably would be no need to resort to such patently ludicrous arguments as that “Venezuela’s geographic proximity to West Africa make[s] it an ideal launching pad” for trans-Atlantic narco-shipments that help expand Hezbollah’s coffers.

It’s helpful to have a narco-jihadi menace—in bed with socialist regimes in Latin America, no less—festering along the United States’ southern border.

02/03/2021
Who Is Aleksei Navalny? NYT Once Knew, but Has Since Forgotten

“Who Is Aleksei Navalny?” was the headline over the “Inside the Times” column–which is a good question, given that the Russian activist has been mentioned more than 300 times in the paper, and has become the undisputed poster child for opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Unfortunately, the accompanying article doesn't begin to try to answer the question.

A New York Times headline asks a good question that the accompanying story completely fails to answer.

With the Biden administration focused on passing a massive Covid relief package as its first major legislative action, t...
02/02/2021
On Sunday Shows, the Only Biden ‘Promise’ That Matters Is Compromise

With the Biden administration focused on passing a massive Covid relief package as its first major legislative action, the Sunday morning political talk shows tackled the issue with remarkable uniformity, fixated on exactly the wrong questions.

To hear corporate media tell it, the most important promise—and the only one they will hold him accountable for—is one Biden never even made: to compromise with the GOP for the sake of compromising.

The genuinely remarkable thing is that the New York Times, the US’s most prestigious newspaper, has devoted considerable...
01/29/2021
NYT’s China Syndrome

The genuinely remarkable thing is that the New York Times, the US’s most prestigious newspaper, has devoted considerable resources to investigating why China didn’t address the pandemic even more quickly and effectively than it did.

Too good or not good enough, China's coronavirus response is an obsession of the New York Times.

A recent study out of UC San Francisco showed that depictions of abortion in TV and movies don't square with reality--in...
01/29/2021
Kimberly Inez McGuire on Abortion Realities, Bama Athreya on Defending Gig Workers

A recent study out of UC San Francisco showed that depictions of abortion in TV and movies don't square with reality--in part because, in the last year anyway, only one character was parenting at the time of their abortion, while in real life the majority of women getting abortions have children.

News media on abortion can be distorted too, to the extent that the focus is overwhelmingly on Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court. As important as it to fight for Roe, it's more important to understand that for many women, overturning that ruling would not suddenly shut down access to abortion, simply because many women already lack that access -- that makes a right a reality -- even with Roe in place.

And recognizing that reproductive rights are not equally afforded is itself just a step toward an expansive understanding of reproductive justice that goes beyond abortion. How do we get to that at once bolder and more grounded conversation?

For many women, overturning Roe v. Wade would not suddenly shut down access to abortion, simply because many women already lack that access.

Venezuela’s December 6 parliamentary election offers an instructive case study, with corporate journalists unquestioning...
01/27/2021
US Media Require No Evidence for Claims of Electoral Fraud—in Venezuela

Venezuela’s December 6 parliamentary election offers an instructive case study, with corporate journalists unquestioningly repeating Trump officials’ unsubstantiated allegations of “fraud” there at the same time that they debunked Trump’s virtually identical claims vis-a-vis the US election. And the right-wing violence that was rightly portrayed as a threat to democracy in the US was heartily endorsed as a democratic campaign in Venezuela, where it served Washington’s foreign policy goals.

Corporate outlets have summarily denounced Trump’s bogus claims of vote fraud, thought for years they have faithfully echoed similarly spurious accusations made about elections held by official enemies.

Transcript of CounterSpin's compilation show on the Flint water crisis, with Chris Savage, Talia Buford and Peggy Case:"...
01/26/2021
Flint ‘Really Comes Down to People Not Being Listened To’

Transcript of CounterSpin's compilation show on the Flint water crisis, with Chris Savage, Talia Buford and Peggy Case:

"Some of the people we talked to, they called it the 'all lives mattering' of environmental justice. The idea that, yes, of course, everyone should not be subjected to intense environmental pollution. And, yes, you do want to have protection for everyone. But by not focusing on the people who currently do not have those protections, you’re basically ensuring that they never will."

"Flint is a failure on a number of different levels, a failure from the city level to the state level to the federal level."

Media are helping Rep. Ritchie Torres brand himself as a "pro-Israel progressive," in pointed contrast to Alexandria Oca...
01/26/2021
Ritchie Torres: The AOC Alternative Who Isn’t

Media are helping Rep. Ritchie Torres brand himself as a "pro-Israel progressive," in pointed contrast to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her Squad. But how progressive is Torres really?

Despite the media hype, Ritchie Torres not joining AOC’s Squad is not a case of a fellow progressive challenging the group’s pro-Palestine position, but rather a politician considerably to their right declaring that he is much more at home with the Democratic establishment.

The point of deficit hawkery is to scold and scare readers into accepting cuts to welfare and public services that are o...
01/25/2021
Media’s Deficit Hawks Fly Again—as Soon as a Democrat Takes Office

The point of deficit hawkery is to scold and scare readers into accepting cuts to welfare and public services that are of no use to the wealthy. While they curiously have little problem with Republicans running deficits to suit their wealthy constituents, as soon as a Democrat is elected, media move to neutralize the threat that any progressive legislation might be enacted on behalf of the people.

A Democrat has assumed office, and so, like clockwork, corporate media are here to play their favorite game of pretending to suddenly be deeply concerned with the deficit and the national debt.

The New York Times painted exactly the narrative the GOP will work for the next two years to build: that Democrats are t...
01/23/2021
Media Allow Republicans to Use ‘Unity’ as Tool of Division

The New York Times painted exactly the narrative the GOP will work for the next two years to build: that Democrats are the ones sowing division by refusing to work together to get things done. It is the narrative the GOP—which, with a split Senate, has already made its obstructionist intentions patently clear—desperately needs in order to take back the House and Senate in 2022, and to avoid accountability for the most serious attack on US democracy in living memory. And the country’s top “liberal” paper is handing it to them on a silver platter.

Media lay out the narrative the GOP will work for the next two years to build: that Democrats are the ones sowing division by refusing to work together to get things done.

It's often forgotten that Flint was a crisis of democracy -- as decision making had been taken out of the hands of Flint...
01/22/2021
Chris Savage, Talia Buford & Peggy Case on Flint Water Crisis

It's often forgotten that Flint was a crisis of democracy -- as decision making had been taken out of the hands of Flint's elected officials and given to an "emergency manager" tasked with reining in costs -- a system that seems to be used disproportionately in communities of color, taking decision making out of community hands but leaving them to deal with the fallout of those decisions.

Conversations about Flint on CounterSpin, in its particulars and in terms of how it fits into bigger questions around environmental racism, resource control and local governance.

When the LA Times published Karen Kaplan’s comparison of the Moderna and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines consisting essentially...
01/22/2021
Reports of Racial Disparities in Covid Vaccines Distort Science

When the LA Times published Karen Kaplan’s comparison of the Moderna and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines consisting essentially of a list of percentages without explanation, it created the impression that one vaccine was better than the other for certain populations. Asian parents sent the article to their children urging them to get the Moderna vaccine if possible. Yet these numbers were calculated with a sample size too low to make even a guess of that conclusion.

Much of the scientific journalism on US Covid vaccines has been inaccurate, misleading, fearmongering and irresponsible.

Transcript of Janine Jackson's interview with Elisabeth Rosenthal on the troubled vaccine rollout:"Instead of deciding n...
01/21/2021
‘The Basic Problem Is a Lack of Central Strategy’

Transcript of Janine Jackson's interview with Elisabeth Rosenthal on the troubled vaccine rollout:

"Instead of deciding nationally, with the best experts, how we want to do it, basically the feds have sent it to the states, the states decide how they want to allocate it to the counties, the counties decide how they want to allocate it to hospitals, and likewise to nursing homes and CVS. And it’s just predictable chaos without a central plan which people can trust.

"And the newest wrinkle in this today, which I have smoke coming out of my ears for, is all these governors and mayors have announced that, OK, starting this week, January 11, folks over 75, or over 65, will be able to sign up for the vaccine. Well, good luck with that. I compare it to trying to get a delivery from Whole Foods during the beginning of the pandemic; you have to be tech savvy, sitting there when the slots are released, refreshing your web browser. That is a crazy way to do a vaccine program."

"We have chosen the most profitable form of ending the pandemic, which is a vaccine.... This is the only solution, given how out of control we’ve let this become, as a result of not being good at public health."

CNN ran a special report on “China’s mishandling of the early stages of Covid-19,” despite the fact that China brought i...
01/20/2021
Corporate Media’s Leaked Chinese Documents Confirm China Didn’t Hide Covid-19

CNN ran a special report on “China’s mishandling of the early stages of Covid-19,” despite the fact that China brought its pandemic under control within two months, whereas CNN is based in a country whose own outbreak was still surging to unprecedented heights.

When Western media reports omit necessary context, they imply that the appropriate benchmark to compare China’s response to is perfection, which it inevitably falls short of, allowing the creation of a narrative in which China’s pandemic response was especially (and suspiciously) incompetent and...

Transcript of Janine Jackson's interview with Keri Leigh Merritt on the New Lost Cause:"The Radical Republicans’ plan at...
01/20/2021
‘The Lost Cause in Some Ways Won the Civil War’

Transcript of Janine Jackson's interview with Keri Leigh Merritt on the New Lost Cause:

"The Radical Republicans’ plan at the time—they wanted to punish the Confederates primarily by taking away their huge plantations, and then dividing those up and giving land to freed men and women. And so that would have radically, radically changed the entire trajectory of America; it would have not gotten rid of, but it would have really minimized the incredible racial wealth gap we see today. It would have gotten rid of a lot of the police state, because formerly enslaved people would have land, and thus they would have some political and economic power.

"And so because we failed to punish the leaders of the Confederacy, landholding in the South never changed, wealth-holding in the South never changed. Some of these small rural areas in the South are still run by the descendants of the people who ran the big plantations. And power and wealth has never changed hands in much of the rural South."

"I think we've underestimated how much you can whip up racism and xenophobia by just saying, 'You were robbed of this, you've got something to be angry over, you've got something to be aggrieved about.'”

"Corporate media’s engagement of King has long had an air of unreality about it, as the antiwar and anti-capitalist idea...
01/18/2021
Dreaming Away the Reality of Racism

"Corporate media’s engagement of King has long had an air of unreality about it, as the antiwar and anti-capitalist ideas that for him and others in the civil rights movement were integrally connected with racial equity are ignored or worse."
--Janine Jackson, 10/13

Corporate media’s engagement of Martin Luther King has long had an air of unreality about it, as the antiwar and anti-capitalist ideas that for him and others in the civil rights movement were integrally connected with racial equity are ignored or worse.

It’s difficult to argue that Trump did not repeatedly violate Twitter‘s rules against “threaten[ing] violence” and “glor...
01/15/2021
Trump’s Twitter Ban May Be Justified, but That Doesn’t Mean Tech Giants’ Power Isn’t Scary

It’s difficult to argue that Trump did not repeatedly violate Twitter‘s rules against “threaten[ing] violence” and “glorification of violence,” justifying his ban. But we urgently need to rethink the power of these social media behemoths, because there are plenty of other examples where their enforcement of their rules has been arbitrary and non-transparent.

We urgently need to rethink the power of these social media behemoths, because there are plenty of examples where their enforcement of their rules has been arbitrary and non-transparent.

You can feel the eagerness of many people, including in the media, to get over January 6--to section those people off as...
01/15/2021
Keri Leigh Merritt on the New Lost Cause, Elisabeth Rosenthal on Troubled Vaccine Rollout

You can feel the eagerness of many people, including in the media, to get over January 6--to section those people off as outliers who have little to do with the US conversation, much less the mainstream Republican Party, and why don't we move along to "healing" already? Donald Trump, in this rendering, is a unique, lamentable phenomenon that doesn't represent who "we" are as a country, and when he leaves, those hateful ideas will leave with him.

But Black Americans, anyway, know the price of healing without reckoning, because we pay it, and historians too are shaking their heads at descriptions of the attack on the Capitol as "unpredictable" and "unprecedented", because while it was many things, it wasn't that. People are ready to take on a more complicated understanding of this country's roots, but will news media help inform that conversation, or just inflame or, worse, ignore it?

Historians are shaking their heads as media talk about January 6 as "unprecedented"; while shocking and dispiriting, it has layers and layers of precedent that need to be learned and engaged, if we are ever to actually have the racial reckoning that corporate media are forever insisting we've alread...

The most important claim in the New York Times‘ revisionist history of the Pentagon Papers (1/7/21) is demonstrably fals...
01/14/2021
ACTION ALERT: What Can ‘Now Be Told’ by NYT About Pentagon Papers Isn’t Actually True

The most important claim in the New York Times‘ revisionist history of the Pentagon Papers (1/7/21) is demonstrably false.

https://fair.org/home/action-alert-what-can-now-be-told-by-nyt-about-pentagon-papers-isnt-actually-true/

Please tell the New York Times to set the historical record straight by correcting its story to note that Daniel Ellsberg did in fact give the Pentagon Papers to the Times.

Transcript of Janine Jackson's interview with Dorothee Benz on the January 6 insurrection:"In the intervening four-plus ...
01/14/2021
‘Being Neutral in the Face of a Fascist Threat Is Not an Acceptable Journalistic Value’

Transcript of Janine Jackson's interview with Dorothee Benz on the January 6 insurrection:

"In the intervening four-plus eternal years, as the left, and as Black Lives Matter activists and immigrant rights advocates, have raised the alarm over and over again about rising political violence, about the profoundly anti-democratic, racist policies of the administration, we have been called alarmists, we have been told it’s not that bad. We have been told, basically, to calm down.

And we could see this coming, as could anybody, actually, who’s been on social media for the last three or four weeks. This violent piece of insurrection was planned openly on unencrypted channels. I saw yesterday on Twitter, there was merch, there were people in T-shirts that said 'Civil War January 6, 2021.' So 'unprepared and surprised' is the last thing that anyone should have been, whether that’s the Capitol Police or the media covering this story."

"It's not that they were unprepared, it’s that they were prepared for white nationalists, which to them is not a crisis in the same way that Black people demanding rights is."

Transcript of CounterSpin's interview with Mara Verheyden-Hilliard on police responsibility for the January 6 insurrecti...
01/13/2021
‘What Happened at the Capitol Could Not Happen Unless Police Allowed It to Happen’

Transcript of CounterSpin's interview with Mara Verheyden-Hilliard on police responsibility for the January 6 insurrection:

"Any of us who have ever demonstrated in Washington, DC, or been in Washington, DC, know full well the capacity of the police agencies here to shut down and repress completely peaceful protest. Our clients and we have been subject to kettling, to mass arrest, to projectile weapons, to being soaked in chemical weapons, to tear gas, and there’s been no hesitation to use this. The police have all the materiel, the riot gear, the personnel, the weapons, the tactics at their disposal.

"So that can lead us only to the most obvious conclusion, which is, what happened yesterday at the nation’s capital could not happen unless the police allowed it to happen. And they did in fact allow it to happen."

"There has to be exposure and accountability for every single officer, for every single command official, for everyone who was involved in allowing, facilitating, this white supremacist mob violence."

Media warn voters in urban districts: DSA is coming to raise your rents! Meanwhile, in media aimed at landlords, the wor...
01/12/2021
Socialists Denounced as Foes and Tools of Real Estate Industry

Media warn voters in urban districts: DSA is coming to raise your rents! Meanwhile, in media aimed at landlords, the worry is that DSA will keep rents down.

The idea that DSA members are at the same time both tools and enemies of real estate interests is a frustrating and confounding contradiction,

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FAIR’s media criticism work includes research reports and studies published in our magazine Extra!, interviews with journalists offering critical independent reporting on our weekly radio program CounterSpin, advisories and action campaigns focused on emerging media stories sent through our online Action Alert Network and daily updates and media commentary on the FAIR Blog.

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Since 1986, FAIR has been monitoring corporate media to document bias, government influence and skewed reporting, while championing the efforts of independent journalism.

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Question: does FAIR have any relationship with Counterpunch? If so, what is the relationship. Thanks in advance.
Here's a great lesson in journalism for one and all: how it should be practiced and how it so often is in this country that seems to like being strung out on lies. But there's true bipartisanship and ecumenicism in the sourcing of the lies.
THIS IS A WORTHWHILE SUBSCRIB IT IS FREE
Nobody is discussing if we will have to pay income taxes, regardless of income, on any money provided by the 2 stimulus “donations”. I don’t trust the republicans or democrats not to do a take-back by April 15. Let’s hear, read, some opinions.....
FAIR i'm too sick to read this blaming the arab people still having brutal fascist dictators after arab spring, (it's their own fault). when the usa had morsi imprisoned. u need to rebuttal horrific nbc propaganda!
PCR amplifies, it does not isolate, it does not verify any dis ease.
Why isn't this piece accessible? It's been taken down?
#TypoAlert Hi; please check the most recent post about Charter Schools, which was published about 8 hours ago. I believe you meant to write, "New York Magazine's, Jonathan Chait..." instead of "New York's Jonathan Chait..." Thanks, and Best Regards.
Corporate Media Reverse Reality by Blaming BLM Protesters for Everything
Media Still Refuse to Report the Real News: Trump Is Trying to Steal the Election
Media Fail to Prepare Public for Potential Trump Coup
the standard playbook of authoritarians everywhere: cast doubt on the election results by filing numerous lawsuits and launching coordinated federal and state investigations, including into foreign interference; call on militia groups to intimidate election officials and instigate violence; rely on fringe social media to generate untraceable rumors, and on Fox News to amplify these messages as fact; and create a climate of confusion and chaos.