When Meet the Press needed an expert to talk about Syria's chemical weapons, they turned to Jeffrey Goldberg– who got Iraq's WMDs spectacularly wrong.
Dec
07
2012
This Time, Trust Anonymous WMD Claims–They've Got 'Specific Intelligence'
By 45 Comments
The theatrics of WMD claims about Syria–satellite images, anonymous sources and so on–are obviously reminiscent of the lead up to the Iraq War. But media stress that this time–it's different.
Dec
05
2012
Poverty on the Front Page…Along With Other News
By 22 Comments
USA Today's cover story today is a moving piece by Marisol Bello headlined, "For the Poor, 'Recovery' Is a Mirage." And then, right beneath this story, another bit of front-page news: a glimpse of an entirely different world.
Dec
04
2012
Julian Assange, Erin Burnett and the Battle Over Press Freedom
By 38 Comments
There seems to be an expectation in the Assange case that a dissident must take refuge with a government with a sterling human rights record. This message is conveyed by journalists whose own country has detained, harassed and killed their journalistic colleagues.
Dec
04
2012
Think We Live in a Colorblind Era? Welcome to Wet Seal
By 13 Comments
When pundits wax rhapsodic about the "colorblind" era we live in–or fulminate against affirmative action policies as interfering with that "post-racial" state–some of us think of cases like Wet Seal.
Dec
04
2012
CBS, Cliff Jumping and Your Family's Tax Burden
By 11 Comments
The notion, coming from CBS reporter Anna Werner, that come January 1 an average family will be stuck with a bill for $3,500 is misleading–a deception in some sense borrowed from the faulty "cliff" analogy in the first place.
Dec
03
2012
When a Tax on the Rich Is Actually a Tax on the Rich
By 52 Comments
Meet the Press hosted what David Gregory dubbed a "special economic roundtable" on December 2 that included "CNBC's dynamic duo," Maria Bartiromo and Jim Cramer. But Bartiromo's comments about tax increases for the wealthy needed a factcheck. She started by making a familiar conservative point about the so-called "fiscal cliff"– that the White House talks about ending tax cuts for the wealthy, but will not talk about spending cuts: And the fact is that I find it extraordinary that we are zeroing in on this discussion only about taxes, and we do not have this kind of elaborate discussion when [...]
Nov
30
2012
FAIR TV: NYT Counts Drone Victims, CBS=CEOs, AP's Iran Nukes Hoax
By 4 Comments
The new episode of FAIR TV is here! CBS tells us what CEOs think about the "fiscal cliff" and the New York Times counts drone victims– but not very many of them. And did the Associated Press fall for a hoax with their latest "exclusive" on Iran and nuclear weapons? Check it out– and share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter:
Nov
30
2012
NYT Undercounts Drone Deaths in Pakistan
By 15 Comments
The New York Times editorial page (11/30/12) weighs in on the Obama administration's drone policies. What the paper wants is more accountability: The government "must stay within formal guidelines based on the rule of law." That's all well and good–but the paper should do a better job of counting the innocents killed by drone attacks. The Times explains that aspect of the story this way: For eight years, the United States has conducted but never formally acknowledged a program to kill terrorists associated with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban away from the battlefield in Afghanistan. Using drones, the Central Intelligence Agency [...]
Nov
30
2012
GOP's Small Business Tax Talking Point
By 29 Comments
Of all the arguments Republicans offer to maintain Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, one stands out: The tax increase would be a blow to small business owners. This is misleading–but you can't count on media to get this right. The CBS Evening News had a segment last night (11/29/12) taking a look at the issue. On its face, there's not much support for the Republican position: About 2.5 percent of small business owners–a somewhat loosely defined group–would see a tax hike on income above $250,000 (Tax Policy Center, 8/5/10). This is straightforward; so how do you make it less [...]
Nov
29
2012
AP's Iran Bomb Drawing Hoax
By 33 Comments
Crack open USA Today (11/28/12) and you saw this headline: Diagram Suggests Iran Working on Bomb The story was short–short enough for a careful reader to see that it in no way lived up to that alarmist headline. But the piece still tried really hard to frighten people. Here's the lead: Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, according to a diagram obtained by the Associated Press. The diagram was leaked by officials from a country critical of Iran's atomic program [...]
Nov
28
2012
Reporting on Sweatshops When Your Boss is in the Sweatshop Business
By 18 Comments
ABC World News has done two pretty tough reports from Brian Ross on the horrible fire at the Tazreen garment factory in Bangladesh that killed 114 workers. On November 25, Ross talked about the shameful record, as previously reported by ABC News, of more than 600 garment factory fire deaths in Bangladesh over the last five years, a place of the cheapest labor in the world and some of the most deplorable conditions. And Ross named names: Workers' activists went into the burned-out remains today to document which major retailers they say were using the Tazreen factory. They say they [...]
