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Managing Editor of Extra! Magazine
Julie Hollar is the managing editor of FAIR's magazine, Extra!. Her work received an award from Project Censored in 2005, and she has been interviewed by such media outlets as the Los Angeles Times, Agence France-Presse and the San Francisco Chronicle. A graduate of Rice University, she has written for the Texas Observer and coordinated communications and activism at the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas. Hollar also co-directed the 2006 documentary Boy I Am and was previously active in the Paper Tiger Television collective.

Feb
14
2013

On Transgender Healthcare, NYT Reports Tree, Ignores Forest

By 10 Comments
transgender_healthcare_pride2012

The New York Times reports that in the last few years, several elite U.S. universities have begun to cover sex reassignment surgery and/or hormones for transgender students. On the one hand, it's great that they're reporting news like this, and after years of extremely disrespectful coverage of transgender issues, it feels like a victory that their "balance" is limited to noting that "the idea still seems radical to plenty of people." On the other hand, not a single trans-identified person is quoted. But what I really want to highlight here is how this kind of article utterly fails to connect some [...]

Filed Under: Healthcare, LGBT, New York Times Tagged With: ,
Jun
07
2012

Disney Makes the World a Better Place, Reports Disney's Network

By 23 Comments

On Tuesday (6/5/12), ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer introduced a news segment:   Michelle Obama appeared today with the CEO of our parent company, Disney, because Disney decided to do something historic to help fight childhood obesity and called in the big guns to do it, including a very, very famous mouse. The "historic" move: Food ads during ABC's children's programming will now have to meet what correspondent Reena Ninan called "strict nutritional standards." Ninan also touted Disney's earlier decision to phase out trans fats from its theme parks and offer "healthier options." ("They say they saw real results. [...]

Filed Under: ABC, Advertisers, Media Business Tagged With: ,
May
23
2012

Give Friedman a Chance–to Rewrite His Own History

By 17 Comments

Thomas Friedman on Face the Nation this past Sunday (5/20/12): You know, I believed from the beginning we had four choices in Afghanistan, Bob: lose early, lose late, lose big, or lose small. And, you know, my hope was that we would lose small and early. Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, November 2, 2001: A month into the war in Afghanistan, the hand-wringing has already begun over how long this might last. Let's all take a deep breath and repeat after me: Give war a chance.  

Filed Under: Afghanistan, CBS, New York Times, War/Military Tagged With:
Mar
22
2012

Wanted (by NYT): One Woman to Represent All Feminists

By 26 Comments

Over the weekend, the New York Times (3/18/12) published an article pondering why no one has taken Gloria Steinem's place as ubiquitous spokesperson for women's rights: Over the last 40 years, Gloria Steinem has almost always been at the other end of the phone when some member of the news media has sought comment about a pressing issue involving women's rights…. And that raises a question well worth asking in 2012: Where is the next Gloria Steinem, and why–decades after the media spotlight first focused on her–has no one emerged to take her place? But is it well worth asking? [...]

Filed Under: Gender, New York Times Tagged With: ,
Jul
21
2011

NBC Finds 'Balance' in Debt Ceiling Poll

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NBC (Nightly News, 7/19/11) did some polling to see what the public thinks about the Republican and Democratic positions on the budget and debt ceiling : CHUCK TODD: Now, look, any sort of deal is putting pressure on the bases of both parties. For Republicans, a large majority of the country is telling Republicans get off the no new taxes pledge and compromise, 62 percent. TEXT: NBC News/The Wall Street Journal Should Republicans Compromise? Agree to Raise Taxes Yes 62% No 27% TODD: But inside those numbers, tea party supporters, 65 percent of them say to Republicans, "No. Stick to [...]

Filed Under: Budget, NBC, Politics Tagged With:
Jul
18
2011

Murdoch's Journal Defends Bosses on News Corp Scandal

By 8 Comments

In the wake of the News Corp scandal and the resignation of their own paper's publisher/CEO, the editors of the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal came out swinging today (7/18/11) against critics who would question the Journal's own standards and even "perhaps injure press freedom in general." Today's editorial first goes for deflection: Scotland Yard's failure to stop the hacking is "more troubling than the hacking itself," and "it is also worth noting the irony of so much moral outrage devoted to a single media company, when British tabloids have been known for decades for buying scoops and digging up dirt [...]

Filed Under: Media Criticism, Wall Street Journal Tagged With: ,
Apr
21
2011

Another Word From Our Sponsor: The Return of Renee McMontagne

By 2 Comments

Renee "McMontagne" brought NPR listeners another McDonald's PR story yesterday morning. On April 5, Montange and her Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep uncritically previewed McDonald's big PR campaign revolving around a one-day hiring blitz to "recast its jobs not as dead-end work, but in ads starring its happy employees as desirable employment" (FAIR Blog, 4/6/11). I noted that McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc gave NPR a 9-figure bequest a few years ago. Well, Montagne returned to the story yesterday with an on-the-ground report from the scene of a McDonald's hiring event in Philadelphia, where an NPR correspondent interviewed three of those [...]

Filed Under: Economy, NPR Tagged With: ,
Apr
21
2011

Newsweek Bravely Highlights the Plight of the Beached White Male

By 10 Comments

Newsweek's cover story this week is on the plight of college-educated white men aged 35-64. The magazine laments that "this hitherto privileged demo isn't just on its knees, it's flat on on its face." The subhead of the piece asks, "Can manhood survive the lost decade?" Now, I have much sympathy for all who are struggling with unemployment. But are middle-aged, college-educated white males flat on their face and worthy of a trend cover story? It's hard to square that with the piece's own admission that their jobless rate is just above 5 percent. Most demographic groups would give anything [...]

Filed Under: Economy, Gender, Newsweek, Race
Apr
18
2011

NYT Critical Spotlight on Tanton Gives His Anti-Immigrant Groups a Pass

By 17 Comments

The Sunday New York Times (4/17/11) ran a big front-page piece on John Tanton, founder of the anti-immigration organizations Federation for American Immigration Reform and Center for Immigration Studies. I guess it's positive that someone in corporate media is finally paying attention to Tanton's racism (long documented here at FAIR–1/1/93–and by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center–Winter/08), and reporter Jason DeParle does include a good deal of damning information about Tanton and some of his own racist words. But he also manages to interview almost exclusively people currently or formerly affiliated with Tanton's groups (six of these people in [...]

Filed Under: Immigration, MSNBC, New York Times Tagged With: , , , ,
Apr
06
2011

NPR: And Now, a Word From Our Sponsor

By 28 Comments

NPR Morning Edition (4/5/11) keeps its audience informed about important business news (that just so happens to be about an image-burnishing campaign by the company whose heiress gave them a 9-figure bequest a few years ago): RENEE MONTAGNE: And our last word in business today comes from another Illinois-based employer. The word is McJobs. That word has meant low-paid work at a particular fast food chain. But McDonald's is trying to, quote, "turn the word on its ear," as one marketing executive put it to Ad Age magazine. Yesterday, McDonald's launched a McJobs campaign, with the goal of recruiting 50,000 [...]

Filed Under: NPR Tagged With: , , ,
Mar
23
2011

NYT Radiation Reassurance: Ground Zero Deja Vu

By 4 Comments

The New York Times' reassuring reporting on the radioactive plume drifting across the U.S. continues the paper's troubling tradition of parroting comforting words from officials in the midst of modern-day environmental crises–like the environmental fallout post-9/11. Let's compare headlines: "Radiation Over U.S. Is Harmless, Officials Say" (3/22/11) "Workers and Residents Are Safe, Officials Say" (11/2/01) As I have documented (Extra!, 11-12/06), in the months and years following the September 11 attacks, the Times ignored studies and voices that cast strong doubt on official proclamations that the air and dust near Ground Zero were not a serious hazard. Andrew Revkin, the [...]

Filed Under: Environment, New York Times, Nuclear power Tagged With:
Mar
18
2011

FAIR at Left Forum in NYC

By 2 Comments

This Saturday I'll be on a panel at Left Forum titled "Racism and Resistance in the Immigration Debate," with former FAIR communications director Isabel Macdonald, Monica Novoa of Drop the I-Word, Sonia Guinansaca of the New York State Youth Leadership Council and Esther Kaplan of the Nation Institute, moderated by my former Paper Tiger colleague Denisse Andrade. Below is the description. I'll be talking about my recent article, "Time to 'Drop and Leave' Loaded Language," among other things. If you're in the New York area, stop by for what should be a very interesting conversation. Racist, dehumanizing terms such as [...]

Filed Under: Immigration, Media Activism Tagged With: ,
Mar
16
2011

On Islamist Terrorism, WSJ Entitled to Its Own Opinions–But Not Its Own Facts

By 19 Comments
Rep. Peter King

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial (3/11/11) defended the Peter King hearings on Islamist terrorism against "our friends on the left [who] are busy portraying them as the McCarthy hearings and Palmer Raids rolled into one." The editors argued that in fact, the focus on Muslims is justified based on the facts: Since 9/11, there have been more than 50 known cases, involving about 130 individuals, in which terrorist plots were hatched on American soil. These include plots to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, an office tower in Dallas, a federal court house in Illinois, the Washington, [...]

Filed Under: Islamophobia, Wall Street Journal Tagged With: , ,
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