A New York Times op-ed today (2/15/11) by Scott Turow, Paul Aiken and James Shapiro ("Would the Bard Have Survived the Web?") uses William Shakespeare as exhibit A in their case for copyright, noting that theater flourished in 16th century England because playwrights were able to make money by charging people to enter their theaters. This they translate into a sweeping argument against attempts to reform copyright law, disparaging a handful of law professors and other experts who have made careers of fashioning counterintuitive arguments holding that copyright impedes creativity and progress. Their theory is that if we severely weaken [...]
Oct
22
2010
Tell PBS: Bring Back Now!
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FAIR's exposé of PBS's prominent news and public affairs shows demonstrated that public television is failing to fulfill its mission–to "provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard," to serve as "a forum for controversy and debate," and broadcast programs that "help us see America whole, in all its diversity." Now, which PBS canceled without explanation and replaced with Need to Know (co-hosted by corporate media fixture Jon Meacham), lived up to that mission admirably. Need to Know does not. Join FAIR in telling PBS to bring back Now: Sign the petition today.
Oct
12
2010
WPost Asks Notorious Homophobe to Write About Gay Youth Suicides
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In light of the recent and tragic spate of gay youth suicides, the Washington Post's On Faith blog chose to honor National Coming Out day with a guest post (10/11/10) by raging homophobe Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. The post, titled "Christian Compassion Requires the Truth About Harms of Homosexuality," accused "homosexual activist groups" like the Gay Lesbian and Straight Educators Network (GLSEN) of being the real bullies, pushing kids to come out and believe they can't change, which he argues is "likely exacerbating the very problem they claim they want to solve." As evidence, Perkins cites two [...]
Sep
29
2010
Media Blitz Against the Paycheck Fairness Act
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There's a push for the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act before Congress adjourns for the season, which has sparked some pushback from right-wingers given prominent platforms in the corporate media. The Act, which already passed the House, would help enforce and close loopholes in the Equal Pay Act of 1963; under the law, women would actually be able to find out how much their male colleagues make without either of them facing retaliation. A September 22 New York Times op-ed by Christina Hoff Sommers of AEI and an October 4 George Will Newsweek column both attack it as [...]
Sep
16
2010
How AP Can Make a Poll Say Whatever It Wants It To
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An AP piece published across the Web today (9/16/10) carries this headline: AP-GfK Poll: Nearly Half Oppose Tax Hikes for Rich. Well, that's one way of looking at it–just like you could report the results of the 1988 election by saying that Michael Dukakis got "nearly half" of the popular vote. The more logical way of putting it would be that more than half support letting tax cuts expire for the rich: 54 percent to 44 percent. But framing it instead around the minority position lets them focus on how Democrats might worry about "provoking the 44 percent who say [...]
Aug
31
2010
Deficit Panic Continues at NYT
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The New York Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes today (8/31/10) about the possible steps Obama might take to bolster the economy: With voters angry about government spending, and economists divided about just what approach is the correct one, such aggressive steps are by now out of the question. "Thereâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s a deep frustration among economists that they simply donâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t know what to do under these circumstances, at least in terms of fiscal policy," said Bruce Bartlett, an economist who advised Republican presidents. "I think there are a lot of economists who, in principle, would support some new fiscal stimulus, perhaps a [...]
Aug
31
2010
The Katrina Story You Don't See So Much in Anniversary Coverage
In the coverage of Hurricane Katrina's fifth anniversary, you'll find several obligatory mentions in the corporate media of the still-decimated Lower Ninth Ward, but you'd be hard pressed to find anything as direct or damning as what you find in independent media coverage–for example, this piece on Women's eNews (8/29/10) by Kimberly Seals Allers, who recently attended a conference in New Orleans on health disparities in communities of color: When a few of the local community leaders came to address us, what they had to say about the Lower Ninth Ward was appalling but not surprising. They said that of [...]
Aug
25
2010
Brian Williams Rehashes Katrina Violence Myth
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Dateline NBC (8/22/10) did a special look back at Hurricane Katrina last weekend in anticipation of the disaster's five-year anniversary. Watching the collage of 2005 footage and Brian Williams' present-day commentary, I was struck by his characterization of the violence: You know, I've been around a lot of guns and a lot of dead bodies, and a lot of people shooting at people to make dead bodies. But you put them all together and you put it in the United States of America and boy, it gets your attention. You can't shake that…. It was clear already there weren't going [...]
Jul
13
2010
Women's Sports Gets 1.6% of Local TV News Sports Coverage
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No, that's not a typo: Only 1.6 percent of sports coverage on L.A.'s three major network affiliates went to women's sports. On ESPN Sportscenter, it's 1.4 percent. It's just slightly higher when you add in ticker-tape coverage. And it's getting worse, not better: Those numbers are down from about 5 percent in 1989. And a major part of that drop, according to study co-author Michael Messner of the University of Southern California, is because of a drop in "insulting or trivialization or humorous sexualization of women athletes, like a nude bungee jumper or leering court reports on tennis players like [...]
Jun
25
2010
Congo: The Sucking Vortex Where Africa's Heart Should Be
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That's according to Time magazine's Alex Perry (7/5/10): If you want to see what's wrong with Africa, take a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The size of Western Europe, with almost no paved roads, Congo is the sucking vortex where Africa's heart should be. Independent Congo gave the world Mobutu Sese Seko, who for 32 years impoverished his people while traveling the world in a chartered Concorde. His death in 1997 ushered in a civil war that killed 5.4 million people and unleashed a hurricane of rape on tens of thousands more. Today AIDS and malaria are epidemic. [...]
Jun
16
2010
What an Estate Looks Like to the New York Times
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This weekend the New York Times (6/13/10) reminded me once again that I am not the paper's target audience. While supporters say the estate tax affects only the richest members of society and helps counteract the concentration of wealth, that million-dollar limit would seem to ensnare many people who consider themselves decidedly middle class–especially in the Northeast and California where home values are high. What is the dividing line between wealthy and upper middle class? Or between someone who owns an estate and someone lucky enough to have bought a home decades ago and watched its value grow to seven [...]
May
24
2010
Kristof's 'Simplest Option' for Ending Poverty: Blame the Poor
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In his May 23 column–"Moonshine or the Kids?"–New York Times columnist Nick Kristof has hit upon the "simplest option" for keeping poor African kids in school (and ending malaria): getting their fathers to stop drinking, smoking and whoring. There's an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It's a blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous: It's that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children's prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by [...]
May
20
2010
Covering Africa Through Celebrities, Exhibit Eleventy Million
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NBC reporter Ann Curry's fawning interview with actor Ben Affleck (NBC Nightly News, 5/19/10), about his celebrity activist work in the Congo, is downright embarrassing: CURRY: Why do you pick the place that people think is actually one of the worst places in terms of the number of atrocities, in terms of the level of suffering, one of the worst places on Earth? AFFLECK: I really do see tremendous hopefulness. I'm really moved by the power of folks to find solutions to their own problems. The Congolese sense of kind of strength and self-sufficiency and resilience. CURRY: And he's seen [...]
