Bruce Springsteen occasionally writes a letter to the editor of his local paper, the Asbury Park Press. Yesterday (3/30/11) the Press published a letter from the musician congratulating the paper for some trenchant poverty coverage, that in his view was the exception. As FAIR's work has shown, Springsteen is on to something. Here's the full text of the letter: Thank you for your March 27 front-page story by Michael Symons, "As Poverty Rises, Cuts Target Aid." The article is one of the few that highlights the contradictions between a policy of large tax cuts, on the one hand, and cuts [...]
Mar
22
2011
NYT's Reassuring Radiation Reporting
By 13 Comments
The radioactive plume from Japan wafting from west to east across the U.S. is absolutely nothing to worry about, writes William J. Broad in a New York Times report today ("Radiation Over U.S. Is Harmless, Officials Say," 3/22/11) about the radiation threats posed by the Japanese nuclear plant disaster. Broad writes: Health experts said that the plume's radiation had been diluted enormously in its journey of thousands of miles and that–at least for now, with concentrations so low–its presence will have no health consequences in the United States. In a similar way, faint radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spread around [...]
Mar
18
2011
Ann Coulter on O'Reilly: Radiation Is Good for You
By 14 Comments
At a time when the Japanese prime minister is describing his country's nuclear crisis and the growing threat of radiation exposure as "very grave," it must have been comforting for Fox News watchers to turn on the O'Reilly Factor last night (3/17/11) to see Ann Coulter telling them that radiation is actually good for you. Yes, Coulter told O'Reilly viewers, the evidence was right there in the media, including in the newspaper she'd once hoped would be targeted with a terror attack: I'm citing a stunning number of physicists and from the New York Times and the Times of London, [...]
Mar
11
2011
O'Reilly's Amnesia on Right-Wing Terror
By 29 Comments
While defending Rep. Peter King's (R.-N.Y.) congressional hearings on domestic Muslim extremism, Bill O'Reilly (3/9/11) scoffed at the notion that the biggest domestic terror threats in the U.S. come from the "radical right" and not from homegrown Muslims. After playing a clip of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark Potok making that argument, O'Reilly responded: Are you kidding me? The radical right? The last terror act assigned to them was the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995. In reality, acts of political violence connected to the far right are a regular occurrence. To make his claim, O'Reilly even had to overlook [...]
Feb
25
2011
Latest Glimpse of Fox's Culture of Lying?
By 37 Comments
A front-page story in today's New York Times strongly suggests that Roger Ailes–the News Corp executive who runs the Fox News Channel, the Fox Business Network, and Fox broadcast stations–urged a witness to lie to federal officials in order to protectfriend and politician Rudolph Giuliani. If true, what may be most remarkable about the story is how unsurprising it is coming from Fox. Other networks surely harbor biases, but it would be surprising to find, say, that a top ABC News executive had suborned perjury in a partisan ploy to protect a politician. But if the allegations against Ailes are [...]
Jan
20
2011
Glenn Beck's Dangerous Obsession With Frances Fox Piven
By 46 Comments
In addition to his repeated murder fantasies, Glenn Beck harbors apocalyptic fantasies of mass death–suggesting, for instance, that if the direction of the country doesn't change, "God will wash this nation with blood." (Barack Obama, are you listening?) But the Fox News host harbors many deranged obsessions. He has long obsessed over Frances Fox Piven, the 78-year-old distinguished professor at the City University of New York. Central to Beck's lies about Piven is the charge that a Nation article she co-wrote with Richard Cloward in 1966 somehow holds the blueprint for a violent leftist takeover of the United States. Beck's [...]
Jan
19
2011
Beck: Murder Fantasies Are Funny
By 24 Comments
Glenn Beck has expressed on-air desires to strangle Michael Moore with his own hands, beat Charles Rangel to death with a shovel, and once aired a sketch on his Fox News show that had him poisoning then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Appearing on the Today show this morning (1/19/11), responding to questions about his frequent murder fantasies (a specialty of Fox News personalities), Beck told host Meredith Vieira that he was just being funny. Beck said the host should ask Jon Stewart and the Simpsons the same question. "Comedy is comedy," he explained. Vieira did not point out that [...]
Jan
18
2011
CBS News Still Covering for Ronald Reagan?
By 30 Comments
In his new book, Ron Reagan says he saw early signs of Alzheimer's disease in his father, Ronald Reagan, while the late president was still in the White House. When he said as much on ABC's 20/20 last Friday (1/14/11), he infuriated many on the right, including his older brother Michael Reagan. Over the weekend, the older Reagan son took to Twitter, writing over the course of several messages, "My brother seems to want [to] sell out his father to sell books…. My father did not suffer from Alzheimer's in the '80s…. Ron, my brother, was an embarrassment to my [...]
Dec
03
2010
WikiLeaks Not a Whistleblower, Assange Not a Journalist?
By 26 Comments
"Julian Assange and his cronies, in their effort to hinder our war efforts, are creating a hit list for our enemies by publishing the names of our human intelligence sources…. I simply will not stand idly by as they become death targets because of Julian Assange. Let me be very clear, WikiLeaks is not a whistleblower website and Assange is not a journalist." – Sen. John Ensign (R.-Nevada) introducing an anti-WikiLeaks bill that would forbid the disclosure of the names of intelligence agents and informants Funny, I thought our legal traditions generally frowned on the notion that powerful government officials, [...]
Dec
02
2010
WPost News Report: Deficit Commission Shuns Ideology
By 24 Comments
In today's Washington Post (12/2/10), in the news article "Deficit Commission Sets Ideology Aside," reporters Lori Montgomery and Brady Dennis explain why the commission is not ideological: Confronted with a deficit-reduction plan loaded with political dynamite, members from both parties set aside ideological orthodoxy at least briefly, sparking hope that their work could ignite a serious effort to reduce government debt and spare the nation from a European-style fiscal crisis. But the notion that the deficit is one of the most pressing issues facing the country– "The Moment of Truth" is the title of the commission's report–is profoundly ideological to [...]
Nov
16
2010
For Fox News, 'Hispanics' = 'Illegals'
By 1 Comment
On Friday, Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher took a study that says there are 100,000 fewer Hispanics in Arizona than there were before the debate over the state's disputed anti-immigrant law, and reported it as 100,000 fewer "illegals." By conflating Hispanics with "illegals," Gallagher inadvertently illustrates the case made by opponents of the law.
Nov
15
2010
Glenn Beck's Jewish Problem
By 77 Comments
Last Wednesday (Glenn Beck Program, 11/10/10), we got a glimpse of how low Glenn Beck will go to smear a political opponent. Beck's lie that philanthropist George Soros helped "send the Jews to the death camps" during World War II, was, in essence, an attack on a Jewish child for the heartbreaking things he was put through in the course of surviving the Holocaust. But the smear was just part of the anti-Soros crusade Beck is carrying out on his national radio program and his Fox News show, portraying Soros as an "puppet master" who operates behind the scenes to [...]
Nov
10
2010
Fox News: The No. 1 Name in Murder Fantasies
By 58 Comments
Bill O'Reilly's recent "joke" about decapitating Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank was only the latest example of a demented Fox News culture that permits on-air personalities to fantasize about assassination and other forms of violence against those deemed enemies of the station, its personalities or their worldview. During the cable channel's 2008 election coverage, in what she later called an attempt at humor, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta linked Osama bin Laden to Barack Obama as people who both should be assassinated: And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, uh Obama. [...]
