The national media watch group
The reality is that it is possible to both protest government intrusions on press freedom and to condemn bad journalism of the sort practiced by Jonathan Karl. It's important for protect journalism from official control for the same reason that it's important for media outlets to do a good job.
This week on FAIR TV: CBS Evening News looked like it was covering an immigrant rights rally– but it was merely a set up to talk about chaos at the border. Time's Joe Klein goes after the "gun lobby" by saying… both sides are at fault? And Cokie Roberts hears the public doesn't want to start a war with Syria. Why does she think that's "dangerous"?
The claims made about Israeli airstrikes against Syria could be true, or not. What is certain is that the assessments of the airstrikes are being shared anonymously by governments involved in carrying them out, a scenario that cries out for more skepticism.
When someone says they "broke" with George W. Bush over the Iraq War, you might be inclined to think that they did that sometime before 2006 or so, which is about when Bush strategist-turned-TV pundit Matthew Dowd is saying he left.
The New York Times treats Iran's right to enrich uranium as a "claim," to be challenged by anonymous U.S. officials.
To hear U.S. corporate media tell it, there are "exercises" right next door, conducted by the world's most powerful military, which possesses thousands of nuclear weapons–and then there's menacing "saber-rattling."
On two Sunday shows this weekend, the hosts made the same point about the White House's plan for modest gun control efforts: The public isn't going along. Oddly, they both ignored their own networks' polling that would have undermined their argument.
George Will offers imaginary headline to prove his point about liberal media bias. Real headlines, unfortunately, don't back up his case.
This week on FAIR TV: Hugo Chavez was loathed by the U.S. press–and that didn't change when they reported his death. Plus Time magazine provides a look at the "Path to War" with Iran–omitting a key fact along the way.
And the Keystone XL pipeline is back in the news. But when it came up on ABC's This Week, "left" pundit James Carville had a curious message.
The controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline doesn't get covered much in corporate television–it takes tens of thousands of activists marching in Washington to get a few words on the nightly newscasts. But the State Department's recent draft assessment of the pipeline's environmental impact got a mention on one show, and it said a lot. Not about the pipeline, really, but about corporate media. The comment came on the roundtable discussion on ABC's This Week (3/3/13). The panel, like so many of these discussions, was tilted to the right: A Republican mayor from Utah (Mia Love), a former Bush adviser [...]
This week we take a look at how the Washington Post challenges some sequester spin. And CBS pokes fun at Iranian claims about Argo–but are the Iranians right that Argo is fiction? Plus George Will has some thoughts about stop-and-frisk policing.
The ABC Sunday show This Week had not one but two roundtables this weekend. Right-winger George Will appeared on both of them, because… well, he knows a lot of stuff.
TV news is often not all that informative. Sometimes that's because the reports are so short–a few hundred words. But then there are TV reports that manage to use their short space to garble the details of a story completely. ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl's piece about the Senate confirmation hearing for Obama's CIA pick John Brennan fit into the latter category.
