
CBS's Schieffer followed the establishment media's script on Snowden: We don't know what exactly the government is doing, and we should know, but the guy who's generated the discussion about all of this is a narcissist.
The national media watch group

CBS's Schieffer followed the establishment media's script on Snowden: We don't know what exactly the government is doing, and we should know, but the guy who's generated the discussion about all of this is a narcissist.

The debate over the government's surveillance powers that was set off by whistleblower Edward Snowden is an important one. Who is invited to take part in that discussion really determines the kind of debate we're likely to get.
What's the press saying about the Bradley Manning trial? We take a look at a strange CBS Evening News report about a U.S. atrocity in Afghanistan, and David Gregory thinks he found an Obama flip-flop.

How many Iraqis died in the Iraq War? Public responses to that question are disheartening because they reflect a very distorted public perception of the war. But they are indicative of an even bigger problem: corporate media's inadequate coverage of the human costs of U.S.-led wars.

In a courtroom base near Tacoma, Washington, Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales will plead guilty today to killing 16 civilians–most of them women and children–in an Afghan village on March 11, 2012. A little more than a year later, U.S. media seem to have not much interest left in the Bales case.

If you care at all about war and peace, press freedom, whistleblowers' rights and the public's right to know what the government is doing, the trial of Bradley Manning is of enormous consequence. It would have been hard for NBC News to come up with a more hostile framing.

This week on FAIR TV: Obama's big speech on U.S. anti-terrorism policies was treated as a big shift, a pivot away from war. Was it? Activists around the world rallied against Monsanto–which wasn't considered big news here. And Bob Schieffer complains that the White House makes it hard to get good guests for his Sunday chat show. There's an easy fix for that, isn't there?

Mainstream reporters are speaking openly about the chilling effect of the Obama White House's investigations into leaks of classified material. But this willingness to talk about how the White House operates can lead some journalists to make some rather strange arguments.

If you followed the coverage of President Barack Obama's May 23 speech at the National Defense University, you would think something big happened to the "war on terror." That was probably the message the White House wanted the press to send. But is true?

President Barack Obama's address yesterday on U.S. terror strategies got a lot of attention for supposedly charting a new course in America's longest war. But some of the facts were mangled along the way.

CBS anchor Scott Pelley declared, "We are getting big stories wrong, over and over again.'" Well, that sounds like pretty dramatic self-criticism. But, as usual with corporate media self-critiques, Pelley's criticism mostly misses the mark.

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 pundits' message on Barack Obama's talk of a "red line" on Syria is that they are concerned about the credibility of the president's threats of violence–much more so than about the credibility of his evidence.