One issue that comes up in much of the coverage of the Newtown massacre is the notion that the public's view on gun control has shifted towards the "pro-gun" side in recent years. It's important to look at that assumption.
Dec
05
2012
Poverty on the Front Page…Along With Other News
By 22 Comments
USA Today's cover story today is a moving piece by Marisol Bello headlined, "For the Poor, 'Recovery' Is a Mirage." And then, right beneath this story, another bit of front-page news: a glimpse of an entirely different world.
Nov
30
2012
FAIR TV: NYT Counts Drone Victims, CBS=CEOs, AP's Iran Nukes Hoax
By 4 Comments
The new episode of FAIR TV is here! CBS tells us what CEOs think about the "fiscal cliff" and the New York Times counts drone victims– but not very many of them. And did the Associated Press fall for a hoax with their latest "exclusive" on Iran and nuclear weapons? Check it out– and share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter:
Nov
29
2012
AP's Iran Bomb Drawing Hoax
By 33 Comments
Crack open USA Today (11/28/12) and you saw this headline: Diagram Suggests Iran Working on Bomb The story was short–short enough for a careful reader to see that it in no way lived up to that alarmist headline. But the piece still tried really hard to frighten people. Here's the lead: Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, according to a diagram obtained by the Associated Press. The diagram was leaked by officials from a country critical of Iran's atomic program [...]
Nov
14
2012
Fiscal Cliff Not a Cliff? Tell That to USA Today
By 29 Comments
Some commentators and journalists have pointed out the metaphor for the impending tax increases and spending cuts in 2013–the "fiscal cliff"–is highly misleading, and probably intentionally so. There is no way to reverse course when you fall off a cliff; you are plummeting towards the ground, making a terrible mess upon impact. Thus the brakes must be applied before the end of the year. In reality, this isn't true; Congress and the White House can actually go past the "cliff" deadline, and strike a deal early next year, without the supposedly dire consequences. The numbers thrown around in the press [...]
Nov
13
2012
David Gregory: Obama's Failure to Embrace CEOs
By 29 Comments
Post-election lessons are everywhere in the media, as pundits either try to explain how Mitt Romney lost or what Obama must do in his second term. My favorite example of this came on the front page of USA Today (11/8/12): If you think it's somewhat odd that Obama would need to "soothe Wall Street," then you'll never make it in big media. On Sunday, NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory (11/11/12) was offering similar advice alongside CNBC host Jim Cramer (the one whose prediction of a massive Obama landslide doesn't prevent him from being a political pundit): GREGORY: Jim, [...]
Oct
19
2012
Every Green Energy Failure Is News
By 19 Comments
USA Today (10/17/12) ran a story about a battery manufacturer filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. But the story might as well have been a press release from the Mitt Romney campaign. "Another Blow for Green Energy" read the headline. Wendy Koch's piece led off with this: An electric vehicle battery maker that was awarded $249 million in federal stimulus funds filed for Chapter 11 reorganization on Tuesday, giving GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney potential ammunition to attack President Obama's green-energy subsidies. It's a short article, but it's hard to avoid the central theme: This is good news for the [...]
May
08
2012
Hillary Clinton's Iran Weapons Lie Is 'Tough Talk'
By 32 Comments
Covering Hillary Clinton's trip to India, USA Today's Richard Wolf writes (5/8/12): Fielding rapid-fire questions at a town-hall-style event in Kolkata, she denounced Iran's nuclear arms program and urged India to reduce its Iranian oil imports further. "We appreciate what has been done, and of course we want to keep the pressure on Iran," she said. When I read that I thought, "Here we go again, another outlet misstating the basic facts about the Iran debate." Then I checked the transcript of the Clinton's town hall, and that is indeed what she said, in response to a question about U.S. [...]
Apr
11
2012
Winners of the 2012 Election Revealed
By 22 Comments
Forget the polls and the horserace for a second. In this election season, the big winners will be big media. As most people should know–but media don't tell you very often–much of the money that flows into and around the campaigns is used to buy advertising. Which means that television and radio stations make a lot of money during the campaign season. There are attempts to shine a light on this arrangement–such as the effort to make TV stations post advertising data online (something that–surprise, surprise!–TV stations don't care for). That's what made this exchange on public television's Nightly Business [...]
Mar
08
2012
Satellite Intelligence: Iran 2012, Iraq 2003
By 22 Comments
The big news today looks and sounds familiar. Here's USA Today (3/8/12): Here's what that Associated Press piece is reporting: VIENNA — Satellite images of an Iranian military facility appear to show trucks and earth-moving vehicles at the site, indicating an attempted cleanup of radioactive traces possibly left by tests of a nuclear-weapon trigger, diplomats told the Associated Press on Wednesday…. Two of the diplomats said the crews at the Parchin military site may be trying to erase evidence of tests of a small experimental neutron device used to set off a nuclear explosion…. The diplomats said they suspect attempts [...]
Feb
17
2012
Postal Service Broke? Letter Explains What USA Today Omitted
By 12 Comments
Much of the coverage about the U.S. Postal Service tells us that it is losing money hand over fist. But one of the questions journalists are supposed to ask–why?–is rarely posed. A letter to the editor in today's USA Today tries to fill in that gap: Letter: Congressional mandate behind Postal Service woes Your article "Anything Good in the Mail?" is misleading about the reasons for the U.S. Postal Service's financial problems. It focuses on competition from the Internet, conventional wisdom that doesn't withstand scrutiny ("Bell Tolls for the U.S. Mail, as We Know It"). Almost 90 percent of the [...]
Jan
27
2012
Pentagon Budgets and Fuzzy Math
By 17 Comments
By the tone of some of the media coverage, you might have thought Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a plan to slash military spending yesterday. On the front page of USA Today (1/27/12), under the headline "Panetta Backs Far Leaner Military," readers learn in the first paragraph: The Pentagon's new plan to cut Defense spending means a reduction of 100,000 troops, the retiring of ships and planes and closing of bases–moves that the Defense secretary said would not compromise security. The piece quotes critics of the cuts like Sen. Joe Lieberman and an analyst at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. [...]
