The national media watch group
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez might be excused for harboring some hard feelings towards a government that helped to try to overthrow your own. Which may be why U.S. reports rarely bring up the 2002 coup attempt–and when they do, treat Washington's involvement in it as another nutty Chavez conspiracy theory.
"It’s hard to watch Robert Griffin III play football and not think about education policy." Education "reformers" Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein begin an op-ed with this dubious claim, then go on to flesh out their absurd football/education analogy.
The Washington Post has never been fond of left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. As serious questions mount about the state of Chavez's health, the paper's editorial page found it a good time to take another swipe.
Barack Obama nominated Republican ex-Senator Chuck Hagel to be his next Defense secretary today. The story can seem a little bit confusing–often because of misleading recaps of Hagel's career, which can make him sound like more like Dennis Kucinich than like the Republican who voted in favor of the Iraq War.
The problem with liberal cable channel Current TV being sold to Al Jazeera isn't that American TV viewers might be subjected to news with a point of view. It's news with what many elites might consider the wrong point of view that is the problem.
If you were concerned that the Syria WMD stories didn't already feel enough like the Iraq WMD reports, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius had one just for you. It's not that Ignatius doesn't know that this story sounds, well, familiar–but it's important to recall more of the journalism from the Iraq invasion era.
Don't expect much help from corporate media on understanding the "Chained CPI," because selling the "grand bargain" requires citizens not really knowing what this part of the deal entails.
As a general rule, it'd be better if media accounts of war did not stress the surgical precision of the weapons being used. It's a fixture of U.S. reporting on U.S. wars, but the same rhetoric is used when U.S. allies are dropping bombs. According to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (11/19/12): Israel has gone out of its way to avoid civilian casualties. Its air force has used new, highly accurate ammunition aiming for rocket-launching sites and government installations. For the most part, it has succeeded. Aron Heller of the Associated Press (11/17/12) had this description of the Israeli military: Israel, [...]
People who follow media criticism are likely aware of the term "false balance," used to describe coverage that presents "both sides" of an issue as if they are equivalent–when they are anything but. Does that label apply to coverage of the current Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip? A November 15 Washington Post headline read, "Civilians in Gaza, Israel Suffer Amid Conflict." The piece would appear to want to give readers the sense that comparable suffering is occurring on both sides. But reality tells a different story–one that is not so symmetrical. The piece begins in a Gaza hospital, where [...]
Military attacks and other violence in the Gaza Strip and Israel have resulted at this point in over a dozen deaths, most of them Palestinians, and sparked fears of an Israeli ground invasion similar to the 2008-09 assault that claimed over 1,000 Palestinian lives. The past 24 hours of violence was sparked by Israel's killing of Hamas military leader Ahmad al-Jabari on Wednesday. The question, then, is a familiar one: What prompted this action? The conventional corporate media timelines usually stress, whatever the facts, that Israel is responding to violent attacks by Palestinians, as FAIR documented over 10 years ago [...]
It's bad enough when media refer to civilian deaths in U.S. wars as "collateral damage," but it was jarring to see how the phrase was used in a Washington Post headline today: Obviously, they're talking about the sex-and-emails scandal. How could dead Afghan civilians ever threaten the career of a high-ranking U.S. official?
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 [...]
There's no doubt that the sex scandal that prompted CIA director David Petraeus's sudden resignation late last week is a big story. New details–verified or not–seem to arrive almost by the hour. But the reason it seems to have shaken so many media figures is because Petraeus was uniquely beloved by many in the corporate media, who considered him both an accessible source and a war hero. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams called him (11/9/12) a "a man of such sterling reputation," and confided on the air to one guest that "it is impossible to be a member of [...]
