He's back. Right-wing activist James O'Keefe's latest "work" is an undercover video that shows representatives from afake Muslim charity trying to make a $5 million donation to NPR. The "Muslim" donors-to-be meet with two NPR development officers. In the ensuing conversation, as all the media coverage explains, one of thetwo–Ron Schiller–expresses critical views ofRepublicans and the far-right Tea Party. Schiller is an NPR fundraiser, with no journalistic role there.While itwasn't wiseto share his personal views at a lunch, it is the sort of thing that people do all the time. So why does anyone care about this? Because O'Keefe–and countless [...]
Jan
10
2011
With Short Memories, Violent Tone of Media Unlikely to Change
By 3 Comments
One theme in the coverage of the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffordsconcerns whether the tone of the political debate will change. That's probably going to happen in the short-term. A long-term shift is unlikely. There have been frequent allusions to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the nationaldiscussion that ensued at the time about violent rhetoric on right-wing talk shows. See Extra!'s 1995 article "AM Armies" for more background. Roughly 10 years later, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough convened a panel (4/27/05) to discuss talk radio extremism, in the wake of incendiary comments made by Air America's Randi Rhodes. As FAIR [...]
Jan
04
2011
Propaganda and the Saddam Statue 'Conspiracy'
By 23 Comments
Remember the toppling of that Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad (4/9/03) that signified the "end" of the Iraq War? At the time, there were critics who pointed out that the extensively televised images of a jubilant crowd of Iraqis were misleading.The sense of media excitement was unmistakable; as FAIR pointed out, the Los Angeles Times ran a headline the next day, "Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?" The incident is rehashed and examined in the New Yorker this week by Peter Maass, who was reporting from the scene that day.He states early on that both sides of the war [...]
Jan
03
2011
One Media Activist Gets NPR Wiki Correction
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According to NPR ombud Alicia Shepard (12/30/10), one very persistent letter writer named Henry Norr managed to get NPR to correct an error made several times by different programs–that WikiLeaks "published" the many thousands of State Department cables in its possession. The site has actually published few of them– less than 2,000. Shepard wrote: On Dec. 21, I sent Norr's 9 examples to NPR top editors and asked that a staff memo be sent out reminding everyone to be more careful in talking about the November document release. The memo went out on Christmas Eve. Still Norr was (rightly) not [...]
Nov
15
2010
Glenn Beck's Jewish Problem
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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
09
2010
FAIR Out There
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–On Democracy Now! (11/8/10): While Keith Olbermann's donations became front-page news, little attention has been paid to the massive amount of political spending by MSNBC's parent company General Electric, one of the nation's largest military contractors. Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting reports GE made over $2 million in political contributions in the 2010 election cycle. The top recipient was Republican Senate candidate Rob Portman from Ohio. The company has also spent $32 million on lobbying this year and contributed over $1 million to campaign against a California ballot initiative aimed at eliminating tax loopholes for major corporations. –George Curry, writing [...]
Oct
28
2010
Juan Williams' Ethical Duties–and NPR's
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A guest post by Frances Cerra Whittelsey, Extra! contributor and journalism scholar: Whether or not Juan Williams is truly a liberal or just playing the role to give Fox an appearance of balance begs the question of whether his comment about fearing Muslims on airplanes justified his firing by NPR. Williams is waving the free speech flag to defend his "honest statement of feeling," as he put it in a statement published online by Fox. He insists he has not shown himself to be a bigot by admitting that fear grips him when he sees Muslims in Muslim garb getting [...]
Oct
22
2010
With Juan Williams, the Question Is Not Objectivity, but Bigotry
By 49 Comments
It seems to me that debating Juan Williams' firing from NPR in terms of the role of "opinion" and "objectivity" in journalism is missing the point. Williams has expressed his opinions on Fox News countless times. Other NPR employees frequently express opinions, too, as when Scott Simon wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (10/11/01) comparing opponents of the invasion of Afghanistan to Hitler appeasers; it didn't seem to set back Simon's career any. The reason that Williams' discussion with Bill O'Reilly (O'Reilly Factor, 10/18/10) got him fired, it seems clear to me, is that he sounded like he [...]
Mar
01
2009
The Rest of Paul Harvey's Story
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On the death of radio's Paul Harvey, it's hard for me not to think of his June 23, 2005 broadcast as his most revealing moment. That's the episode where he delivered this memorable rant (Extra! Update, 8/05): After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill said that the American people–he said, the American people, he said, and this is a direct quote, "We didn't come this far because we are made of sugar candy." And that reminder was taken seriously. And we proceeded to develop and deliver the bomb, even though roughly 150,000 men, women and children perished in Hiroshima [...]
