5/6/08
Paper reprises one-sided panel to discuss "Mission Accomplished"
The New York Times' May 4 Week in Review section featured a discussion of the state of the Iraq War with advocates of that war—-the same advocates who prompted a FAIR action alert on March 17. The following letter was sent to New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt, Op-Ed page editor David Shipley and Week in Review editor Sam Tanenhaus. Their contact information is listed below, as is FAIR's earlier alert.

CounterSpin: Ben Dangl on Bolivian referendum, Kate Sheppard on McCain & environment (5/9/08) Activism Update: NYT Again Excludes Critics From Iraq War Discussion (5/6/08)
Activism Update: TV News Blackout on Pentagon Pundits (5/5/08)
CounterSpin: Justin Levitt on Supreme Court and voter ID, Sara Robinson on Texas Mormons case (5/2/08)
| Other Recent Additions

Elections/2008
George W. Bush
Iraq Occupation
FROM THE ARCHIVES
'The Final Word Is Hooray!'
Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits (3/15/06)
On the fifth anniversary of George W. Bush's speech beneath the "Mission Accomplished" banner where he declared the end of "major combat" in Iraq, it's appropriate to recall the crucial role pundits and reporters played in triumphantly hyping the war. This FAIR media advisory was originally sent out in March 2006.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
The Military-Industrial-Media Complex
Why war is covered from the warriors’ perspective (July/August 2005)
FROM THE ARCHIVES
The Military-Editorial Complex
(Update October 1995)
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Covering McCain
Are Journalists On the Bus or Off the Bus? (2/24/00)
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Obamamania
How loving Barack Obama helps pundits love themselves (March/April 2007)
FAIR's magazine Extra! is looking for a managing editor.
Help us raise $25,000 this Spring.
When you give to FAIR, FAIR gives right back with hard hitting media criticism, innovative analysis and activism campaigns to fight biased news coverage.
FAIR's annotated newswire
The Hardball host makes "something of a confession" to a Harvard audience: "Television is limited in the way it can tell the political story of our time." He had some other observations on the politics of TV:
"And it was basically pro-war during the war.... The bosses were. And I was up against that."
All believable enough, up until that last part.... See Matthews' quotes in the FAIR Media Advisory: 'The Final Word Is Hooray!': Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna Pundits (3/15/06)
In light of the media pounding Barack Obama has taken for his various associations, Chapman notes that John McCain "has his own Bill Ayers" in the form of Watergate felon and ultra-right violence advocate G. Gordon Liddy.
Lest this all "sound like ancient history," Chapman reminds us of Liddy's 1994 post-Waco advice to any listeners approached by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms: "Resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests. ... Kill the sons of bitches."
See Extra!: Liddy's Lethal Advice: Red Meat for Republican Voters? (7–8/95) by Richard Bottoms
Nagourney writes as though Hillary Clinton were a small child who needs to be told in the gentlest possible way that she isn't going to get a pony:
Yes, if you start out the day 140 delegates behind the other candidate and end up the day 150 behind, then you did not "fundamentally improve" your chances of being nominated. In fact, "if anything," they're worse! Or, as Nagourney puts it (after a couple of paragraphs talking about what the events of the night symbolized):
Indeed, Mr. Obama may have widened his delegate lead over Mrs. Clinton, an outcome with mathematic and political resonance.
Yes, it has "mathematic and political resonance"--plus the delegates, you know, decide who the nominee is.
Note how Adam Nagourney's definition of Obama's troubles shifts from paragraph to paragraph. First there's this:
So Obama's problem is "white blue-collar voters." The very next paragraph, though, gives him an entirely different problem:
Now the problem is "middle-class white voters"--a different and more serious problem, given that just about everyone in the United States considers themselves to be middle class. In the next paragraph, the problem becomes bigger still:
So "white blue-collar support" becomes "middle-class white voters" which becomes "white support." It's nice, though, to see the New York Times demonstrating such unusual solidarity with the (white) working class.
Plus New York Times: Price Disparities at the Pump (5/6/08)
A chart purports to give a state-by-state breakdown on the "Estimated savings per driver from a summer
break on the state gas tax"--except that it assumes that drivers will pocket the entire difference, whereas if you ask an economist, they'll tell you that when the supply of gasoline is limited, cutting gas taxes will just result in the people who sell gas getting more money. "Estimated increased oil company profits per driver" would have been a more accurate label for this chart.
Think Progress: Washington Post Editorial Board Attempts to Erase Its Pre-War Rush to Invasion (5/1/08) by Amanda Terkel
This is a good catch from Think Progress, but if anything too kind to the Post: Not just their general record, but this particular editorial was terrible, beginning with a big three cheers for Bush:
But they don't endorse "mission accomplished" because there are still things to be done. Like what? Well, like finding those weapons of mass destruction!
The Post seems to have been unaware that the war itself was not yet over—and, of course, would still not be over five years later.
The Los Angeles Times ponders the strangeness of Iraqis who won’t just accept an envelope full of cash after private gunmen shoot their family dead:
Yglesias is mystified by "how, in the context of war, totally normal attributes of human behavior become transformed into mysterious cultural quirks of the elusive Arab":
| More Media Views









