Start your two-year subscription with a free copy of Interventions, a collection of Chomsky's essays for the New York Times Syndicate. These columns were published all around the globe, but rarely in major U.S. media -- and certainly not in the New York Times. Foreword written by FAIR's Peter Hart.
5/13/08
UPDATE--The Catholic League, a conservative Catholic advocacy organization, has challenged the accuracy of FAIR's April 29 media advisory, "Pope Gets Pass on Church Abuse History." In a May 2 release, "Media Watchdog, FAIR, Smears Pope," League president Bill Donohue challenged FAIR's report that before he was elected pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger “sent a letter to church bishops invoking a 1962 doctrine threatening automatic excommunication for any Catholic official who discussed abuse cases outside the church’s legal system.”
CounterSpin: Bill Fletcher on Wright and Obama, Andy Worthington on Guantanamo (5/16/08)
Media Advisory: Catholic League's Inaccurate Critique of FAIR: Group mischaracterized document in defending Pope Benedict (5/13/08)
CounterSpin: Ben Dangl on Bolivian referendum, Kate Sheppard on McCain & environment (5/9/08) Media Advisory: Journalists Predict Scrutiny of McCain...Some Day (5/9/08)
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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)
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FAIR's annotated newswire
From this "balanced" piece concerning efforts by John McCain and Barack Obama to discourage 527 groups during the general election:
Obama himself blurred the lines last weekend in Oregon, when he suggested that McCain's association with the Keating Five savings and loan scandal in the 1980s would be fair game in the general-election campaign. Republicans say Obama and the Democratic National Committee distorted McCain's words and record with ads showing him saying he would be all right with U.S. troops remaining in Iraq for 100.
Weisman and Shear here provide an iconic example of weak media coverage—everything is tossed together in a laundry list of "negative campaigning"--McCain's Hamas smear equated with Obama accurately noting that McCain was one of the Keating Five.
In solidarity with "my mentor, 'Papa Bear' Bill O'Reilly," the spoof news personality plays a "never-before-seen clip of me back when I was the midday anchor at WPTS in Patterson Springs, North Carolina." Unable to comprehend the portion of his teleprompter's script containing the phrase "I'm sorry, I was wrong" about an earlier error, the parody of O'Reilly's bad temper and fragile ego culminates with a haranguing "I'm too big for this town! I'll let you all know I had a callback for a station in Richmond, Virginia! As in, Richmond [bleep]ing capital VA!!"
Media Matters: Military Analysts Named in Times Exposé Appeared or Were Quoted More Than 4,500 Times on Broadcast nets, Cables, NPR (5/13/08) by Lauren K. Auerbach et al.
Atop the list is CNN analyst and former Brigadier General David L. Grange, who alone was featured a whopping 921 times. Grange is now the president of the
McCormick Tribune Foundation, which declares that "nothing is more critical to the vitality of a democracy than free, vigorous and diverse news media, providing citizens the information they need to make reasoned decisions."
Bill O'Reilly is named Olbermann's "worst person in the world"--again.
It turns out the two men in question—who "identified themselves to "a U.S. embassy several weeks ago"—were tourists engaged in nothing more "suspicious than taken photos of each others in front of the ferry. But, Olbermann notes, "of course, the possibility of that kind of innocent explanation never occur to you if your multi-million dollar salary depends on feeding paranoid fears."
How local activists in Vermont got Al Jazeera English TV removed from one of the only two places it could be watched in the U.S.:
Crooks & Liars: Blast From the Past: Video: Bill O’Reilly Gone Wild: Drops F-Bombs on the Set. (5/12/08) by John Amato
For more on the reality behind O'Reilly's facade, check out The O'Really Factor? by FAIR's Peter Hart.
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