Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

09/06/2024

Does Sulzberger actually think that by writing a several-thousand-word warning against Trump’s threat to press freedom, but simultaneously announcing that he will resolutely oppose “taking sides” in this election, he is somehow inoculating himself against right-wing populist hatred of the Times, and any future retribution from a Trump presidency?

Not Reporting on Trump as a Threat to Democracy Is Also a Threat to Democracy

https://fair.org/home/not-reporting-on-trump-as-a-threat-to-democracy-is-also-a-threat-to-democracy/

09/06/2024

Corporate news media tend to report economic news like the weather – yes, it affects different people differently but the source, “the economy,” is just stuff that happens. But there’s really no such thing as THE economy; there are policies and practices about taxes and lending and wages – and they are as historically embedded, as preferentially enforced – and as susceptible to intentional change – as everything else. So how should we read reports about the “best Black economy in decades”? Particularly as one question news media rarely include in the daily recitation of numbers is: “Compared to what?”

A people-centered press corps would spell out the meaning of economic “indicators” in relation to where we want to go as a society that has yet to address deep historical and structural harms.

09/05/2024

Transcript of CounterSpin's interview with Freddy Brewster on the supermarket megamerger:

"In an attempt to allay the concerns from the FTC about this merger, Kroger had promised to sell off 600 stores, slash prices by a billion dollars, and invest a billion dollars in wages if the merger is allowed to go through.

"So what this kind of says and highlights is that Kroger is already buying Albertsons for $24.6 billion, and is willing to invest another $2 billion to bring down prices and to get more wages. That shows that they already have quite a bit of market power. They have $29 billion sitting around that they can use to buy another company and lower prices and give people better wages. Well, why aren't they lowering prices and giving people better wages right now?"

"Kroger's CEO, on a shareholder call, admitted that inflation is a good thing, because it'll allow the company to raise prices."

09/04/2024

An Atlantic piece erroneously gives the impression that since the assault on Gaza began last October, it has been the pro-Palestinian left that has enforced speech norms.

Free speech debates tend to value the importance and rights to a platform of the saintly media class.

09/03/2024

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08/30/2024

Despite corporate media’s supposed dedication to preserving Western democracy, the Washington Post and the New York Times have mostly stayed silent on French President Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to respect the winners of the recent election.

France has gone nearly two months without a legitimate government, and US corporate media don’t seem to care to report on it.

08/30/2024

In October 2022, the largest supermarket chain in the US, Kroger, announced a plan to take over the second-largest supermarket chain in the country, Albertsons – in a merger that would create the country’s third-largest private sector employer overall (after Walmart and Amazon), a conglomerate of some 5,000 stores and 710,000 employees. What could go wrong?

Kroger is currently raising the prices of things like eggs and milk above inflation rates, simply because they can get away with it.

08/28/2024

Transcript of CounterSpin's interview with Steve Macek on "dark money":

"OpenSecrets just came out with an analysis where they say that contributions from dark money groups and shell organizations are outpacing all prior elections in this year, and might surpass the $660 million in contributions from dark money sources that flooded the 2020 elections. So they’re projecting that could be as much as a billion dollars. We haven’t heard very much about this."

"Outside forces who, in some cases, do not have to disclose the source of their funding can spend more on a race than the candidates themselves."

08/27/2024

Breaking news alerts often feed into predictable patterns that parrot official narratives, and prioritize clicks over well-informed citizens.

Media outlets promise comprehensive news alerts about important breaking stories occurring everywhere—but that's not what subscribers are getting.

08/26/2024

Despite multiple eyewitnesses describing an Israeli Iron Dome interceptor missile falling on the field during the time of the Majdal Shams strike, the New York Times insisted on spotlighting Israeli and US claims in its headlines, rather than genuinely assessing the facts on the ground.

Coverage of the Golan Heights massacre continues a long trend of US media outlets obscuring and distorting reality in order to downplay Israel’s aggressive regional ambitions.

08/23/2024

If you were teaching a class called “How to Slime People in a Subtle, Scuzzy Way,” a paragraph from the New York Times‘ obituary of Phil Donahue could be part of the curriculum.

More than 20 years after the New York Times was catastrophically wrong on the Iraq War, the paper cannot forgive anyone who was right.

08/23/2024

Mother Jones reports on FAIR and other nonprofits being subpoenaed by Elon Musk: "The subpoenas represent a new chapter in the legal war Musk launched after advertisers fled X."

The billionaire's legal war over lost X advertisers takes a "really cynical" turn.

08/23/2024

If you use the word “democracy” unsarcastically, you likely think it has to something to do with, not only every person living in a society having some say in the laws and policies that govern them, but also the idea that everyone should be able to know what is going on, besides voting, that influences that critical decision-making. “Dark money,” as it’s called, has become business as usual, practically, but still represents the opposite of that transparency, that ability for even the unpowerful to know what’s happening, to know what’s affecting the rules that govern our lives.

A press corps concerned with defending democracy, and not merely narrating the nightmare of crisis, would be talking about it every day in every way. Our guest has written about the gap between what we need and what we get in terms of media.

How do we acknowledge the fact that many people’s opinions are shaped by messages that are created and paid for by folks who work hard to hide their identity and their interests?

08/22/2024

The New York Times' deputy opinion editor criticized Bernie Sanders at the DNC for making "policy proposals that put [Kamala] Harris in a big-government vise, binding (or pushing) her in a direction that a lot of moderates do not want to go.” The proposals the Times cited, however, turn out to be mainly unpopular with the New York Times.

The specific policies the New York Times scolds Bernie Sanders for promoting don't seem to be particularly unpopular, with moderates or anyone else.

08/21/2024

Transcript of CounterSpin's interview with Emily Sanders on criminalizing pipeline protest:

"The federal penalty for damaging or destroying pipelines is already a felony charge of up to 20 years in prison. But in hearing testimony that I found, and policy briefs posted online, oil industry trade group executives were basically pushing lawmakers to expand the definition of so-called 'attacks' on pipelines that can be punished under felony charges to include vague language like 'disruptions of service' or 'attacks on construction sites.'

"And that could implicate a much broader set of activities that are used to protest fossil fuel infrastructure."

"This rulemaking process is supposed to be about protecting community members and making sure pipelines are safe, not about preventing protests."

08/19/2024

Phil Donahue took progressive issues and mainstreamed them to millions through his syndicated daytime show. His short-lived MSNBC primetime show was canceled in 2003 because—as the leaked internal memo said—Donahue represented “a difficult public face for NBC at a time of war.”

Phil Donahue was a trailblazer in bringing social issues to a national audience as a daytime broadcast TV host, and then he was pretty much banished from TV by MSNBC.

08/16/2024

We have not forgotten the years of protest by the people of Standing Rock in resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline. The news and images were dramatic, the cause couldn’t have been more fundamental, the support was international and cross-community. Fossil fuel makers, who would like to keep making money from the destruction of the planet’s capacity for life, and their ally/enablers in law and law enforcement, want nothing like that to ever happen again, and certainly not for you to see it and take inspiration.

The crickets you’re hearing about efforts to eviscerate the right to protest the impacts of climate disruption? That’s all intentional.

08/15/2024

In a study of the media discussion around student-led encampments against the assault on Gaza, FAIR found no student protesters (or students) on the Sunday talkshows, two student protesters out of 79 guests on four daily news shows, and one op-ed written by a student protester out of 51 opinion pieces on the encampment in four leading newspapers.

A new FAIR study finds that media conversations about student-led campus encampments in solidarity with Palestine rarely included students themselves.

08/15/2024

Major press outlets are amplifying Republican claims that Tim Walz, as governor of Minnesota, let the Twin Cities burn during the 2020 George Floyd uprising. By spotlighting these charges, corporate media are assisting GOP attempts to portray themselves as the party of law and order against a tide of anarchic anti-police chaos.

Corporate media are allowing the debate to revolve around the question of whether Tim Walz was quick enough to use force against Black Lives Matter protests.

08/13/2024

Transcript of CounterSpin's interview with Lee Hepner on the Google monopoly:

"Google maintains its power through that circular system. It pays for exclusive agreements across Apple, Samsung, Mozilla, other device manufacturers, and by virtue of those exclusive agreements, it achieves scale that it then sells to advertisers for extraordinary revenue, and then it reinvests that revenue back at the beginning, in securing those exclusive agreements. So you really see how this is a self-reinforcing monopoly that Google has been able to maintain through anti-competitive conduct."

"Google has maintained its monopoly position, not necessarily by having a superior product, but by blocking out rivals."

08/09/2024

The New York Times suggests that the only possible motive for opposing Josh Shapiro as vice presidential candidate is because he is Jewish--and also that it would have been good to choose him because his policy positions would have angered the left.

The New York Times has stood by the fiction that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who made the short list of vice presidential hopefuls, didn’t get the nod because of left-wing antisemitism.

08/09/2024

Since the Trump campaign is trying to run the Swift Boat playbook against Tim Walz, it's worth remembering what a bad job corporate media did handling the original Swift Boat attacks.

Advocacy organizations typically receive little time or space to express their opinions in mainstream media discussions, so it’s not surprising that they turn to political advertisements as an alternative means of getting their message out to the public. A paid publicity campaign may legitimize th...

08/09/2024

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” So ruled District Court Judge Amit Mehta in United States vs. Google, being called a landmark antitrust case that will affect not just Google but potentially all tech giants in the current landscape.

Does the company that "corners the market" do so because people simply prefer what they sell? The anti-monopoly ruling against Google challenges that idea of how things work.

08/08/2024

Transcript of CounterSpin's interview with Tim Wise on "DEI hires":

"All CRT tries to do, and this is so important for people to understand, is to provide a theoretical grounding so that when you look out and you see racial disparity, you have a framework and a lens for understanding it. And without a systemic lens, frankly, the only explanation left is the one the right prefers, which is, these Black and brown folks are broken. And CRT is saying, 'No, it’s not Black and brown folks who are broken.'

"It’s not necessarily that white people are bad. CRT doesn’t bash white people. That’s a great myth. CRT doesn’t really say anything about white people as people. It says something about white supremacy as a system, historically and contemporaneously. And if you don’t have that framework, I don’t know how you can make sense of the world around you, except by blaming the people on the bottom for being there."

"When you're used to hegemony, pluralism begins to feel like oppression."

08/07/2024

After Israel targets political leaders in Beirut and Tehran, some argue that the best way to prevent an escalating regional conflict is to give more weapons to Israel.

Following Israel’s assassinations of a Hezbollah commander in Beirut and a Hamas negotiator in Tehran, corporate media pundits have called for the US and Israel to escalate the region-wide war.

08/06/2024

Transcript of CounterSpin's interview with Keith McHenry on criminalizing homelessness:

"Every time there's even a slight proposal to house some homeless people, build a building for them or open a hotel for homeless people, you end up with riots and protests, as you can see has happened in places like New York City. And then there's the pitting of immigrants and homeless against one another, which is another divide-and-conquer tactic that is occurring, that's also making housing homeless people very difficult.

"So there's just no policy, no national policy, no state policies, really, to resolve this, other than through criminalization."

"Millions of dollars have been spent just driving people from corner to corner, with no even slight effort, really, to house people."

08/06/2024

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08/02/2024

While Republicans are clearly scrambling to find profitable lines of attack in a new presidential race, they’re deploying one line that draws on a lot of history: labeling presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris a “DEI hire” – the reference being programs designed to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. The notion, if anyone needed it spelled out, is that any and every Black or brown person, or woman, in a job is only there because employers were “forced” to hire them.

To many, this sort of thing is transparent misogyny and racism – and that special combination of the two. But being obvious doesn’t mean it isn’t impactful; and it doesn’t come out of nowhere; it’s built on decades of undermining any intentional efforts to dismantle or even acknowledge the living history of structurally embedded white supremacy in this country.

The right wing has gotten much more overt about their intention to defeat the prospect of multiracial democracy, as demonstrated by its latest weaponized trope—the “DEI hire.”

08/01/2024

“Seventy-six percent of Americans say that they still trust their local news stations," the New Yorker reported. By hijacking this trusting relationship, Sinclair is able to sneak its propaganda into millions of American homes, including in presidential swing states where Sinclair owns more stations than any other network.

While millions of Americans are subjected to Sinclair’s electioneering, few know it. That’s because, like a chameleon, the TV network blends into the woodwork.

08/01/2024

Ability and age shouldn’t be off the table as media topics during elections, but there are ways to have these conversations without promoting harm. Some common pitfalls to avoid include: stating or implying that all disabilities or conditions are inherent liabilities, even cognitive disabilities; diagnosing candidates without evidence; using illness or disability as a metaphor; conflating age with ability; conflating physical and cognitive health; using stigmatizing language to describe incapacities; and highlighting issues with ability or health without explaining why they are concerning.

Ability and age shouldn’t be off the table as media topics during elections, but there are ways to have these conversations without promoting harm.