As far back as 1835, perhaps our nation’s earliest and most astute observer, Alexis de Tocqueville, understood the power of the media. He described the press as “the chief democratic instrument of freedom.” But today our “instrument of freedom” seems to mean the freedom to enrich oneself privately, whatever it takes. How did we get […]
“Congress Advances Bill to Renew NSA Surveillance Program After Trump Briefly Upstages Key Vote” was the headline on a Washington Post article. The lead described the bill as reauthorizing “the government’s authority to conduct foreign surveillance on U.S. soil.”
Since the outbreak of mass demonstrations and unrest in Iran last week, U.S. media have mostly busied themselves with the question of not if we should “do something,” but what, exactly, that something should be. As usual, it’s simply taken for granted the United States has a divine right to intervene in the affairs of […]
CounterSpin interview with Suyapa Portillo on Honduras Electoral Chaos
The FCC is under attack—and so too is the First Amendment. As the primary regulator of how media and information gets to our nation’s citizens, the Federal Communications Commission has a critical role to play in protecting the open Internet, free speech, and free press in our democracy.
The Washington Post has put out 15 opinion pieces on issues surrounding Venezuela, and they are disturbing and far from the truth.
Since the Charlottesville attack a month ago, a review of commentary in the six top broadsheet newspapers—the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, LA Times, San Jose Mercury News and Washington Post—found virtually equal amounts of condemnation of fascists and anti-fascist protesters.
Have we in the U.S. have forgotten what happened in Honduras? Or is that many of us believe falsehoods about that history brought to us by media like the New York Times?
Nominal media liberals, charged with opposing Trump and the emerging far right, have prioritized demonizing the left and in doing so have helped pave the way for Trump’s neo-Nazi whitewashing.
The conflict between the needs of the majority and the interests of the few runs throughout our economy.
Neither the recent report on the civilian deaths and war crimes in Mosul (published by Amnesty International), nor the broader issue of the civilian toll in the US war against ISIS, has come close to penetrating US corporate media. Can one imagine this frame in reporting on Russia’s siege of Aleppo? Can one imagine highlighting […]
The discussion of violent and paranoid rhetoric in the media is long overdue, whether or not it is ever determined that accused Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner was somehow influenced or motivated by such rhetoric. Before the shooting, there had been a remarkable surge of politically motivated violence (FAIR Blog, 1/12/11). Despite media efforts to […]
Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress like to argue that public concern over federal budget deficits makes it impossible to pass a new round of job-creating stimulus spending. And corporate media like to echo these sentiments, despite there being little evidence that citizens are as concerned about these issues as inside-the-Beltway deficit hawks. In the […]
NYT Fails to Include Advocates among ‘Diverse’ Experts The New York Times devoted some rare space on September 20 to discussing single-payer (or Medicare-for-all) health reform. The result? A one-sided account of why such a system couldn’t work. With a headline like “Medicare for All? ‘Crazy,’ ‘Socialized’ and Unlikely,” readers probably had a sense of […]
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