Media
-
‘The FCC Chair Is Outright Lying to Reporters and Congress’
Just a few days ago, FCC chair Ajit Pai confirmed to a Senate committee what everyone and their mother suspected, that there was no such cyber attack, and he knew it. But he couldn’t tell Congress or the public the truth–that internal system failures caused the crash–Pai claimed, because he was bound to confidentiality by… Continue reading
-
“Five Eyes” summit in Australia ramps up internet censorship By Mike Head
Despite the high-profile character of the 5 EYES gathering, the event received almost no publicity. Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton hosted the summit. Leading the other delegations were US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid, along with Canada’s Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and New Zealand Justice Minister Andrew… Continue reading
-
WaPo Uses Photo of John McCain Next to Nazi to Praise His ‘Human Rights’ Work
A Washington Post column (8/27/18 celebrating John McCain as a human rights “champion” was illustrated with a photo of him making common cause with a far-right, antisemitic Ukrainian politician. Continue reading
-
Slavoj Zizek: Who has the right to bring the public bad news?
When WikiLeaks exploded onto the scene a decade ago, it briefly seemed like the internet could create a truly open society. Since then, Big Brother has fought back. Continue reading
-
Banning Absurd Racist Alex Jones Threatens Us All
Digital media owners are silencing the left; now it’s Alex Jones’ turn to be silenced. How do we define the public commons when it’s all privately owned? Continue reading
-
'Shock and Awe' Celebrates Reporters Who Got It Right By Gunar Olsen
It’s now conventional for corporate media pundits and centrist politicians to acknowledge that their support for the US invasion of Iraq was misguided. Most excuse their pro-war record on the grounds that there was no available alternate narrative to the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. How could they have… Continue reading
-
‘Shock and Awe’ Celebrates Reporters Who Got It Right By Gunar Olsen
It’s now conventional for corporate media pundits and centrist politicians to acknowledge that their support for the US invasion of Iraq was misguided. Most excuse their pro-war record on the grounds that there was no available alternate narrative to the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. How could they have… Continue reading
-
The Utility of the RussiaGate Conspiracy By Alan MacLeod
To the shock of many, Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential elections, becoming the 45th president of the United States. Not least shocked were corporate media, and the political establishment more generally; the Princeton Election Consortium confidently predicted an over 99 percent chance of a Clinton victory, while MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (10/17/16) said it could… Continue reading
-
The Sanctification of NATO By Gregory Shupak
Claims that US President Donald Trump is undermining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by criticizing some of its members and having a cordial meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin have sent establishment media into a frenzy to sanctify NATO as a force for peace and democracy. Continue reading
-
Jeff Bezos’ Paper Tells You Not to Worry About Those Billionaires by Dean Baker
Just when you thought economic commentary in the Washington Post couldn’t get any more insipid, Roger Lowenstein proves otherwise. In a business section “perspective” (7/20/18), he tells readers: But what if inequality is the wrong metric. Herewith a modest proposition: economic inequality is not the best yardstick. What we should be paying attention to is… Continue reading
-
Key Fact Obscured in Immigration Coverage: MS-13 Was Made in US By Justin Anderson
In a piece for the Atlantic (6/20/18), former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum countered statements by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, in which Hayes described a harrowing first-person account of a mother forcibly separated from her child at the US/Mexico border as reading like “the literature of a totalitarian government”: Continue reading
-
Can Truth Survive Trump? WaPo Fails to Ask How Well Truth Was Doing to Begin With By Dean Baker
Carlos Lozada, the nonfiction book critic for the Washington Post, promised “an honest investigation” of whether truth can survive the Trump administration in the lead article in the paper’s Sunday Outlook section. He delivered considerably less. Continue reading
-
In Wake of AMLO Victory, US Media Fear Chavismo and Hope for 'Business-Friendly' Change By Gregory Shupak
Neoliberal capitalist dogma pervades mainstream media. A case in point is coverage of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s resounding victory in Mexico’s presidential election. Continue reading
-
Immigration Story Missing Context of Hunger and Freedom By Jane Regan
In the classroom, I emphasize that every news story—even a little one about a city sidewalk repair—must provide context. Why that sidewalk, why now? Who lives there and walks there? What sidewalks are not getting repaired? When was the sidewalk first built? What’s the budget? And so on. Continue reading
-
NYT Sees 'Dystopia' in Chinese Surveillance—Which Looks a Lot Like US Surveillance By Jim Naureckas
There’s a category of story we call “Them Not Us”—US media reporting on problems abroad, and seemingly not noticing that they have the same problems at home. There’s a great example of that in the New York Times (7/8/18), headlined “Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: AI, Shame and Lots of Cameras.” Continue reading
-
'Data Needs to Serve a Public Safety Purpose'
6 July 2018 — FAIR by Janine Jackson Janine Jackson interviewed Tracy Rosenberg about ICE’s corporate collaborators for the June 29, 2018, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. Continue reading
-
EU Copyright Law Rejected!
We did it! Today, the European Parliament voted to reject the proposed copyright proposal, which includes the dangerous Link Tax and Censorship Machine provisions. Continue reading
-
Korean Voices Missing From Major Papers’ Opinions on Singapore Summit By Adam Johnson
In major-paper opinion coverage of the Singapore summit, the people with the most to lose and gain from the summit, the people whose nation was actually being discussed—Koreans—were almost uniformly ignored. Continue reading
-
Pundits Worry Threat of Nuclear War Is Being Reduced By Gregory Shupak
On MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, the host was aghast (6/12/18) that the US says it will halt the annual war games it conducts with South Korea on North Korea’s doorstep, because doing so is “an absolute jackpot for the North Korean dictator,” “one of the things he wants most on earth,” and now Washington “has… Continue reading
-
NYT Carries IDF Attack on Murdered Medic–Reveals It’s a Smear in 20th Paragraph
Journalism how-not-to: New York Times (6/7/18) puts the attack in the headline, reveals it’s a smear in paragraph 20. A reporter at the most influential paper in English-language media appears to not know the difference between a government “tightly editing” and selectively editing video. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 