Media
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Media: Mizue Aizeki on Criminalizing Immigrants
Early morning deportation raids are stoking fear in immigrant communities, pulling parents from children and shipping people who’ve lived in the US for decades to places they don’t remember. Donald Trump talks about rounding up “drug lords” and murderers, but not only is that not who is being targeted, recently released executive orders expand the… Continue reading
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Media: Jessica Gonzalez on FCC Chair Ajit Pai
“T-Mobile Very Pleased with Direction of Change under Trump Administration, CEO Says.” That headline tells you pretty much what you need to know about Ajit Pai, Trump’s choice of chair for the FCC—the entity charged with representing the public interest in the communications industry. The phone company exec is pleased, he says, because Pai’s appointment… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Paul Mason And The Grand Propaganda Narratives
Where once a handful of dissidents was allowed to challenge the Grand Propaganda Narratives (GPN) of the day, modern leftists are tolerated only if they accept these narratives even as they talk radical change. A Guardian regular who stands out in this regard is Paul Mason, formerly BBC Newsnight Business Editor and Channel 4 News… Continue reading
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Media: Trump Supporters Support Trump: To Maintain ‘Balance,’ Media Resort to Tautology
The policy’s sloppy language, bungled roll-out and punitive real-world impact on innocents have rightly been prominently reported by journalists. Much of the coverage has focused on the widespread backlash to the ban, which has manifested itself in numerous legal challenges and a nationwide series of rapid-response airport protests. Coupled with the new president’s record-low approval… Continue reading
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Media: ‘It Is Not at All Typical to Stifle Basic Scientific Information’
It may not get the same sort of headlines, but the White House’s war on science could well yield casualties as great as other violent acts more traditionally defined. Continue reading
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Media: ‘This Is a Country That’s in a Tremendous Crisis’
Janine Jackson: “Women Killed in Yemen Raid Were Qaeda Fighters, Pentagon Says” was the headline on a January 30 New York Times story on the recent commando raid in central Yemen, the first on Donald Trump’s watch. The Times says the Pentagon first denied any civilian casualties, then backtracked as evidence came in of such… Continue reading
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NYT: Unlike Russian Wars, US Wars ‘Promote Freedom and Democracy’
The New York Times, in its recent rebuff of comments President Donald Trump made about Russia, seems not to have evolved its understanding of US geopolitics past an 8th grade level. Trump had been asked by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly (2/5/17) why he wouldn’t condemn Vladimir Putin, whom O’Reilly called a “killer.” Continue reading
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Media: On Iran, SPLC’s ‘Extremist’ Is NPR’s ‘Expert’
Last week, the Trump administration began ratcheting up hostilities with Iran, nominally in response to a ballistic missile test in late January. NPR (2/2/17) dutifully reported Trump’s announcement of new sanctions on Iran, framing the issue as the Trump White House responding to an Iranian “provocation” in regards to Iran’s agreement with the UN, rather… Continue reading
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A Lesson Media Missed About the Dangers of Scapegoating
4 February 2017 — FAIR US news outlets were roughly six times more interested in Michael Zehaf-Bibeau (left) than in Alexandre Bissonnette—even though Bissonnette is accused of killing six times as many people. If you were unfamiliar with the way US corporate media works, you might assume that the murder of six people in a Continue reading
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Zaid Jilani on Trump’s Yemen Raid, Andrew Rosenberg on Science and Resistance
No one should be surprised that the Trump White House declared the recent commando raid in Yemen that killed at least 23 civilians, including children, “a successful operation.” Some media accounts are describing the first raid on Trump’s watch as “botched,” but that’s not the same as questioning it, much less putting it in a… Continue reading
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Zaid Jilani on Trump's Yemen Raid, Andrew Rosenberg on Science and Resistance
No one should be surprised that the Trump White House declared the recent commando raid in Yemen that killed at least 23 civilians, including children, “a successful operation.” Some media accounts are describing the first raid on Trump’s watch as “botched,” but that’s not the same as questioning it, much less putting it in a… Continue reading
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Media: (The Absence of) Power is Exhausting By Dan Hind
The Guardian could use its membership scheme to create reader-owned co-ops across the UK. The Guardian still has enormous communicative power and this could be put to work promoting democratic, accountable media. A working model for this exists already, in the shape of the Bristol Cable. Continue reading
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It’s Austerity, Not Globalization, That Pulls European Workers to the Right
Both the Washington Post (1/22/17) and New York Times (1/22/17) had pieces about declining support for the left in France and the rise of a nationalist right in both Italy and France. Both pieces attributed the rise in support for the right to people losing from globalization, implying that this is some impersonal process that… Continue reading
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NYT Ignored Reality at 2001 Bush Inauguration; Now Ignorance Is History
19 January 2017 — FAIR It was much harder for TV than for newspapers to downplay the reality that George W. Bush was greeted in 2001 by massive protests. Discussing the security challenges posed by the inauguration of Donald Trump, the New York Times (1/18/17) reported: Those numbers are quite likely to be larger than Continue reading
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WaPo’s Factcheck of WikiLeaks Highlights Paper’s Strange View of Facts
The Washington Post (1/5/17) “factchecks” Julian Assange’s claims without either proving or disproving them. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Fox News, 1/3/17) again denied that the leaked e-mails he published during the election came from Russia—an assertion contradicted by many anonymous US intelligence officials. “We can say, we have said repeatedly over the last two months,… Continue reading
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US Government Tries and Fails to Play Media Critic on RT
The much-anticipated Office of the Director of Intelligence (DNI) Report—the combined assessment of the CIA, FBI, DHS and others—on alleged attempts by Russia to influence the 2016 election was released on Friday to a combination of uncritical boosting and underwhelmed perplexity. To many, it was further proof of Russia’s involvement in the DNC and Podesta… Continue reading
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Signs Look Grim for Media Picking the Side of Liberty and Dissent
This is a kind of “which side are you on?” moment for journalists. Will they defend the rights and liberties of the many communities under threat—Muslims, women, those reliant on government assistance? Will they keep alive a space for dissent and critical questioning in the face of a White House that declares itself indifferent to… Continue reading
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Media: Hypocrisy of Russia-Did-It Stories Is Hard to Stomach
Meddling in other countries’ elections is an exciting adventure–when it’s the United States doing the meddling. It is, of course, worth knowing what involvement any other country might have had in the US election, but elite media’s consumption with the Russia-did-it storyline so far is discouraging to say the least. Continue reading
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Rather Than Exposing Propaganda, WaPo Shows How It’s Done
In short order, the DNC and the Obama administration-led intelligence establishment began claiming, with no hard evidence, that the source of WikiLeaks’ explosive emails was “the Russians.” While denied by WikiLeaks, it was a charge that Clinton made ad nauseum on the campaign trail and in her three televised debates with Trump, using it as… Continue reading
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Media: ‘Castro Was a Living Reminder of the Limits of American Power’
Janine Jackson: Fidel Castro, who died November 25 at age 90, will be remembered as someone whose work changed, not just Cuba, but the wider world. With US media ringing with denunciation—with some left over to denunciate those who aren’t denunciating enough—there’s little oxygen left for discussion of that work, and what it meant and… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 