Media
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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
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Media: Why Are Media Outlets Still Citing Discredited ‘Fake News’ Blacklist?
The Washington Post (11/24/16) last week published a front-page blockbuster that quickly went viral: Russia-promoted “fake news” had infiltrated the newsfeeds of 213 million Americans during the election, muddying the waters in a disinformation scheme to benefit Donald Trump. Craig Timberg’s story was based on a “report” from an anonymous group (or simply a person,… Continue reading
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Media: Corporate Welfare Will Bring Back Jobs vs. Jobs Will Never Come Back
The Carrier company’s announcement that, after exhortations from Donald Trump, it was going to move a thousand jobs overseas—rather than the 2,000 that it had previously planned to move—led New York Times reporter Nelson Schwartz (11/29/16) to declare that “Mr. Trump is a different kind of Republican, willing to take on big business, at least… Continue reading
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If We Care About the Constitution, Trump Has to Sell His Empire
Donald Trump is about to become president and immediately begin violating the Constitution. The Constitution explicitly prohibits the president from taking payments and gifts from foreign governments. (Can we stop using the term “emolument“? No one has used it for a hundred years. We want to be clear on what the Constitution means.) Continue reading
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‘People Can Protect the Rights of Everyone in Their Community’
Janine Jackson: Watching social media, interest and energy around issues seems to swell and dissipate. But moving toward a functioning, inclusive democracy requires sustained work: building institutions, organizing, so that in times of acute crisis we have structures, or at least models of ways to respond. Continue reading
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Media: Lashing Out at ‘Identity Politics,’ Pundits Blame Trump on Those Most Vulnerable to Trump
21 November 2016 — FAIR Over the past two weeks, pundits from all ends of the spectrum have been scrambling to explain Clinton’s unexpected loss, with reasons spanning from the plausible to the highly dubious; WikiLeaks, Bernie Sanders, fake news, Jill Stein, Russia, bad algorithms and the FBI have all been accused of having sole… Continue reading
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TV Pundits Eager to Make Trump the New ‘Normal’
After wrongly predicting the election, political pundits are returning to TV talkshows to explain what will happen under a Trump presidency. But these predictions aren’t like TV anchors predicting the weather; these forecasts have a profound impact on the public reception to the Trump administration and the future course of US politics. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 