Articles by FAIR-Fairness
We found 45 results.
Venezuela: Guaidó Is Gone, but Media Dishonesty Is Here to Stay
Ricardo Vaz | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2023
11 Jan 2023 – The latest iteration of Washington’s regime-change efforts against the democratically elected Venezuelan government came to an end. On 30 Dec an opposition-controlled parliament voted to end the US-backed “interim government” headed by Juan Guaidó.
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NATO Narratives and Corporate Media Are Leading to ‘Doorstep of Doom’
Robin Andersen | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Dec 2022
1 Dec 2022 – Corporate media are failing democracy and to disclose our current, stark choice between war, life and the planet. They shout for more war in loud voices. They censor and poison public discourse and position North Americans as targets of propaganda—the denizens of empire—instead of citizen participants in a democracy.
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The News Is Not That Israel Has Apartheid, but That Amnesty Dares Say So
Ari Paul | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Feb 2022
3 Feb 2022 – Does the state of Israel now endorse cancel culture? AP (1/31/22) disclosed that its government called on Amnesty International not to release a report (2/1/22) that defines that nation’s legal structure as a form of apartheid. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said the report endorses “lies shared by terrorist organizations.”
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What You Should Really Know about Ukraine
Bryce Greene | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Jan 2022
28 Jan 2022 – These “explainer” pieces are emblematic of Ukraine coverage in the rest of corporate media, which almost universally gave a pro-Western view of US/Russia relations and the history behind them. Media echoed the point of view of those who believe the US should have an active role in Ukrainian politics and enforce its perspective through military threats.
→ read full articleAs Kabul Is Retaken, Papers Look Back in Erasure
Gregory Shupak | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2021
19 Aug 2021 – Corporate media coverage of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan offered more mystification than illumination. I looked at editorials in five major US dailies: the Boston Globe, LA Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Their editorial boards consistently trivialized South Asian lives, erased US responsibility for lethal violence, and made untenable assertions about Washington’s supposedly righteous motives in the war.
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Media Play Up Protests, Play Down Effect of US Sanctions in Cuba
Alan MacLeod | FAIR-Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Jul 2021
16 Jul 2021 – The Media were quick to give the protests front and center coverage. Far larger and more deadly movements in Chile and Ecuador were mostly ignored by the corporate press. Meanwhile, the political situation in Haiti, which has seen three continuous years of nationwide protest, was overwhelmingly ignored until the assassination of US-backed President Jovenel Moïse last week.
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How Not to Cover Critical Race Theory
Julie Hollar | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Jul 2021
10 Jul 2021 – Fox News and its conservative media allies have turned white rage onto a more actionable target: critical race theory. Though the theory is a longstanding and specific academic lens for understanding systemic racism, the right has transformed it into a catchall for anything that encourages talking about and addressing racism.
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Palestine/Israel Coverage Presents False Equivalency Between Occupied and Occupier
Gregory Shupak | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 May 2021
18 May 2021 – Media coverage of heightened violence in Israel/Palestine has misrepresented events in the Israeli government’s favor by suggesting that Israel is acting defensively, presenting a false equivalency between occupier and occupied, and burying information necessary to understand the scale of Israeli brutality.
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Need a Quote from an Official Enemy Denouncing Democracy? Do like the New York Times and Make It Up
Jim Naureckas | FAIR-Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Apr 2021
You know you’re in for a hard sell when the New York Times (29 Mar 2021) publishes an article under the headline “An Alliance of Autocracies? China Wants to Lead a New World Order.”
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NASA: Applause for Perseverance Ignores Plutonium Bullet We Dodged
Karl Grossman | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Mar 2021
25 Feb 2021 – With all the media hoopla last week about the Perseverance rover, frequently unreported was that its energy source is plutonium—considered the most lethal of all radioactive substances (half-life of 24,100 years)—and nowhere in media was the NASA projection that there were 1-in-960 odds of an accidental release of the plutonium on the mission.
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States Have No Inherent ‘Right to Exist’—but It’s a Media Fixation on Israel/Palestine
Gregory Shupak | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2021
12 Feb 2021 – No state has an intrinsic “right to exist.” As international relations scholar Scott Burchill points out, there is no abstract “right to exist” in international law, or in “any serious theory of international relations.” Nor is it customary, Burchill explains, for states or sub-state groups to recognize a state’s “right to exist.”
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ACTION ALERT: What Can ‘Now Be Told’ by NYT about Pentagon Papers Isn’t Actually True
Jim Naureckas | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jan 2021
Contrary to what is generally believed, Mr. Ellsberg never ‘gave’ the papers to the Times.” In fact, Ellsberg did give the papers to Sheehan, as the story gets around to revealing 38 paragraphs later: “So he told Mr. Ellsberg that he now needed the documents, not just his notes…. This time, when Mr. Sheehan asked, Mr. Ellsberg consented…. He arranged for Mr. Sheehan to pick up a complete copy of the historical study stowed in an Ellsberg family apartment in Manhattan.”So the big revisionist revelation in the New York Times article turns out to be false.
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As Bolivian Regime Delays Elections a Third Time, Media Continue to Ignore Coup
Bryce Greene | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Aug 2020
6 Aug 2020 – When a country’s military oust a sitting president by force, that is a military coup. Referring to it simply as a “resignation”–as in the Washington Post’s 11/10/19–fails to capture the nature of the overthrow. Describing Morales’ ouster as merely happening “amid widespread unrest” is a way of telling readers: “This sort of thing happens all the time in this part of the world. No need to look into it.”
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Trump’s Tantrum against TikTok Is No Laughing Matter
Ari Paul | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Aug 2020
5 Aug 2020 – President Donald Trump has made it clear he would like to ban the video-making app TikTok. Despite being mostly used by younger users to make music or comedic videos, the White House says it is worried about the platform, as the New York Times (8/1/20) explained, “because of the app’s Chinese ownership.”
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Missing Perspective in Media: Iran/Venezuela Ties Are None of US’s Business
Gregory Shupak | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jun 2020
10 Jun 2020 – The American state not only snuffs out lives by pressing knees to necks domestically, it also seeks to asphyxiate entire countries like Iran and Venezuela. This is evident in corporate media coverage of Iranian oil shipments to Venezuela, which has framed the deliveries as a problem that needs to be solved, rather than a commercial transaction that doesn’t concern third parties.
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NYT Erases US Occupation’s Role in Prolonging Taliban Insurgency
Joshua Cho | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jun 2020
12 Jun 2020 – The New York Times’ correspondent in Afghanistan, Mujib Mashal, somehow managed to write the article “How the Taliban Outlasted a Superpower: Tenacity and Carnage” to explain how the Taliban “outlasted a superpower through 19 years of war,” without examining at all how the US contributed to reviving and sustaining the Taliban insurgency.
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Corporate Media Don’t Think Americans Paid to Invade Venezuela Count as Mercenaries
Joshua Cho | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 May 2020
11 May 2020 – In recent reports regarding the Bay of Pigs–style invasion the term “mercenary” was accompanied by scare quotes, as if these men could only be seen that way from the perspective of an Official US EnemyTM (whose perspective is always illegitimate in the eyes of corporate media). It is clear that the men behind the La Guaira invasion aren’t described as mercenaries because the US government and media alike favor regime change in Venezuela.
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Corporate Media Setting Stage for New Cold War with China
Gregory Shupak | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 May 2020
15 May 2020 – Corporate media are laying the ideological groundwork for a new cold war with China, presenting the nation as a hostile power that needs to be kept in check.
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Cuba Under Media Attack for Sending Doctors, Not Bombs, to Help COVID-19 Victims
Belen Fernandez | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Apr 2020
14 Apr 2020 – As coronavirus ravages the world, Cuba has exhibited disproportionate heroism, deploying medical personnel to at least 14 countries thus far to battle the pandemic. It is a welcome bit of uplifting news in an otherwise mostly dismal international panorama. Lest anyone start feeling too inspired by the idea of humanity, however, sectors of the US corporate media are dutifully standing by to burst the bubble.
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NYT Blames Maduro for Healthcare Horror, Downplays US Role
Bryce Greene | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Apr 2020
The New York Times (10 Apr 2020) published an article describing the horrendous shape of the Venezuelan healthcare system. The piece fumbled the most important aspect of the story: how and why the system is as bad as it is. In true “manufacturing consent” fashion, it downplayed the US role in destabilizing the Venezuelan economy, and instead pointed to President Nicolás Maduro’s “authoritarianism” as the primary cause of the crisis.
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Bolsonaro Is Far from Alone in Putting Profits over Lives—but He Is a Useful Scapegoat
Brian Mier | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Apr 2020
12 Apr 2020 -Far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—already a media fixture for his propensity to say horrible things on Twitter—has over the past few weeks become one of the most ridiculed leaders in the world due to his handling of the coronavirus crisis.
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As US Consigns Iranians to Death, Corporate Media Look the Other Way
Gregory Shupak | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Apr 2020
8 Apr 2020 – Covid-19 has hammered few countries as hard as it has hit Iran, which reports (as of April 8) 64,586 cases and 3,993 deaths. US sanctions are a major reason that Iranians are getting infected with and dying from the coronavirus in such large numbers: The US’s economic warfare softened Iran up for the pandemic well before its outbreak.
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The US’s Inalienable Right to Violence
Gregory Shupak | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
21 Jan 2020 – Even when critical of US actions, media commentary on recent US bombings and assassinations in the Middle East is premised on the assumption that the US has the right to use violence (or the threat of it) to assert its will, anytime, anywhere. Conversely, corporate media coverage suggests that any countermeasure—such as resistance to the US presence in Iraq—is inherently illegitimate, criminal and/or terroristic.
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For Western Press, the Only Coup in Venezuela Is against Guaidó
Lucas Koerner | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jan 2020
10 Jan 2020 – The international corporate media have entered crisis mode following the replacement of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as head of the country’s National Assembly. In headline after headline, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “Takes Over”, “Claims Control of” or “Seizes” parliament, and “Ousts” Guaidó in the process. However, the elementary if inconvenient fact is that Guaidó failed to secure the necessary votes from his own coalition’s deputies to continue as president of the legislature.
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From Resistance to Assistance: Little Pushback to Trump’s Iran Assassination
Alan MacLeod | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jan 2020
9 Jan 2020 – The allegation is that he targeted US troops or “contractors”—i.e., mercenaries—stationed not at home, but in a region on the other side of the world that the US illegally attacked and has occupied for most of this century. “Soleimani provided effective military resistance to foreign occupying forces,” though, sounds very different from “killed hundreds of Americans.”
→ read full articleWaPo’s Afghan Papers Propagate Colonial Narrative of Noble Intentions Gone Awry
Joshua Cho | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Dec 2019
The Afghanistan Papers should also be considered an excellent case study of contemporary colonial propaganda, and yet another example of corporate media criticizing US wars without opposing US imperialism. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s famous analysis of media coverage of the Vietnam War, in Manufacturing Consent, found that questions of the invasion’s “tactics and costs”—to the US—dominated the debate.
→ read full articleRussia Has ‘Oligarchs,’ the US Has ‘Businessmen’
Alan MacLeod | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
In 150 NYT, CNN and Fox articles, ‘oligarch’ seems reserved for Slavic billionaires.
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Protectors of Mauna Kea Are Fighting Colonialism, Not Science
Julianne Tveten | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Sep 2019
27 Aug 2019 – Thousands of Native Hawaiians and their supporters have been congregating since July 15 at the base of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano and mountain on the island of Hawaii… While proposals to compromise might appear fair, protectors say, they dismiss the historical context in Hawaii of colonialism and the usurpation of Indigenous land that continues today. Thus, these suggestions elide the stark power asymmetry between historically disenfranchised and marginalized Native Hawaiians and the billion-dollar, state-backed TMT project.
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Still Manufacturing Consent: An Interview with Noam Chomsky
Alan MacLeod | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
Alan MacLeod and Noam Chomsky discussed the origins of the classic work of media criticism (co-authored with Edward Herman) Manufacturing Consent, the role of that book’s “propaganda model” today, Google and Facebook, Donald Trump and Russia, fake news and Syria. This is a lightly edited transcript.
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Dictator: Media Code for ‘Government We Don’t Like’
Alan MacLeod | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
11 Apr 2019 – Let’s start with a quiz: Quick! Name some dictators! I’m willing to bet most of you responded with just a few of the same names: Assad, Putin, Castro, Kim Jong-un, Gaddafi, Maduro. This is not because they are the only dictators in the world (far from it), or that all of them even necessarily qualify for the title, but precisely because these are the figures most constantly labeled as such by our media.
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Assange’s ‘Conspiracy’ to Expose War Crimes Has Already Been Punished
Joe Emersberger | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
In 2010, the Guardian, like the New York Times and a few other corporate newspapers, briefly partnered with WikiLeaks to publish the contents of thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables, known as Cablegate. The material exposed atrocities perpetrated by the US military, as well as other disgraceful acts—like US diplomats strategizing on how to undermine elected governments out of favor with Washington, spying on official US allies and bullying poor countries into paying wildly exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs.
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‘Renouncing Violence’ Is a Demand Made Almost Exclusively of Muslims
Adam Johnson | FAIR-Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Apr 2019
29 Mar 2019 – A FAIR survey of the phrase “renounce violence” in the New York Times over the past 10 years shows that 95 percent of the time the demand is made of Muslim organizations, people or political parties, the most prominent being the Taliban and Hamas. There are zero instances of anyone in the Times—whether reporters quoting officials or columnists—from March 28, 2009, to March 28, 2019, insisting or suggesting that the United States, Israel or any white-majority country “renounce violence.”
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The ‘Venezuelan People’ Are Whoever Agrees with Donald Trump
Alan MacLeod | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Feb 2019
31 Jan 2019 – The latest bizarre episode in the Trump presidency is currently playing out in Venezuela. Just weeks after President Nicolás Maduro’s inauguration, Trump officially recognized Juan Guaidó, the 35-year-old head of the National Assembly—a man who has never even run for president—as the rightful head of state.
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‘Resistance’ Media Side with Trump to Promote Coup in Venezuela
Alan MacLeod | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jan 2019
25 Jan 2019 – After winning re-election in 2018, President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was recently sworn in for a second term. However, Trump has taken the extraordinary step of declaring the elections void. He also arranged to have National Assembly head Juan Guaidó name himself the country’s new leader. This has spurred the Venezuelan right wing onto the streets to try to force Maduro out of office, leading to the deaths of 14 people. On Trump’s support for regime change in Venezuela, the “resistance” media are lining up shoulder to shoulder with the president.
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Media Worried US Won’t Occupy Syria Forever
Gregory Shupak | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jan 2019
11 Jan 2019 – In December, President Donald Trump said that he planned to withdraw the US troops from Syria, which number between 2,000 and 4,000. Trump’s claim was widely condemned in corporate media, demonstrating the commentariat’s shared belief in American benevolence toward other peoples, in Washington’s alleged right and duty to decide other countries’ fates, and in the forever war the US supposedly has to wage in the Middle East.
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Distorting Past and Present: Reuters on Nicaragua’s Armed Uprising
Joe Emersberger | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Aug 2018
23 Aug 2018 – I examined 45 Reuters news articles about the uprising in Nicaragua since April 18, which are widely reprinted throughout English-language Western media as portrayed by corporate journalism. The story conveyed by Reuters is that the Sandinista government is opposed to democracy and human rights in Nicaragua, while the US government supports these things. But a closer look at the picture reveals numerous distortions about Nicaragua’s past and present.
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A ‘Regime’ Is a Government at Odds with the US Empire
Gregory Shupak | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Aug 2018
20 Aug 2018 – A country’s political leaders are likely to be called a “regime” when they do not follow US dictates, and are less likely to be categorized as such if they cooperate with the empire. Calling a government a “regime” suggests a lack of legitimacy, with the implication that its ousting would serve humanitarian and democratic ends; it’s no accident that the phrase is “regime change,” not “government change” or “administration change.”
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Why Venezuela Reporting Is So Bad
Joe Emersberger | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jul 2018
27 Jun 2018 – For almost 20 years, the US government has been trying to overthrow Venezuela’s government, and establishment media outlets (state, corporate and some nonprofit) throughout the Americas and Europe have been bending over backwards to help the US do it. Review of Alan MacLeod’s Bad News from Venezuela
→ read full articleAs Israel Kills Dozens and Maims Thousands, Palestinian ‘Violence’ Under Media Microscope
Gregory Shupak | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 May 2018
30 Apr 2018 – Corporate media help set the terms of debate about the issues they cover by pointing toward specific sets of questions and ignoring others. When news outlets highlight particular points of contention, they encourage audiences to see these as the central aspects of the story and discourage consideration of other facets of the topic. Recent reporting on the Palestinians’ Great Return March offers a case study in how news media establish truncated, distorted parameters of discussion.
→ read full articleOut of 26 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Zero Opposed
Adam Johnson | FAIR-Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Apr 2018
18 Apr 2018 – A survey by FAIR of the top 100 papers in the US by circulation found not a single editorial board opposed to Trump’s April 13 airstrikes on Syria. Twenty supported the strikes, while six were ambiguous as to whether or not the bombing was advisable. The remaining 74 issued no opinion about Trump’s latest escalation of the Syrian war.
→ read full articleMajor War Journalism Papers Urge Trump to Kill Syrians, Risk World War III
Gregory Shupak | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Apr 2018
12 Apr 2018 – Clamoring for Catastrophe: President Donald Trump is threatening to escalate the Syrian war, as are France and the United Kingdom, while Israel bombed Syria three days ago. In this context, major “liberal” media outlets are writing that Trump should attack Syria further.
→ read full articleSnipers Shooting Unarmed People at 100 Meters Isn’t a ‘Clash’ as War Journalists Make Believe
Adam Johnson | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Apr 2018
9 Apr 2018 – “Clash” is a reporter’s best friend when they want to describe violence without offending anyone in power—in the words of George Orwell, “to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.” It’s predictable, then, that in coverage of Israel’s recent mass shootings in Gaza—which have killed over 30 Palestinians and injured more than 1,100—the word “clashes” is used to euphemize snipers in fortified positions firing on unarmed protesters 100 meters away.
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Evidence of Violent Extremism of Little Interest When Killer Is White
FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Apr 2018
29 Mar 2018 – Remember that Muslim mass murderer who belonged to an Islamic home-madrassa called INTIFADA, where knife-wielding Shari’a survivalists studied the Qur’an, guns and dangerous chemicals? And how the liberal media fawningly portrayed him as a misunderstood and under-loved young man otherwise full of promise? You don’t, because that never happened. But have you heard about the Christian Texas child-killer from an all-white sect who slaughtered the president of a homeowners’ association and a 17-year-old aspiring neurosurgeon? Both victims were African-Americans.
→ read full articleAfter Trump’s Jerusalem Move, Media Worry about ‘Violence’–Not Violation of International Law
Adam Johnson and Nima Shirazi | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Dec 2017
8 Dec 2017 – The frame that dominated headlines as news of Trump’s announcement broke was not on the meaning of the move but on potential vague “fears of violence” from Palestinians and Muslims throughout the Middle East. This is often the case when it comes to Israel/Palestine: Media focus is on the reaction to injustice, not on the injustice itself. The illegality of Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem is rarely mentioned.
→ read full articleThe 2014 P.U.-litzers
FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Dec 2014
Some of the Stinkiest Reporting from the Past Year – It’s that time of year again, when FAIR looks back at the year and recalls some of the stinkiest media moments. There were, of course, many contenders– but only a select few can make the list.
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