Articles by Fairness

We found 87 results.

Friedman’s Vermin Analogies Echo Ugly Pro-Genocide Propaganda
Jim Naureckas | Fair Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Feb 2024

6 Feb 2024 – NYT columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a piece that compared the targets of US bombs to vermin. It’s the sort of metaphor that propagandists have historically used to justify genocide.

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Conflating Jewish and Pro-Israel Is Wrong and Misleading
Ari Paul | Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Nov 2023

6 Nov 2023 – As protests erupt worldwide against Israel’s ferocious bombardment and invasion of Gaza, US media ponder how this impacts Jewish people. The way this is framed completely mischaracterizes Jewish opinion, falsely acting as if it is unquestionably unified in support of Israeli military attacks.

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In AI Regulation Coverage, Media Let US Lawmakers off the Hook
Julianne Tveten | FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Sep 2023

8 Sep 2023 – Corporate Press: ‘US Policymakers would like to place guardrails on artificial intelligence, but, given its novel and evolving nature, they’ll need more time.’ This narrative minimizes their responsibility— excusing, rather than interrogating, regulatory inertia.

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Six Tropes to Look Out for in Western Media’s Distorted Palestine/Israel Coverage
Lara-Nour Walton | FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Aug 2023

Do Palestinians deserve to be free? “A complex and controversial issue,” says ChatGPT. Do Israelis deserve to be free? “Yes, like all people.,” affirms the AI gadget. “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” — Malcolm X

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USA: How to Hide and Ignore 4.5 Million Deaths
Bryce Greene | Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Aug 2023

1 Aug 2023 – A ‘Costs of War’ study estimates that the USA’s 9/11 wars caused 4.5 million deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia and Syria with 40–60 million people displaced from their homes. “Pax Americana”

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Ukraine’s ‘Press Freedom’ Score Increases Despite Martial Law, Banned Media
Bryce Greene | Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting FAIR - TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 May 2023

9 May 2023 – Now you know why Ukraine is fighting for “our values” – meaning something terrible has happened to those “our values.”

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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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Factchecking the Factchecker on Chomsky, Russia and Media Access
John Kempthorne | FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Sep 2022

30 Aug 2022 – US-based media platforms have made an extraordinary effort to cut Western audiences off from news from a Russian perspective. When social critic Noam Chomsky pointed out how unprecedented this was, Newsweek‘s “factchecker” (26 Jul 2022) declared his criticism “clearly untrue”—a determination that did more to confirm the ideological strictures of US media than to debunk them.

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Calling Putin ‘Hitler’ to Smear Diplomacy as ‘Appeasement’
Joshua Cho | FAIR- Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jul 2022

21 Jul 2022 – The extreme caricatures of Putin as equal to or worse than Hitler, frequent Nazi comparisons, and Munich references made by Western media paint those who would prefer a negotiated settlement to years of bloodshed, the risk of World War III and nuclear war as “appeasers” of a Hitlerian dictator with genocidal ambitions.

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What You Should ‘Really’ Know about Ukraine
Bryce Greene | FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Feb 2022

As tensions began to rise over Ukraine, US media produced articles attempting to explain the situation: “Ukraine Explained” (New York Times, 12/8/21) and “What You Need to Know About Tensions Between Ukraine and Russia” (Washington Post, 11/26/21). But to truly understand this crisis, you would need to know much more than what these articles offered.

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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.

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As 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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‘What We’ve Seen in Sheikh Jarrah Is a Microcosm of What We’ve Experienced for the Last 70+ Years’
Janine Jackson | Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 May 2021

Interview with US Campaign for Palestinian Rights’ Ahmad Abuznaid about Israel/Palestine apartheid for CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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‘Government Money That’s Gone into Vaccine Development Is Being Privatized by a Handful of Companies’
Janine Jackson | Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 May 2021

12 May 2021 – Interview with Knowledge Ecology International’s James Love about Bill Gates and vaccine politics for CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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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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UN Rebuke of US Sanctions on Venezuela Met with Stunning Media Silence
John McEvoy | FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Mar 2021

10Mar 2021 – By omitting the devastating impact of sanctions, corporate media attribute sole responsibility for economic and humanitarian conditions to the Venezuelan government, thereby using the misery provoked by sanctions to validate the infliction of even more misery. US and European officials have long admitted that the sanctions regime against Venezuela is collective punishment by design.

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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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Trump’s Twitter Ban May Be Justified, but That Doesn’t Mean Tech Giants’ Power Isn’t Scary
Alan MacLeod | FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Jan 2021

15 Jan 2021 – In the wake of the dramatic storming of the Capitol last week, a host of big media companies, including Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, Twitch, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, have all taken measures against Donald Trump. Making the most headlines, however, was the decision of the president’s favorite medium, Twitter (8 Jan 21), to permanently suspend him “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

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Net Worth of US Billionaires Has Soared by $1 Trillion to Total of $4 Trillion Since Pandemic Began
Americans for Tax Fairness and The Institute for Policy Studies | Global Research - TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Dec 2020

10 Dec 2020 – The collective wealth of America’s 651 billionaires has jumped by over $1 trillion since roughly the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to a total of $4 trillion at market close on Monday, December 7, 2020. Wealth increase in 9 months exceeds $908 billion cost of Covid relief package GOP has stalled as too costly.

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Media Fuels Economic War on Nicaragua with False ‘Conflict Beef’ Story
John Perry | Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)/Grayzone - TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Dec 2020

Liberal media outlets are aiding a US economic war on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, calling for a boycott of “conflict beef” based on deeply flawed opposition accusations.

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Farcical Coverage of Julian Assange’s Farcical Hearing
Joshua Cho | FAIR- Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Nov 2020

13 Nov 2020 – US corporate media have buried coverage of Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in the UK, despite its being the media “Trial of the Century”. But even in the scarce coverage that does exist, one would hardly get the impression that the US and British governments are involved in an illegal conspiracy—in violation of their own laws—to punish Assange for the “crime” of journalism.

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Julian Assange: Press Shows Little Interest in Media ‘Trial of Century’
Alan MacLeod | FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Sep 2020

25 Sep 2020 – Labeled the media “trial of the century,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing is currently taking place in London—although you might not have heard if you’re relying solely on corporate media for news. If extradited, Assange faces 175 years in a Colorado supermax prison, often described as a “black site” on US soil.

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Media Show Little Interest in Israeli Bombing of Gaza
Alan MacLeod | FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Aug 2020

21 Aug 2020 – Israel is bombing Palestine again, although you wouldn’t guess that from watching TV news. For the eleventh straight night, Israeli Defense Force warplanes have been bombing the densely populated Gaza Strip causing considerable damage and forcing the shutdown of the area’s only power plant. But the corporate media, focused on the coronavirus and US elections, have shown little interest in the renewed violence in the Middle East.

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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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Worries about Foreign ‘Hacking’ of Vaccine Research Place Corporate Profits Ahead of Public Health
Joshua Cho | FAIR- Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Aug 2020

28 Jul 2020 – One should expect corporate media outlets like the Times to equate corporate interests with the US national interest. By spinning the intellectual property of large US corporations as something that must be safeguarded rather than something that should be shared, US media are failing to inform their audiences about how corporations are delaying the development of a vaccine—and causing unnecessary deaths.

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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.”

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WaPo’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.

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Major Media Bury Groundbreaking Studies of Pentagon’s Massive Carbon Bootprint
Joshua Cho – FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, 14 Oct 2019

10 Oct 2019 – US military is responsible for the most egregious and widespread pollution of the planet, yet this information and accompanying documentation goes almost entirely unreported.

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In Media Newspeak, a ‘Peace Plan’ for Palestine/Israel Is Anything US Proposes
Joshua Cho | FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Oct 2019

30 Sep 2019 – The corporate media’s coverage of Kushner’s “Vision for Peace” transmitted the perspective of US official sources, constantly referring unironically to the proposal as a “peace plan,” “peace initiative” or “peace process.” The more difficult and honest approach to reporting—by analyzing the plan on its predictable outcomes, rather than its professed objectives—wasn’t taken, despite the media’s own reporting indicating how the plan could never lead to peace.

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Russia 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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There’s Far More Diversity in Venezuela’s ‘Muzzled’ Media than in US Corporate Press
Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz – FAIR|Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

20 May 2019 – The international corporate media have long displayed a peculiar creativity with the facts in their Venezuela reporting, to the point that coverage of the nation’s crisis has become perhaps the world’s most lucrative fictional genre. Fairy tales about totalitarian state censorship in Venezuela reflect US corporate media regime’s own self-censorship, which is far more efficacious than any so-called “authoritarian” leader could imagine.

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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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Facts Don’t Interfere with Propaganda Blitz against Venezuela’s Elected President
Joe Emersberger | Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Feb 2019

12 Feb 2019 – The Miami Herald (2/8/19) reported, “Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro continues to reject international aid.”“ The “Venezuelan leader” is Venezuela’s elected president. In contrast, it referred to Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s “interim president.” Calling for international aid and being democratically elected will do as little to protect Maduro’s government from US aggression as being disarmed of WMD did to prevent Iraq from being invaded—unless there is much more pushback from the US public against a lethal propaganda system.

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US Media Ignore—and Applaud—Economic War on Venezuela
Gregory Shupak | Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Feb 2019

6 Feb 2019 – The US media chorus supporting a US overthrow of the Venezuelan government has for years pointed to the country’s economic crisis as a justification for regime change, while whitewashing the ways in which the US has strangled the Venezuelan economy.

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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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That Facebook Will Turn to Censoring the Left Isn’t a Worry—It’s a Reality
Alan MacLeod | Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Aug 2018

22 Aug 2018 – That Facebook’s stated concern about stopping the spread of hate speech is genuine is challenged by the fact that the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland party went to Facebook headquarters in Berlin in 2017 to discuss how it could use the platform for recruitment and for micro-targeting in the German elections.

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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

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Media Delegitimize Venezuelan Elections amid Complete Unanimity of Outlook
Alan MacLeod | Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting-FAIR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 May 2018

23 May 2018 – Despite an opposition boycott making the result predictable, Maduro received the vote of 28 percent of the eligible electorate, around the same as Barack Obama received in 2008 and more than he got in 2012, or Trump in 2016. Ignoring this, Reuters (5/20/18) claimed poor Venezuelans were voting for Maduro because they believed they were going to “win a prize.”

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As 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.

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Out 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.

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Major 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.

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Snipers 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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US Isn’t Leaving Syria—but Media Lost It When Possibility Was Raised
Gregory Shupak - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting-FAIR, 9 Apr 2018

6 Apr 2018 – The very possibility of US withdrawal from Syria rendered apoplectic journalists who are convinced of the legitimacy of Washington’s domination of the country—international law be damned. Some writers want America to occupy Syria to weaken Russia. In the Washington Post, Josh Rogin claimed that “there are a lot of good arguments for maintaining an American presence in Syria after the fall of the Islamic State.”

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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.

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After 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.

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Media Erase NATO Role in Bringing Slave Markets to Libya
Ben Norton | Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Dec 2017

28 Nov 2017 – The American and British media have awakened to the grim reality in Libya, where African refugees are for sale in open-air slave markets. Yet a crucial detail in this scandal has been downplayed or even ignored in many corporate media reports: the role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in bringing slavery to the North African nation.

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NYT Only the Latest Corporate Media Outlet to Give Free Publicity to Mercenary Profiteer
Adam Johnson | FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Sep 2017

The New York Times (8/30/17) decided to turn over a large chunk of the most precious opinion space in the English-speaking world to mercenary entrepreneur Erik Prince, so he could promote his plan to privatize and profit from the US occupation of Afghanistan.

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How Media Obscure US/Saudi Responsibility for Killing Yemeni Civilians
Ben Norton | FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Sep 2017

31 Aug 2017 – A coalition of Saudi Arabia, USA, UK and UAE has relentlessly bombed Yemen since March 2015. There are no other parties bombing the country, so media cannot feign ignorance as to who is responsible for the attacks. But reports on the bloody US/Saudi coalition airstrikes were nonetheless rife with ambiguous and downright misleading language.

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For Media, Driving Into a Crowd of Protesters Is a ‘Clash’ Not Terrorism
Adam Johnson | Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Aug 2017

12 Aug 2017 – The Washington Post, Boston Globe, AOL News, The Hill, BBC and Sky News UK all chose to frame the ramming of a car into anti-fascist protesters as “clashes.” “Clashes” is a term designed to obscure blame, presenting a picture of two equal sides engaging in violent activities. Reading “one dead” after “clashes” at a white nationalist rally gives us no idea who died, or who did the killing.

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Missing from Reports of Yemeni Carnage: Washington’s Responsibility
Jim Naureckas – Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, 7 Sep 2015

Washington’s role in facilitating deaths unmentioned by mainstream media.

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Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting-FAIR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Mar 2015

19 Mar 2015 – On 12th Anniversary of Iraq Invasion, Recalling Corporate Media’s Deception – It’s hardly controversial to suggest that the mainstream media’s performance in the lead-up to the Iraq War was a disaster.

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Good News! US Corporations Won’t Have to Pay for Nuclear Disasters in India
Jim Naureckas – Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting-FAIR, 2 Feb 2015

The “breakthrough” between Obama and Modi seems to be an agreement that the law will be “tweaked” to let US corporations off the hook in case of a devastating accident. For example, suppliers of nuclear equipment could be redefined as “contractors” and therefore not be liable under Indian law.

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Remembering Victims of Terror–And Forgetting Some Others
Jim Naureckas - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, 12 Jan 2015

Describing the attack on the French satirical paper, CBS News’ Morell said: “The motive here is absolutely clear. Trying to shut down a media organization that lampooned the prophet Mohammed. So no doubt in my mind this is terrorism.” Breivik’s motive was certainly not shutting anyone down for lampooning Mohammed. So perhaps, in Morrell’s mind, it doesn’t count as terrorism?

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The 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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Mainstream Media Silences Debate on US New Wars
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Nov 2014

New analysis finds little opposition in mainstream media to latest US military attacks on Middle East nations. In total, 205 sources appeared on the programs discussing military options in Syria and Iraq. Just six of these guests, or 3 percent, voiced opposition to US military intervention. There were 125 guests (61 percent) who spoke in favor of US war.

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On US TV, Israel Is ‘Striking Back’
Peter Hart – Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, 7 Jul 2014

This disparity is meaningful. The term “retaliation” suggests a defensive stance undertaken in response to someone else’s aggression. It also lays responsibility for the cycle of violence at the doorstep of the party being “retaliated” against, since they presumably initiated the conflict.

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AP: Chavez Wasted His Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Built Gigantic Skyscrapers
Jim Naureckas – Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting-FAIR, 25 Mar 2013

One of the more bizarre takes on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s death comes from Associated Press business reporter Pamela Sampson (3/5/13): Chavez squandered his nation’s oil money on healthcare, education and nutrition when he could have been building the world’s tallest building or his own branch of the Louvre. What kind of monster has priorities like that?

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The P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2012
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting-FAIR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Dec 2012

Recalling Some of the Stinkiest Media Moments of the Year [2012]

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The Threat–Again–of Left-Wing Latin American Democracy
Peter Hart – Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting-FAIR, 6 Aug 2012

You can count on U.S. corporate media to express alarm about the threat posed by left-wing governments in Latin America. But how do you sound the alarm about left-wing threats to democracy when actual elected left-wing leaders are being removed in anti-democratic coups? That’s no easy feat, but some reporters are up to the challenge. In the Washington Post on July 22 [2012] (under the headline “Latin America’s New Authoritarians”), reporter Juan Forero explains…

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Do TV Networks ‘Practice’ for War?
Peter Hart – Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting-FAIR, 20 Feb 2012

I was visiting ABC News the other day to see a friend who works on graphics. When I went to his room, he showed me all the graphics he was making in anticipation of the Israeli attack on Iran; not just maps, but flight patterns, trajectories and 3-D models of U.S. aircraft carrier fleets. Does that kind of thing actually happen? Well, yeah.

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Fox News: The No. 1 Name in Murder Fantasies
Steve Rendall - Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, 17 Jan 2011

This report is not new; it was published by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting two months ago. We thought it was important to republish it, as it shows a pattern of recklessness at Fox News. Recklessness that contributed to Saturday’s [8 Jan 2011] tragedy in Arizona.

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