Bill O'Reilly's (Totally Bogus) Healthcare Stunner!
Last night on the O'Reilly Factor (3/16/10): What I'm about to tell you is simply stunning. A new survey published by the New England Journal of Medicine, a prestigious magazine, says that nearly half...
View ArticleThings That Are Funny to Dana Milbank: Kenyans, Hawaiians, Short Democrats
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank (3/18/10) returns from his excursion into mocking right-wingers to return to his natural role of ridiculing single-payer advocates. His target today is Rep....
View ArticleNoam Chomsky on Healthcare and the Media
Via an interview with Raw Story (3/22/10): The Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor added that it's a damning referendum on American democracy that one of the most highly supported...
View ArticleIf Chris Matthews Were Capable of Embarrassment
…he would have to take a leave of absence to recover from the shame of having heaped ridicule on a guest who tried to explain to him how Congress could and would pass a healthcare reform bill. Daily...
View ArticleHealth Reform and the Imaginary Conservative Majority
One of the main assumptions of the final weeks of coverage of the congressional debate over healthcare reform was that the public was opposed to the White House plan. But some polling analysis shows...
View ArticleOne GOP Lawmaker Says Dems Are 'Ratcheting Up Rhetoric,' While Another Calls...
Articles like "Accusations Fly Between Parties Over Threats and Vandalism" in the New York Times today (3/26/10) are fairly useless. Are Republicans "fanning the flames with coded rhetoric," as a...
View ArticleWill Face the Nation Factcheck Guest's Healthcare Lies?
Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann made two false claims about healthcare on CBS's Face the Nation last Sunday that went unchallenged by host Bob Schieffer. CBS did, however, post an article on their...
View ArticleFrontline Disguises Single-Payer Advocates as Public-Option Promoters
The PBS program Frontline on April 13 offered a look at the White House drive for healthcare reform titled Obama's Deal. Like a previous Frontline special about the U.S. healthcare system, the program...
View ArticleAction Alert: PBS Misrepresents Single-Payer Advocates
FAIR's latest Action Alert (4/23/10) concerns the Frontline program Obama's Deal, which not only didn't mention the single-payer proposal, but misrepresented single-payer advocates as proponents of a...
View ArticleWaPo Editor Wants a War Debate–Somewhere Else
Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt wrote a piece today (5/24/10) headlined, "In the Absence of Debate, Iraq and Afghanistan Go Unnoticed." Hiatt laments the silence surrounding U.S. wars...
View ArticlePBS's NewsHour Throws a Tea Party
NewsHour viewers last night (9/9/10) might have been surprised to see a long one-on-one conversation with far-right activist/lobbyist Dick Armey, promoting his new book, Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party...
View ArticleThe Goal of Stimulus Is Not to Show How Progressive You Are
Matt Bai (New York Times, 11/9/10), as a standard-issue corporate media political analyst, sees the Democrats being moved to the right as an upside to their disastrous showing in the '10 midterms. But...
View ArticleMichael Moore's Not-at-All Banned Movie
One recently released WikiLeaks cable stated that Cuban officials had banned Michael Moore's healthcare documentary Sicko. Critics of Moore's work pounced, delighted thata film that spent...
View ArticleAt NBC, Olympics Were Bigger News Than Healthcare or Unemployment
I always enjoy Andrew Tyndall's year-in-review report, which tallies the minutes each network newscast devoted to the important stories of the year. His 2010 report is worth a look. The most...
View ArticleDid We Say Job-Killing? We Meant Job-DESTROYING: The New 'Civil' DC
Under the headline "Lawmakers Aiming to Increase Civility," the New York Times (1/17/11)reports from the front lines of theimproved, post-Tucsonpolitical climate: And the House speaker, John A....
View ArticleNo Room in NYT for Single-Payer Doctors, but Right-Wing Cranks Are OK
When I saw the headline (1/19/11), "Vocal Physicians Group Renews Health Law Fight," I thought maybe–just maybe–the New York Times might be talking about Physicians for a National Health Program, the...
View ArticlePimps and Prostitutes…Again?
In late 2009 and early 2010, right-wing activist James O'Keefe concocted a story that got widespread media coverage. The tall tale went like this: O'Keefe and his associate went to offices affiliated...
View Article'Revamping' Medicare? The Word They're Looking for Is 'Slashing'
Few pieces better illustrate the uselessness of so much corporate media political journalism than Kathleen Hennessey's piece in the L.A. Times (4/4/11) on Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's deficit reduction...
View ArticleOnly Hotheads Talk About the Effects of Budget Cuts
Corporate media's preference for"centrism" canoftentranslate intoreporting that casts two sides of a debate as equally belligerent or unwilling to compromise. ABC reporter Jonathan Karl's report...
View ArticleThe Washington Post and Paul Ryan's Wonky Math
Dean Baker's Beat the Press is the best Early Warning Media Mythbuster. It's simple: You read it every morning before you read the papers (he is up before you are, trust me) and you're well prepared to...
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