FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)

Under Trump, Criticism Is Now Criminal After the killing of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, Trump escalated his war on free speech, calling for criminalizing criticism of himself.

Trump's statement was a declaration that the idea of free speech is over. Where once you had the right to criticize those who “bring order,” now such reckless rhetoric is punishable as direct support for “terrorism.”

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Mumia Abu-Jamal on Media and Power Mumia Abu-Jamal's 1982 conviction exposed flagrant flaws in corporate media’s storytelling around crime and punishment and race and power.

It was and continues to be clear that for the powers that be, including in the elite press, it is important not only to keep Mumia Abu-Jamal behind bars, but to keep him quiet.

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NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin Summer School sidelines critical perspectives to teach its audience that privatization, austerity and deregulation are pivotal to freedom and prosperity.

NPR's Planet Money spent the summer School convincing its audience that the most good a state can do is to protect the accumulation of private property—and that any alternative is tantamount to theft and a barrier to our collective prosperity.

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‘Media Need to Report on the Real Cost of Data Centers’: CounterSpin interview with Jai Dulani and Vivek Bharathan on data center opposition "This is because of community pushback, communities that are saying, this is not worth the environmental threat that these data centers pose."

"We're really being put in a position to compete with corporations around water. Farmland is being rezoned for these data centers. So you can't eat AI, you can't drink AI. This is the future that is being built before our eyes."

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When a Shooter Is Trans—and Not a Cis Male—Suddenly Identity Matters Most media outlets focused on profiling the shooter—who was transgender—treating the shooting as an isolated case rather than part of a larger, systemic issue.

The "trans shooter" meme illustrates a flaw in the way our minds work: We pay attention to things because they're unusual, then think they're common because we're paying attention to them.

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When a Shooter Is Trans—and Not a Cis Male—Suddenly Identity Matters Most media outlets focused on profiling the shooter—who was transgender—treating the shooting as an isolated case rather than part of a larger, systemic issue.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, 0.11% of the known suspects in mass shootings over the past decade were transgender—far less than the trans share of the general public.

fair.org/home/when-a-...

CPB Is Dead, But We Need Public Media More Than Ever Federal funding for public broadcasting officially ends today, the beginning of the new federal fiscal year. With the Republican-directed rescission of already-allocated funds to the Corporation for P...

Eliminating CPB could be both loss & gain for public media. There’s no sugarcoating the lost journalism jobs, station closures & programming cuts. And yet public media will also be freed from the ideological leash that always kept it from serving as a true public watchdog.

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How the hell is Trump’s fascistic “We’re under invasion from within” or talk of “enemies foreign & domestic” not the blaring headline in every newspaper? That content-free WaPo headline is particularly reprehensible in failing to convey to readers any sense of what happened yesterday.

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When you see stories like this—only (my word) 40% of Americans believe Israel is deliberately killing civilians—remember that 95% of what Israel is doing is never reported in the Israel-friendly media, & the 5% that is is accompanied by an Israeli “justification”. @fairmediawatch.bsky.social

US Cartooning Tradition in Peril in Trump’s First Year In the era of Trump, publishers are, for a variety of reasons, encouraging cartoonists to approach the president on bended knee.

In the second Trump era, we need political cartoonists more than ever--but publishers are making them an endangered species.

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‘Kristi Noem Is Actually Claiming Videotaping DHS Officers Is Violent’: CounterSpin interview with Matthew Cunningham-Cook on criminalizing witness "It's an extremely dangerous time for the free press, and it's critically important that journalists not be kowtowing to this administration."

"They’re interested in crafting a legal argument that states that it’s actually 'doxxing' to videotape DHS officers, or to find out who they are... This is just so wildly against basic understandings of what our Constitution means."

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“Unitary executive” sounds so much better than “dictator”, doesn’t it? Guess what word you won’t find in this NYT article? Yeah, you guessed, it’s “dictator”. And guess what phrase you won’t find when the NYT writes about, eg, Kim Jung-Un? Yeah, it’s “unitary executive.”

When Palestinians Die in Israeli Captivity, US Media Almost Never Take Note The different treatment accorded to the plights of Palestinian and Israeli prisoners by US corporate media illustrates a persistent double standard that treats some people as more human than others.

Media should be reporting on Israeli captives. It only serves the interests of the Israeli government, however, for US corporate media to foreground the plight of Israelis held by Hamas while failing to do so for Palestinians in Israeli captivity.

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UN Declares Genocide in Gaza While 250 US Lawmakers Are in Israel It is surely in the interest of the public to know if their local representatives were in Israel networking with parties to what the UN has labeled a genocide.

As the world’s preeminent governing body has officially labeled what is happening in Gaza genocide, prominent US news outlets failed to cover the largest-ever delegation of US state legislators meeting in Jerusalem at a conference sponsored by the Israeli government.

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‘Near Daily’ Israeli Assaults on Lebanon Have Become Non-News for Western Media Western corporate media have increasingly lost interest in reporting on Israel’s unceasing war on its northern neighbor.

The fact that such terrorism against Lebanon by the state of Israel transpires “almost every day” is perhaps part of the reason the media have largely relegated it to the realm of non-news.

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Charlie Kirk Purges Show the Need to Stand Up to Government Bullying In the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s shooting on September 10, getting rid of troublesome voices has become easier.

My latest looks at the attempt to silence @karenattiah.bsky.social and Jimmy Kimmel in the wake of Charlie Kirk's killing
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Jai Dulani and Vivek Bharathan on Data Center Opposition, Keith McHenry (2024) on Homeless Policy Something so vaguely named as a “data center” is actually a physical thing in real neighborhoods affecting real people.

Many people still think of technology as something that happens inside your phone or your computer, divorced from physical nature. In reality, technology requires massive environmental and economic resources that are localized in real communities.

fair.org/home/jai-dul...

For US Corporate Media, Italy’s Gaza Protests Had Two Strikes Against Them After a massive Italian mobilization against genocide in Gaza, there was only a smattering of online coverage among US corporate media outlets.

The New York Times home page promoted three separate stories on Trump’s attempt to link autism to Tylenol, and a feature on whether reptiles have moods—no doubt important stories, but perhaps less so than tens of thousands of people going on strike against genocide.

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As Ellison Buys Out TikTok, US Moves Toward One-Party Media The Ellison duo taking over both CBS and CNN, as well as controlling a major social media network like TikTok, would be dangerous for democracy.

In healthy democracies, #billionaires don’t buy up all the means of cultural consumption.
#inequality @fairmediawatch.bsky.social fair.org/home/as-elli...

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Trump Turns Pentagon Into Department of War on First Amendment The Trump directive transcends the anti-democratic tradition of suppressing military information, taking the nation into new authoritarian territory.

The Pentagon is saying it will only credential reporters if they promise to be stenographers for the department’s press team, regurgitating press releases and spokesperson talking points, and avoid independent interviews and investigations.

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Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees drop off the grid after leaving site As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald.

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

Charlie Kirk Purges Show the Need to Stand Up to Government Bullying In the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s shooting on September 10, getting rid of troublesome voices has become easier.

Kimmel was purportedly yanked over his benign comments about Kirk’s death. But his real offense may have been showing how Trump couldn’t be bothered to mourn his friend’s death, even as he insisted the rest of the country do so.

fair.org/home/charlie...

Israel murdered 4 American citizens in Lebanon yesterday, including these 3 children. You will not find that news on the home page of either the NYT or WaPo today. 🤬 #DisinformationByOmission @fairmediawatch.bsky.social

ACTION ALERT: Snopes Thinks Kirk Was Kidding About Killing Gays Being ‘God’s Perfect Law’ Please ask Snopes to reevaluate its finding that Charlie Kirk was not endorsing the stoning of gays, which he called "God's perfect law."

.@snopes.com offers no reason for us to doubt Charlie Kirk's sincerity about his belief in the scripture he quoted, and therefore no justification for its definitive "false" rating.

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As Ellison Buys Out TikTok, US Moves Toward One-Party Media The Ellison duo taking over both CBS and CNN, as well as controlling a major social media network like TikTok, would be dangerous for democracy.

The TikTok deal is not just about money. It’s about control of the political narrative.

fair.org/home/as-elli...

Matthew Cunningham-Cook on Criminalizing Witness, Tim Karr on Media Compliance Witness testimony is how we can resist official testimony about people "resisting arrest." And you can tell how much it matters by the efforts to shut it down.

Kristi Noem says videotaping ICE agents is illegally “doxxing” them, even as JD Vance is saying everyone should “call the employer” of anyone who posts anything short of praise of Charlie Kirk online.

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" "And when someone pointed out that killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians, without any due process, is called a war crime, Vance replied, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.” "