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March 1, 2024
Extra! March 2024 Soundbites
Despite the large size and international reach of the event, a global day of protest against the Israeli genocide in Gaza was completely ignored by the New York Times.
Extra! is FAIR’s hard-hitting newsletter of well-documented media criticism. The 4-page, ad-free, newsletter publishes ten times a year bringing you the media analysis and activism that you expect from FAIR. Extra! receives no money from advertisers or corporate underwriters, and depends on subscribers for its existence. Please subscribe and help make it possible for us to keep investigating and publishing.
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November 1, 2022
Extra! November 2022 Soundbites
Coverage of Dugina Bombing Put Journalists ‘on Front Lines’ When Russian journalist Darya Dugina was killed by a car bomb in Moscow in August, CNN (8/27/22) framed her death not as a terroristic attack on the media but as a blow to "Russia’s vast disinformation machine," saying Dugina was "on the front lines" of Russia’s […]
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January 29, 2022
Extra! Soundbites January/February 2022
800,000 Dead From Covid—Who Cares? On a day when some outlets (e.g., New York Times, 12/13/21) soberly reported that the recorded US death toll was about to surpass 800,000—a number greater than the entire population of Seattle, Denver or Washington, DC; greater than the US toll from the Spanish Flu or the Civil War—the Atlantic […]
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July 1, 2021
Extra! Soundbites July 2021
Assaults on Choice Aren’t News (Here) Republican state lawmakers introduced more than 500 bills that would restrict abortion rights by mid-May—including some that would charge women who terminated their pregnancies with murder. But from the beginning of the year until May 16, NBC News didn’t once mention these attempts to roll back reproductive freedom. (They […]
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June 1, 2021
Extra! Soundbites June 2021
Things You Never Expect Michelle Kosinski, a TV journalist who’s served as CNN‘s White House reporter and a foreign correspondent for NBC, posted a tweet (5/8/21) that declared: As an American journalist, you never expect: Your own govt to lie to you, repeatedly Your own govt to hide information the public has a right to […]
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April 1, 2021
Extra! April 2021 Soundbites
Trump Briefings? News. Biden Briefings? Not News. Nowadays, corporate media would have you believe they are appalled by Donald Trump: They had to cover the liar and cheat because he was president, but they held their nose the whole time, and now they can’t wait to get back to serious reporting on policy. The only […]
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April 1, 2021
Already Erasing His Record, Media Celebrate Biden’s ‘First’ Attack
The less clear a population is about the frequency and scale of murderous violence its government carries out, the easier it is for its ruling class to go about its wars. Fortunately for the US state, corporate media help manufacture collective amnesia by expunging US aggression from the record. When the Biden administration bombed Syria […]
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April 1, 2021
Limbaugh Leaves Behind a Nation Transformed by His Resentment and Deception
Rush Limbaugh left behind a legacy of lies, bigotry, science denial and conspiracy mongering—as well as a media and political system significantly transformed by his influence.
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April 1, 2021
Minimum Wage Opponents Are ‘Moderates’—in Media Imagination
As Democrats push to include a 15ドル federal minimum wage in the Covid stimulus package, many media reports have been giving the false impression that it’s an idea far outside the mainstream.
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March 1, 2021
Extra! Soundbites March 2021
The real test is not whether corporate media were able to condemn a president’s seditious acts, but whether they go back to business as usual.
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March 1, 2021
Extra! March 2021 Soundbites
The GOP Threat to Democracy “Trump Caused the Assault on the Capitol. He Must Be Removed,” declared the Washington Post editorial board (1/6/21) immediately after the January 6 insurrection. “Responsibility for this act of sedition lies squarely with the president, who has shown that his continued tenure in office poses a grave threat to US […]
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January 1, 2021
Extra! January/February 2021 Soundbites
Missed Story: Latino Voting Surge Boosted Biden A common theme in post-election coverage was how well Donald Trump did with people of color, particularly Latinos. “How Democrats Missed Trump’s Appeal to Latino Voters” was one New York Times story (11/9/20); another (11/16/20) read, “Liberals Envisioned a Multiracial Coalition. Voters of Color Had Other Ideas.” While […]
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December 1, 2020
Despite ‘Man Bites Dog’ Exit Poll Stories, Dogs Still Do Most Biting
The bottom line, obscured by demographic gee-whiz stories, is that Trump had a 15-point advantage among whites and a 46-point deficit with people of color.
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December 1, 2020
Media Owned by Wealthy Find a Wealth of Reasons Against a Wealth Tax
Corporate media—whose owners are overwhelmingly from the class that would be paying a wealth tax—threw cold water on the idea,
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December 1, 2020
In Dems’ Post-Election Fight, Corporate Media Took Side of Centrists
Joe Biden hadn’t even been declared the victor of the 2020 election before establishment Democrats, in the face of poorer-than-expected results in House and Senate races, began pointing fingers at the left—with corporate media giving them a major assist.
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December 1, 2020
Extra! December 2020 Soundbites
Are You Ready for Some Not-So-Tough Questions? CBS’s Lesley Stahl started 60 Minutes’ pre-election interview with President Donald Trump (10/25/20) by asking, "Are you ready for some tough questions?" Note that this is not a tough question: The correct answer for any candidate is "yes." Despite Trump’s hostile reaction, Stahl’s questions did not get all […]
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November 1, 2020
Extra! November 2020 Soundbites
Be Wary of USA Today’s False Balance "With 50 Days Till Election Day, Voters ‘Anxious,’ Wary of Trump, Biden Alike," a headline in USA Today’s print edition (9/14/20) read. But that framing glossed over a key difference between the two candidates: At the time, about 3 percentage points more people viewed Joe Biden favorably than […]
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November 1, 2020
Media Need to Be Clear About Clear Efforts to Depose Democracy
Newsrooms have an obligation to report that the most powerful person in the country is trying to subvert the election and retain power illegitimately, and a failure to blow the whistle on a clear threat to democracy is journalistic malpractice.
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November 1, 2020
‘The Reality That We Live In Today Is Not Immutable’
CounterSpin’s Janine Jackson (9/25/20) interviewed Laura Flanders—the founding producer of CounterSpin, and for many years Janine’s co-host—about her current project, the Laura Flanders Show, which just started being distributed by the PBS World Channel. This is an excerpt from that conversation. Janine Jackson: The Laura Flanders Show itself is not new, but it is […]
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October 1, 2020
Extra! October 2020 Soundbites
‘Dizzyingly Different Versions of Reality’ "Dueling Versions of Reality Define First Week of Fall Campaign" was the Associated Press’s headline over a piece by its chief political reporter Steve Peoples (9/4/20). "Embracing Both Sides journalism and injecting it with steroids," as critic Eric Boehlert (PressRun, 9/8/20) put it, the story reported that Donald Trump says […]