What Passes for "News"

Truth or Distortion?  Fact or Fiction?

Is Rush Limbaugh a big fat liar?

Is FOX News really news?

"One thing editors of the New York Times and I keep trying to do is knock down the notion that the Times is a liberal paper. But we go about it differently. They do it by stuff like calling the Nazi groper Schwarzenegger a moderate Republican [10/11/03], by apologizing for implying that George W. Bush might not be telling the truth [10/14/03] and by hiring the smarty-pants right-wing columnist David Brooks, who tells us [10/14/03] that baseball fans out in Bush country are courteous, unlike the boors in Boston and New York.

"I read the Times over 70 years - worked there for 24 - and never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a fare increase or rent increase or a utility rate increase it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don't get me started on universal health care and Social Security. Why do people think the Times is liberal?

"For one thing, it depends on how you define liberal. Many good people define it as favoring freedom of choice, protection of the environment, separation of church and state, an end to capital punishment and our savage drug laws. Good causes - the Times says it's for all of them. Yet when push comes to shove, it backs candidates who take the other side. It's allergic to progressives - always has been." - John L. Hess, author of My Times: a Memoir of Dissent which chronicles his 24 years at the New York Times, writing in the December, 2003 issue of Extra! published by FAIR.

Unemployment in the United States since 1989

Party Line or Corporate Line?

The following data come from the 21 April 2003 issue of The Nation and were researched and written by Daniel Benaim, Vishesh Kumar and Priyanka Motaparthy.

Lieutenant General Barry McCaffrey, former drug czar and a player in Gulf War I, is a military news analyst for NBC news. As this link shows, he will speak to your group on a variety of topics for a fee of $10,000-15,000. Well; everyone has to make a living. While listening to McCaffrey give his unbiased and knowledgeable views on NBC, it would be wise to remember that the General is also advisory board members of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a Washington-based lobbying group formed October 2002 to promote public support for an Iraq war. Their purpose in life is to, "engage in educational advocacy efforts to mobilize US and international support for policies aimed at ending the aggression of Saddam Hussein." As of this date [14 April 2003] their web site is down - probably because they met their mission. So, if you want to know anything about them, you'll have to read this or this. The group is, or at least was, chaired by Bruce Jackson, former vp of Lockheed Martin [builders of the F-117 Nighthawk, F-16 Fighting Falcon and other aircraft being used in Iraq] with another board member - Richard Perle, known to one and all. Given McCaffrey's conflict of interest [how can you expect him to be an accurate analyst when it is in his own interest to promote war in Iraq] in the news biz, it is also of interest to note that the General is a board member of Mitretek, Veritas Capital, Raytheon Aerospace and Integrated Defense Technologies - all of which do big business with the defense department. McCaffrey has, of late been a vocal critic of the Rumsfeld war plan. The General would like to see more armor and artillery used in Iraq, specifically the Abrams tank and the Bradley fighting vehicle - both of which are manufactured, in part, by International Defense Technologies. Is there a connection? YOU decide.

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