The Peculiarities of Afghan Society
New reports of civilian casualties in Afghanistan (37 dead) were covered in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. The story provides a decent sense of thedeath toll, but near the end makes a rather bizarre...
View ArticleWho Gets to Speak: Iraq, Afghanistan and the NY Times
The New York Times' Week in Review section yesterday (11/23/08) gathered a group of op-eds under the heading "Transitions," which they described as "a series of Op-Ed articles by experts on the most...
View ArticleMedia's 'Axiomatic' Warmongering
Recalling that "during the mid-1960s, the conventional wisdom was what everyone with a modicum of smarts kept saying: higher U.S. troop levels in Vietnam were absolutely necessary," FAIR associate...
View ArticleMove Over, Taliban–CBS Is the Real Master of Manipulation
CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric (1/27/09) introduced a segment on civilian casualties in Afghanistan by saying, "Our Elizabeth Palmer spoke with the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who says the...
View ArticleUSA Today: Obama's War, No Critics Allowed
USA Today's "Obama's War" cover story today (2/18/09) is long by that paper's usual standards, but can't seem to find any space for critics of the plan to send 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan....
View ArticleNPR's 'History Scrub' of U.S. Fault in Afghanistan
"A rather major problem with nearly all of NPR's reporting" has been identified by NPR Check blogger Mytwords (2/18/09) and named the "history scrub." The definition: "If the essential background...
View ArticleNY Times: The Military's View of Afghanistan
Apparently the New York Times hasmoved Elisabeth Bumiller over to the Pentagon beat. Her record as Bush White House correspondent producedsome memorable missteps ("You canâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t just...
View ArticleOn the 'Silver Lining' of Coffin Photos
Media reporter DeWayne Wickham sees (USA Today, 3/3/09) the new Pentagon rules allowing photography of U.S. casualty coffins as "just the silver lining" around the dark cloud of a fact that "our free...
View ArticleUSA Today's Afghan Poll
People dislike the Afghan war more than ever, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll; 42 percent of Americans now think invading that country was a mistake. For some reason,the paper'sfrontpage...
View ArticleWaPo's Prescription for War Without End
Considering the fact that, "while the Obama administration says that the problems of the region cannot be solved by military means, the basic approach is reliance on heightened military means," FAIR...
View ArticleNPR's Afghanistan Stenographers Bureau Still Open
NPR watchdog Mytwords (NPR Check, 3/28/09) would just "love to know what it costs NPR to station Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson in Afghanistan," from where she dispatches to U.S. public radio such "news" as...
View ArticleWhy Some Deaths 'Don't Seem to Impinge on Our Lives'
Having covered the U.S. war on Afghanistan at his TomDispatch website from the outset, Tom Engelhardt marvels (4/23/09) at how, "almost like clockwork, the reports float up to us from thousands of...
View ArticlePentagon Pundits Still Thriving at MSNBC
During coverage of the Obama administration's 100-day mark, MSNBC had war reporter Richard Engel and anchor Tamron Hall interview MSNBC analyst Barry McCaffrey, who CJR.org's Clint Hendler (4/29/09)...
View Article'Civilian Deaths Imperil Support for Afghan War'
In the wake of the release of the U.S. military's own figures showing a record number of bombs were dropped by U.S. warplanes in Afghanistan during April, newspapers are reporting today on a...
View Article60 Minutes Does PR for Drones
FAIR has a new Action Alert on 60 Minutes' May 10 broadcast extolling the virtues of unmanned drones, with no perspectives at all from critics of the weapons–who might have pointed out that they kill...
View ArticleU.S. Media Solution for War: More Wars
Pointing to a May 9 Boston Globe editorial saying that Barack "Obama conveyed the right message last week by hosting Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari" to emphasize...
View ArticleMSM Blind to Energy Factor in U.S. Wars
In his introduction (TomDispatch, 5/12/09) to Pepe Escobar analyzing the current politics of the Aghanistan/Pakistan region, Tom Engelhardt describes how "there, the skies are filled with planes and...
View ArticleNPR: Ever Faithful to U.S. Empire
Dubbing National Public Radio "The Counterinsurgency Channel," blogger Mytwords (NPR Check, 5/28/09) takes issue with a May 27 All Things Considered report "meant to promote an aspect of U.S....
View ArticleOn the WaPo's 'Tacit Faith in Massive Violence'
Writing that "it takes at least tacit faith in massive violence to believe that after three decades of horrendous violence in Afghanistan, upping the violence there will improve the situation," FAIR...
View ArticleNPR's 'Sanitized, Propaganda-Laden' War Reportage
NPR Check blogger Mytwords has some advice (6/14/09) "in these times of austerity and job 'shedding' at NPR": "Instead of spending all the money it must take to embed a reporter like Tom Bowman with...
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