Jim Naureckas & Janine Jackson, "The FAIR reader � An EXTRA! Review of Press and Politics in the 90s"
FAIR stands for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. They�re a news watchdog agency operating out of New York whose sole purpose is to monitor the press and media and see who�s not telling the full story � and then provide it. They�ll also watch for editorializing or propaganda, like when the three networks have 878 on-screen guests, out of which 877 supported the gulf war.
If a news organization tries to editorialize in a hard news story, FAIR will tell them to knock it off and sends out e-mail alerts so the general public can write in as well. (If you want these alerts, you can sign up to their mailing list at www.fair.org) They�re also accused of being incredibly liberal � and they are � but I�ve seen them go after both sides. It just happens that the conservative side usually lies and manipulates much more frequently. Hell, they released an entire book detailing Rush Limbaugh�s �reign of error.�
There�s dozens of short articles here, criticizing the reaction to everything from Gulf War reporting, to welfare, NAFTA, Panama, and Hillary Clinton�s acerbic comment about baking cookies. Most are well written and sharp-tongued. Some authors do, however, occasionally lapse in judgment thinking that everybody pays as close attention to the media as they do and therefore will skip details that would have helped their argument.
Still though, it�s gotta be pretty cool to have a job examining media professional and proving them to be a bunch of assholes again and again. I noticed they take interns. I�m available.
But since they represent �Fairness and Accuracy,� is it really proper to claim this book is a review of press and politics in the 90s, when it was released in 1996? I figure it took about eight months to gather the articles they wanted to use, add additional information when necessary, copy edit and provide all the footnotes (of which there are hundreds, if not thousands). Perhaps we should all write in and complain that if they were truly about accuracy, they would state that this is really a review of the first half of the 90s.
