Watchdog Watch: FAIR vs. MRC

People who make their living churning out the news are used to having their work criticized from all sides. A quick glance at the opinions of some of the media's more prominent critics - from Noam Chomsky to Spiro Agnew, from Kathleen Hall Jamieson to Rush Limbaugh - makes it clear that there is no consensus about what is wrong with the press. Clearly, media criticism is not an objective science.

Consider, for example, some of the differences between the two most prominent media watchdog organizations, the New York-based Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and the Alexandria, Virginia-based Media Research Center (MRC). FAIR generally has a liberal perspective; for example, its spokespeople attempt to bring to public attention the effects of media mergers and other developments that they think prevent minority voices from being heard. FAIR generally concentrates on what is not being mentioned on news pages and on evening newscasts. The MRC, on the other hand, generally aims at what is there, or at least what it perceives as being there: an overwhelming liberal bias in day-to-day coverage of politics and culture.

 Both groups have published handbooks about media bias, but you'd be hard-pressed to figure out from the books' titles - And That's the Way It Isn't: A Reference Guide to Media Bias and Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media- which organization published which book. And you can bet that they have very different ideas about what constitutes media bias.

Needless to say, that's not the only difference between the two organizations. Here are some others.

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)

Founder and Executive Director: Jeff Cohen; Cohen is a lawyer who has worked for the American Civil Liberties Union

Staff size: nine in New York, one in Los Angeles

Founding date: 1986

1996 operating budget: approximately $800,000

Web address: http://www.fair.org/fair

Selected advisory board members: Actors Edward Asner, John Cusack, Tim Robbins, and Susan Sarandon; journalists Ben Bagdikian, Barbara Ehrenreich, Susan Faludi, Katha Pollitt, and Studs Terkel; musician Jackson Browne; poet Allen Ginsberg; feminists Eleanor Smeal and Gloria Steinem

Selected b�tes noires: Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, Bob Grant

Nexis stories since January 1995 that include the phrase "Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting": 305

 Selected financial backers: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; the Veatch Foundation; the Samuel Rubin Foundation; the Streisand Foundation. Seventy percent of budget comes from subscriptions and donations from individuals. FAIR does not accept corporate contributions.

 FAIR-affiliated books: Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media; The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error

Publications and other resources: the bimonthly magazine Extra! ($19 a year for individuals, $29 for institutions); "Media Beat," a weekly syndicated column by FAIR's Norman Solomon; CounterSpin, a weekly radio show (RealAudio files of recent shows can be accessed from the FAIR Web site)

Excerpt from mission statement: "FAIR focuses public awareness on the narrow corporate ownership of the press, the media's allegiance to official agendas and their insensitivity to women, labor, minorities, and other public interest constituencies."

What they say about the MRC: "We like independent, tough journalism, even when it exposes institutions or individuals we might be sympathetic with. One of the reasons we get lumped together with groups [like MRC] that seem to oppose the very institution of journalism is the centrist modus operandi of the media. You [reporters] think you've covered a story when you put yourself equidistant between two groups and then you don't have to evaluate who's telling the truth or what their records are." -- Jeff Cohen, to cjr

What they're doing to cover the 1996 presidential campaign: plenty of coverage, but no funds are being specifically devoted to it.

Media Research Center (MRC)

Founder and Chairman: L. Brent Bozell III; Bozell was the finance director for Patrick Buchanan's 1992 presidential campaign and is a nephew of William F. Buckley Jr.

Staff size: approximately twenty-six in Virginia, five in Los Angeles

Founding date: 1987

1996 operating budget: approximately $3.83 million

Web address: http://www.mediaresearch.org