Just published, in the September 2011 issue of Extra!, the monthly magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), is an article I wrote about the US mainstream media’s response to the 9/11 attacks and the establishment of Guantánamo, which, of course, has been, for the most part (but with shining exceptions), a disappointment.

In the article, “The ‘Worst of the Worst’?: 9/11, Guantánamo and the failures of US corporate media,” which is available here on FAIR’s website, I examine the unwillingness of the media to criticise the Bush administration’s “war on terror” until after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April 2004, and how the treasure trove of documents about the Guantánamo prisoners that were released under duress by the Pentagon in 2005 and 2006 were only adequately analyzed by the Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey and by myself, in my book The Guantánamo Files and my subsequent work.

I also examine how, under Obama, the media have allowed themselves to be seduced by Pentagon propaganda about the numbers of alleged “recidivists” released from Guantánamo, which has contributed enormously to the skewed debate about he closure of the prison, dominated by Republicans cynically using Guantánamo as part of their political campaigning. Read the rest of this entry »

During a brief media frenzy last week, following the release, by WikiLeaks, of classified military documents relating to almost all of the 779 prisoners held in Guantánamo, I was interviewed on Democracy Now!, by the BBC and Press TV, by Antiwar Radio, by Alexa O’Brien for WikiLeaks Central, and by other media outlets, including FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), for the weekly CounterSpin show, which also featured Lucinda Marshall discussing revelations that the best-selling author Greg Mortensen may have been economical with the truth in his best-selling “memoir,” Three Cups of Tea.

A national media watch group, FAIR, founded in 1986, keeps a close eye on bias in the mainstream media in the United States, which is, of course, a colossal task. I’m delighted to have written for FAIR’s Extra! magazine in February 2009, discussing, in an article entitled, “Dangerous Revisionism Over Guantánamo,” flawed reporting in the New York Times regarding alleged bodyguards for Osama bin Laden (mostly still held), who are known as the “Dirty Thirty,” and I’m also pleased to have spoken on CounterSpin back in May 2008 and November 2008 (also here).

The latest interview, with Steve Rendall, which lasts for nearly nine minutes, and is available here, starts just before 10 minutes into the show, following a round-up of the week’s news, and involves me explaining, in the first place, how the documents contain nearly 200 profiles of innocent and insignificant prisoners whose stories have never been revealed before by the US government. Read the rest of this entry »