Adam Johnson

Adam Johnson

Adam Johnson is a New York-based  journalist, a contributing analyst for FAIR.org, and co-host of the Citations Needed podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @adamjohnsonnyc

Articles by this author

"Editors and producers frequently assure media consumers there’s a “church and state divide” in the newsroom separating reporting from the commercial side of the business." (Photo: Screenshot) Views
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
MSNBC’S Creepy Comcast Commercial Is Sinclair Lite
After the justified uproar over pro-Trump Sinclair Broadcast Group forcing its scores of affiliates to humiliate themselves by reading an on-air script condemning “misleading” news, one would think other media outlets would be a little more careful not to mimic such behavior. Nonetheless, MSNBC —...
Read more
"How Changa or Puryear discussing racism and war furthers an effort to “create chaos” is never made clear, unless stating facts about the world that are unflattering to US centers of power is now per se destructive." (Photo: Screenshot) Views
Friday, April 20, 2018
Public Radio’s McCarthyite Smear of Black Activists Shows Danger of Russia Panic
For over a year, outlets from FAIR ( 8/24/16 ) to TruthDig ( 1/7/17 ) to The Nation ( 8/7/17 ) to The Intercept ( 2/12/18 ) have been warning about the pitfalls of nonstop Russia Is Everywhere and Out to Get Us coverage. The Russians are “stoking discord” and “sowing unrest” and infiltrating online...
Read more
"Seven of the top 10 newspapers by circulation—USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Newsday and Washington Post—supported the airstrikes." (Photo: Screenshot) Views
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Out of 26 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Zero Opposed
A survey by FAIR of the top 100 papers in the US by circulation found not a single editorial board opposed to Trump’s April 13 airstrikes on Syria. Twenty supported the strikes, while six were ambiguous as to whether or not the bombing was advisable. The remaining 74 issued no opinion about Trump’s...
Read more
"With the rise of ISIS and the broader war on terror, members of Congress have shown their “opposition” to war by “calling for a vote” on the war without addressing the underlying substance of said war or how one would vote, should one take place." (Photo: Senate Democrats/Flickr/cc) Views
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Democrats, Too, Love Trump's Wars
American politicians on both sides of the aisle love war. On Monday, an In These Times survey found that 92 percent of U.S. Democratic and Independent senators did not mount meaningful opposition to Donald Trump’s April 13 air strikes against the Syrian government. The primary point of contention...
Read more
Views
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Few to No Anti-Bombing Voices as Trump Prepared to Escalate Syria War
The curators of American public opinion at the three most influential broadsheets in the United States have decided that dissent from the build-up to new airstrikes on Syria is not really an opinion worth hearing. Of 16 columns leveling an opinion about “fresh” airstrikes on the Syrian regime in...
Read more
The power asymmetry is one of the largest of any conflict in the world, yet Western media still cling on an institutional level to a “cycle of violence” frame, with “both sides” depicted as two equal parties. (Photo: Pinterest) Views
Monday, April 09, 2018
Snipers Shooting Unarmed People at 100 Meters Isn’t a ‘Clash’
As FAIR has noted before (e.g., Extra! , 1/17 ; FAIR.org , 4/2/18 ), the term “clash” is almost always used to to launder power asymmetry and give the reader the impression of two equal warring sides. It obscures power dynamics and the nature of the conflict itself, e.g., who instigated it and what...
Read more
"There’s a problem in our society—systemic racism in American media—and rather than an examination of whether it’s affecting coverage here, what the listener gets is yet another boilerplate story about “Russian bots." (Photo: Twitter) Views
Friday, April 06, 2018
Media Warn of ‘Russian Bots’—Despite Primary Source’s Disavowal
One could forgive the average reader for thinking reporters covering bots had been replaced by bots. The formula is something we’ve seen a million times now: After a controversial story breaks, media outlets insist that “Russian bots” used the controversy to “sow discord” or “exploit tensions”; a “...
Read more
"No one on the panel brought up Saudi Arabia’s ongoing war crimes in Yemen—consistent with MSNBC’s network-wide virtual blackout on one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises." (Photo: Screenshot) Views
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Media Boosts Obvious Saudi Front Group as Neutral ‘Think Tank’
The Arabia Foundation appeared in spring 2016, seemingly out of nowhere, as a Saudi-focused think tank with “ties to Riyadh,” but vaguely independent of the regime. Or at least independent enough so that media wouldn’t represent it as an extension of the kingdom. But the past few weeks have clearly...
Read more
"Every element of the rollout reeks of public relations: exact same figure, exact same messaging, staggered announcements to keep the drumbeat going and the “$1000 Bonus!” headlines in the news." (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Views
Thursday, March 01, 2018
Media Parroting ‘$1000 Bonus!’ Stories Helped Give Trump’s Tax Cuts Majority Support
A New York Times/Survey Monkey poll last week revealed that, for the first time, a slim majority of Americans support last December’s Republican tax cuts—cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich, redistributing money from the poor to the wealthiest Americans. How was the impressive feat of...
Read more
Views
Friday, February 16, 2018
US 'Stumbled Into Torture,' Says NYT Reporter
As part of a promotion for the upcoming “Look, Evil Russians!” film Red Sparrow (hyping Hollywood films is apparently a thing reporters do now), New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane ( 2/14/18 ) wrote a synergistic Cold War 2.0 essay about the CIA’s alleged attempt to recruit him...
Read more

Pages