Final Project Ideas - Ruben Figueroa

The organization I am looking at currently is Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (aka FAIR), a group who has been "Challenging Media Censorship and Bias Since 1986." Founded by Jeff Cohen in 1986, the group has been guided by him as executive director, then board member until 2002, when Cohen stepped down to take a position at MSNBC. FAIR works with not only with activist, but journalists as well, to provide "constructive critiques when called for" with regards to reporting news. Additionally, they encourage and work to enable the public to "become media activists rather than passive consumers of news." Among their efforts, FAIR publishes the magazine Extra!, produces the weekly radio program CounterSpin, and distributes Action Alerts to their international network of activists.

As for the media project, I currently am debating between doing fliers/posters focusing on headline misdirection, to fit alongside their multimedia approach which already includes the internet, radio, and magazine realms; my other option would be a brief video element to highlight the realm that they haven't as much foothold in, working to make a brief advertisement-type of promotion for questioning headline reports.

RESOURCES
Their website may be found at: http://www.fair.org/index.php

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/17/arts/tv-view-let-s-be-frank-about-fairness-and-accuracy.html

http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/fair.html

http://smearcasting.com/

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_Reform/HowDetect_BiasNewsMedia.html

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fairness_%26_Accuracy_In_Reporting

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7092

Also of note:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fairness-Accuracy-In-Reporting/12641323331