Norman Solomon (1951- ) is an American journalist, media critic and antiwar activist. A longtime associate of the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), Solomon is also the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts which works pro-actively to provide alternative sources for journalists. His weekly column, "Media Beat", has been in national syndication since 1992.
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Biography
Solomon came under FBI scrutiny after he picketed for the desegregation of a Maryland apartment complex at age 14. As a high school senior, he drew further FBI surveillance for his efforts on behalf of the Montgomery County Student Alliance activist group. He became aware of their surveillance later, through a Freedom of Information request. In Portland, Oregon, he was an activist against nuclear power and nuclear weapons and was a researcher for the Committee for U.S. Veterans of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In September 1984, Solomon served 10 days in jail for obstructing railroad tracks in Vancouver, Washington, to block a train carrying U.S. Department of Energy cargo bound for the U.S. Naval submarine base in Bangor, Washington. USNAVSUBASE Bangor was a home port for submarines armed with Trident D-5 missiles. Soon afterward, Solomon became "disarmament director" for the interfaith Fellowship of Reconciliation, where he remained until spring 1986. As a freelance reporter, Solomon worked for Pacific News Service and Pacifica Radio. He made eight trips to Moscow during the 1980s. In February 1986, he and U.S. military veteran Anthony Guarisco engaged in a sit-in at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, demanding that the U.S. join the Soviet Union in a nuclear test ban. In 1988, Solomon worked briefly as a spokesperson for the Alliance of Atomic Veterans in Washington, D.C. In August 1988, Solomon was hired to run the new Washington, D.C. office of FAIR. Solomon's book, Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation, co-authored with Harvey Wasserman, appeared in 1982. In 1990, he and Martin A. Lee wrote Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media. Since then, Solomon has written ten more books--most recently, Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State (Fall 2007). War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2005) was the basis for a Media Education Foundation film by the same name. Barbara Ehrenreich has called Solomon "one of the sharpest media-watchers in the business."
Books
- Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State (October 2007)
- War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (July 2005)
- Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You (co-authored with Reese Erlich) (2003) Download at Coldtype as a free PDF download (691kb)
- The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media (1999)
- Wizards of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News (co-authored with Jeff Cohen) (1997)
- The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh (1997) This Book is Online
- Judaism: A Very Short Introduction (1996)
- Through the Media Looking Glass: Decoding Bias and Blather in the News (with Jeff Cohen) (1995)
- False Hope: The Politics of Illusion in the Clinton Era (1994)
- Adventures in Medialand: Behind the News, Beyond the Pundits (with Jeff Cohen) (1993)
- The Power of Babble: The Politician's Dictionary of Buzzwords and Doubletalk for Every Occasion (1992)
- Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media (co-authored with Martin A. Lee) (1990)
- Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience With Atomic Radiation (co-authored with Harvey Wasserman (1982) This Book is Online
Film
- War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2007; Based on book by same title.)
Writings
- Past Media Beat columns on Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) site.
- Archive of Norman Solomon's columns at AlterNet
- Coldtype has Solomon's Media Beat columns from 2003-today online as PDFs, plus columns from August to December 2002 collected in PDF form as The Media Marches to War.
