Norman Solomon (born July 7, 1951) is an American journalist, media critic, activist, and former U.S. congressional candidate. Solomon is a longtime associate of the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). In 1997 he founded the Institute for Public Accuracy, which works to provide alternative sources for journalists, and serves as its executive director.
Solomon's weekly column, "Media Beat", was in national syndication from 1992 to 2009. In 2012, Solomon ran for Congress in California's 2nd congressional district. He attended the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions as a Bernie Sanders delegate. Since 2011, he has been the national director of RootsAction.org.
Early life and activism
Solomon came under FBI scrutiny after he picketed for the desegregation of a Maryland apartment complex at age 14. He became aware of their surveillance later, through a Freedom of Information request.
After high school, Solomon began a lifelong commitment to progressive activism. Solomon engaged in civil disobedience as part of the anti-nuclear movement, and eventually spent 40 days in jail as a result. He made eight trips to Moscow during the 1980s, including one during which he and a leader of an American group, the Alliance of Atomic Veterans, organized a sit-in at the U.S. Embassy, demanding that the U.S. join the Soviet Union in a halt to tests of nuclear bombs.
Writer and media critic
As a freelance journalist, Solomon reported for a number of years for Pacific News Service. In 1988, Solomon worked briefly as a spokesperson for the Alliance of Atomic Veterans in Washington, D.C. He was hired in August 1988 to run the new Washington, D.C., office of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.
The author of thirteen books, his op-ed pieces have appeared in a range of newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, and USA Today. His articles have been published by The Nation and other magazines. He is a frequent contributor to online outlets such as Common Dreams, Salon, and LA Progressive.
A book of Solomon's collected columns, The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media, won the 1999 George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. Jonathan Kozol's introduction to the book noted that "the tradition of Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and I. F. Stone does not get much attention these days in the mainstream press ... but that tradition is alive and well in this collection of courageously irreverent columns on the media by Norman Solomon...."
In 2000, Solomon teamed up with Robert Parry to write a series of investigative reports on George W. Bush's Secretary of State Colin Powell, published on Parry's website Consortium News.
Solomon's book Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You (co-authored with Reese Erlich) was published in 2003 and translated into German, Italian, Hungarian, Portuguese, and Korean.
War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death appeared in 2005. The Los Angeles Times called the book "a must-read for those who would like greater context with their bitter morning coffee, or to arm themselves for the debates about Iraq that are still to come." A documentary, narrated by Sean Penn, was based on the book released in 2007.
War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine appeared in 2023. It details the extravagance of U.S. military efforts and targets the media coverage that masks or downplays their results. One review described it as "a companion to War Made Easy, updated to consider events in Afghanistan, Ukraine and other war zones." Another notes, "Solomon makes a striking comparison between the American media’s strong interest in the losses endured by Ukrainian civilians after the recent Russian invasion and its indifference to the fate of Iraqi civilians after America’s invasion in 2003."
Solomon is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, an organization founded in 1997 "as a national consortium of independent public-policy researchers, analysts and activists." According to its web site, the mission of IPA is to increase "the reach and capacity of progressive and grassroots organizations (at no cost to them) to address public policy by getting them and their ideas into the mainstream media".