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Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden is either a whistleblower or a traitor, depending on whom you listen to. We'll hear from Kathleen McClellan of the Government Accountability Project about Snowden and the NSA. Also on CounterSpin: Veteran consumer rights activist Ralph Nader joins us to talk about his new book Told You So. He'll share his thoughts about a media system that too often silences the voices of dissent.
There are plenty of people working in the media who don't have much use for whistleblowers--and they've been having a field day going after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
As Bradley Manning's court martial trial gets underway, journalists face real obstacles in trying to report on it, and they should be facing the constitutional issues the case raises. We'll be joined by Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and U.S. attorney for WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Also on the show: Are parents keeping their kids from learning how to read, so they can get a disability check from the state? The claim has come from some high places in elite media, which you won't be surprised to learn, doesn't make it true. We'll speak with author and journalist Neil deMause about this not-so-new media canard.
Nicholas Kristof's column was almost entirely wrong or unsupported. Yet it turned out to be just the opening salvo of a series of high-profile news reports exposing America’s alleged plague of skyrocketing disability benefits.
Public Radio International's recent energy special had a very positive take on fracking. Which is not surprising when you find out who's funding the show.
Did Barack Obama's National Defense University speech signal a sea change in White House terrorism policy? That depended on who was doing the listening. We'll talk with Pardiss Kebriaei of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
And Bob McChesney talks about his new book Digital Disconnect, and why understanding capitalism is essential to understanding the development of the internet.
When Extra! analyzed immigration reform coverage, the majority of sources from all networks were white male politicians born in the United States without personal ties to immigration. The voices of immigrants or activists were mostly absent.
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: PBS says no to Koch. Not the soft drink, but a documentary called Citizen Koch, about the billionaire right-wing political donors. We'll speak with Tia Lessin, the film's co-director, about what happened. Also on CounterSpin today, actress Angelina Jolie’s announcement that she had a preventive double mastectomy brought breast cancer into the spotlight. The thing about media spotlights, though, is they don't always shed the most useful light. Is the press drawing the sort of lessons from the Jolie story that really will improve women's health choices? We'll talk with Karuna Jaggar from the [...]
