Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Goldman Sachs, Wall Street profiteering and... vampire squids. Wait, what was that last one? Journalist Matt Taibbi wrote a long takedown of the venerable Wall Street firm in Rolling Stone. Business journalists pronounced themselves mostly unimpressed with Taibbi's analysis, and troubled by his language—like calling the company 'a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.' Subtle it is not. But what should we make of the reaction to the piece, from Wall Street and from other reporters? And does reporting like [...]
Search Results for: Gary Webb
May
01
2009
FAIR & Media Justice
Fighting for inclusion and access since 1986
Back in the mid-1980s, when Jeff Cohen founded FAIR, large-scale progressive media activism was still more than a decade away, and the media justice movement lay in the even more distant future. But FAIR set out to focus attention on race/ethnicity, class and gender bias in the media from the beginning, and to draw connections between corporate control of media outlets and the persistent underrepresentation of socially disadvantaged groups. One of FAIR’s most effective approaches was to study the demographic and institutional profiles of the sources used in mainstream news reports—who gets to speak. FAIR research revealed not only the [...]
Feb
07
2006
Fighting Back
FAIR's media activism successes
By Peter Hart
If FAIR's work consisted entirely of quantitative studies and the well-documented criticism that appears in every issue of Extra!, the group would be akin to a conventional think tank. But throughout FAIR's history, it has had a significant emphasis on media activism—treating media giants just as one would any other powerful political or government institution, by directly confronting news outlets when they misinform readers and viewers, keep the lid on stories that should be on the front page, or bombard communities with hateful stereotypes. FAIR didn't invent media activism, but we have helped to develop and refine the techniques that [...]
Feb
01
2006
20 Stories That Made a Difference
For better or worse
FAIR was founded on the belief that journalism matters—that getting out the truth can improve the world, while news that distorts or denies reality can have terrible consequences. To illustrate this conviction, we've compiled a list of 20 news stories published since FAIR's 1986 debut that had a major impact on society—for good or for ill. The list is not meant to be a comprehensive collection of the most momentous stories of the past 20 years, but rather to be illustrative of the power of media. Stories that should have led to serious changes, but were underplayed by corporate media, [...]
Jan
01
2006
SoundBites
'A Hell of a Time Getting Published' "After reading your May issue on the Persian Gulf War coverage [Extra!, 5/91], I thought you might be interested in the attached. My editor and I had a hell of a time getting this published in our own newspaper and as far as I know, only the Seattle Times and a paper in Huntsville, Ala. picked it up. The great irony of this story, of course, is that at the same time George Bush was whipping the public into a love-fest for The Troops, his lawyers were going to court to screw their [...]
May
01
2005
Letter to the Editor
WEBB AND HESS I would like to thank you for your tribute to Gary Webb. While you quite properly contrasted the fate of people who wrote stories the mainstream media deemed unacceptable with people who ducked the stories altogether, it might be interesting to find out what happens to people who write right-wing stories that are discredited. My vague understanding is that they settle into good-paying jobs in the right-wing media. Finally, regarding John Hess. When I read his obituary in the Times, I could not believe that the manufactured Utah past was simply an error. My only question is [...]
Mar
01
2005
America's Debt to Gary Webb
Punished for reporting the truth while those who covered it up thrived
By Robert Parry
In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy—the Reagan/Bush administration’s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan Contra war in the 1980s. For his brave reporting at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb paid a high price. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues at the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, American Journalism Review (11/96, 1-2/ 97, 6/97) and even the Nation magazine (6/2/97). Under this media pressure, his editor, Jerry Ceppos, sold out the story [...]
Mar
01
2005
John Hess, 1917-2005
Editor's Note
This issue's cover story concerns the late journalist Gary Webb, but another reporter's recent death was just as great a loss. John Hess, a great reporter and a great friend of FAIR, died on January 21 at the age of 87. John used to say that the term "investigative reporter" was redundant, because all reporters are supposed to be investigators, rather than simply parroting what people in power were saying. On one issue he was nearly alone in showing skepticism: As far back as the 1980s, John was debunking claims of a "crisis" in Social Security, pointing out how such [...]
