Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The annual United Nations meeting on climate change is underway. That might be news to you if you rely on television for your information. These international conferences tend to produce stories that dwell on the lack of progress, or the unwillingness of countries like China to do more. Dartmouth environmental studies professor Michael Dorsey is on the scene in Durban, South Africa and he'll join us to talk about what's happening—and what's at stake. Also on CounterSpin today: There's no shortage of stories coming out of Japan's ongoing nuclear crisis. Radiation has turned up [...]
Search Results for: Karl Grossman
Aug
12
2011
Karl Grossman & Steve Wing on Fukushima
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Japan's Foreign Minister has told officials to stop claiming Japanese food is safe. This after beef contaminated by radiation from Fukushima’s No. 1 nuclear power plant was sold and consumed around the country. Meanwhile a devastating report from Associated Press reveals that a system to forecast radiation threats did function but was ignored by top officials who didn’t understand its significance. One result: the Karino Elementary School, which the system predicted would be directly in the plume coming from Fukushima’s nuclear plant, was not evacuated, but instead used as temporary shelter for people fleeing [...]
Jul
01
2011
Letters to the Editor
Clearing Up Nuclear Spin Phew! Karl Grossman's excellent article (5/11) on nuclear spin in the media following the Fukushima disaster in Japan is well worth the $20 one-year subscription rate. In a quick, easy read, he references a good many books, articles, reports, government information, and radio and television broadcasts, including Bill Nye the Science Guy, creating a clear, penetrating perspective on the nuclear question and its representation in the media. Andrew Lopez Philadelphia, Pa. Needed: A Better Renewables Conversation Miranda Spencer's article on renewable energy in the May issue is correct to point out the missed opportunity to have [...]
May
01
2011
After Fukushima, Media Still Buying Nuclear Spin
Downplaying deadly dangers in Japan and at home
Ever since the start of nuclear technology, those behind it have made heavy use of deception, obfuscation and denial—with the complicity of most of the media. New York Times reporter William Laurence, working at the same time with the Manhattan Project, wrote a widely published press release covering up the first nuclear test in New Mexico in 1945, claiming it was nothing more than an ammunition dump explosion. The Times and Laurence went on to boost nuclear power for years to come (Beverly Deepe Keever, News Zero: The New York Times and The Bomb). A central concern of nuclear promoters, [...]
Oct
01
2009
Ex-Flak Sees Industry Script in Town Hall Attacks
Interview with Wendell Potter
Where has the investigative reporting been on the organizing behind attacks on healthcare reform at the “town halls” members of Congress have been holding? Wendell Potter sees private health insurance industry as involved in the situation—and he should know. Until last year, Potter was head of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest for-profit health insurance companies. Before that, he headed communications at Humana, another huge for-profit health insurer. Potter started as a reporter for the Memphis Press-Scimitar and worked for the Scripps-Howard bureau in Washington before going into PR. In doing PR for Humana and CIGNA, he [...]
Mar
01
2008
Letters to the Editor
‘Truthful’ or ‘Alarmist’ on Nuclear Power? I would like to comment on the excellent story Karl Grossman wrote on the horrors of nuclear power (1-2/08). Too many people don’t understand the dangers associated with nuclear power, and Karl Grossman did a wonderful job detailing some of them. Nuclear power is dead, or at least should be. It’s probably the worst idea man has ever come up with. Thank you for printing such a truthful and informative article. Mark McKelvey Pasadena, Calif. . It seems rather ironic that Karl Grossman’s article on nuclear power should appear in an issue of FAIR. [...]
Feb
01
2008
Dahr Jamail on the Iraq surge, Karl Grossman on nuclear power resurgence
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Reports that the surge in Iraq "is working" are commonplace, but they rarely confront the question, "Working for whom?" In his latest piece, "Reality Is Totally Different: Iraqis on 'Success' and 'Progress' in Their Country," available at TomDispatch.com, independent journalist Dahr Jamail goes beyond the official Washington view and asks Iraqis how the surge is working for them. We'll talk to Dahr Jamail. Also on the show: It was not just the fiascos of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl but years of citizen activism that scuttled the U.S. love affair with nuclear power in [...]
Feb
01
2008
Money Is the Real Green Power:
The hoax of eco-friendly nuclear energy
Nuclear advocates in government and the nuclear industry are engaged in a massive, heavily financed drive to revive atomic power in the United States—with most of the mainstream media either not questioning or actually assisting in the promotion. “With a very few notable exceptions, such as the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. media have turned the same sort of blind, uncritical eye on the nuclear industry’s claims that led an earlier generation of Americans to believe atomic energy would be too cheap to meter,” comments Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. “The nuclear industry’s public [...]
