Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin, Gen. Stanley McChrystal is out as commander of troops in Afghanistan after derisive remarks he and aides made about the White House and the war to Rolling Stone magazine. But in all the folderol about insubordination and civilian command, are reporters missing the real story? We'll talk to Joshua Holland of AlterNet about what else is in that Rolling Stone piece. Also on the show, it's hard to imagine a worse situation than the oil spill in the gulf, but the Niger Delta in Nigeria has by some accounts suffered spills equaling the Exxon [...]
Feb
26
2010
Cyrus Safdari on Iran, Robert Alvarez on nuclear power
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen says it’s time to "fight crazy with crazy" on Iran's nuclear policy. If that passes for discussion of diplomacy in the corporate press, maybe we should look beyond them for interpretation of the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report. We'll be talking with analyst and IranAffairs.com blogger Cyrus Safdari. Also this week: Nuclear power in America is back. Again. The White House announcement of multi-billion dollar loan guarantees for a new plant in Georgia got plenty of media praise, with editorialists and journalists eagerly citing familiar industry-friendly talking points. [...]
Feb
19
2010
Network Nukes Boosters
Reports on new nuclear plant leave key questions unasked
On February 16, ABC World News and NBC Nightly News aired incomplete and unbalanced reports following Barack Obama's announcement of $8 billion in new loan guarantees for a nuclear power plant in Georgia. ABC reporter Jake Tapper announced that "for years leading Democrats and liberals opposed nuclear energy. No new nukes was the cry. So some may have been surprised to hear President Obama say today, essentially, yes, new nukes." But after that nod, nuclear opponents mostly disappeared from the piece, which showed Tapper stressing industry claims about job creation for this new plant ("3,500 on-site construction jobs and 800 [...]
Feb
01
2010
Sidelining Cap and Trade's Green Critics
As with healthcare, right-wing complaints framed the debate
By Neil deMause
The sweeping bill to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that moved through Congress over the last year received relatively scant media attention, taking a distant back seat to the healthcare reform bill and its attendant public uproar. And, much like the healthcare debate (Extra!, 10/09), coverage of climate-change legislation ended up obscuring the issues as much as it explained them, viewing a Democratic compromise bill through the lens of right-wing and corporate criticism, while marginalizing progressive critics who said the legislation was insufficient to the task at hand. The tone of coverage was set in February, when President Barack Obama issued preliminary [...]
Dec
01
2009
Iraq All Over Again
The press & Iranian nuke allegations
By Peter Hart
There have been recent discussions (e.g., New York Times, 9/29/09) about whether the press is doing a better job covering allegations about Iran's nuclear program than they did during the run-up to the Iraq War. But in some crucial and very basic ways, many in the media are performing just as poorly as they did in 2002 and 2003. The core concern is whether Iran's nuclear enrichment program is intended for weapons. Pundits and reporters seem to think they have the answer. "As if Afghanistan were not enough, now there's Iran's move to get nuclear weapons," declared NBC's Chris Matthews [...]
May
29
2009
John Feffer on North Korea, Han Shan on Shell & Ken Saro-Wiwa
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: When the media talks foreign affairs, there's generally an assumption that countries have identifiable interests and rationally pursue them as best they can. All that's thrown out the window when it comes to North Korea. That country's apparent decision to conduct an underground nuclear test and test-fire several missiles has re-engaged the media discussion about the nuclear-armed dictatorship. But what do we still not understand about that country's behavior? And is all of this really a "test" for Barack Obama? John Feffer of the Institute for Policy Studies will join us to discuss that. [...]
Mar
27
2009
Riki Ott on Exxon Valdez, Harvey Wasserman on Three Mile Island
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Disaster anniversaries are readymade news hooks for media always in search of one. March sees 20 years since the Exxon Valdez spilled at least 11 million gallons (and likely much more) of oil in Prince William Sound, Alaska. It's also been 30 years this month since this country's worst nuclear accident, the partial core meltdown at Pennsylvania nuclear plant Three Mile Island. Both incidents were seen as watershed revelations of institutional failures and engendered activism and calls for reform. But corporate media's "looks back" and "lessons learned" don't always identify the right lessons--and rarely [...]
