Mar
01
2013

SoundBites

Extra! March 2013

FireShot Screen Capture #042 - 'FAIR TV_ Obama's Liberal Inaugural_, Anonymous Iran Truth-Telling, PBS Drone Conflict' - www_fair_org_blog_2013_01_25_fair-tv-obamas-liberal-inaugural-anonymous-iran-truth-telling-

If It Weren’t for Those Meddling Iranians “This demonstrates the ever pernicious Iranian meddling in other countries in the region.” —unnamed U.S. official complaining to Reuters (1/28/13) about Iran allegedly sending arms to Yemen, where the U.S. is conducting a secret drone war   Extreme Weather, Unexplained NBC Nightly News (1/13/13) asked a serious question, then offered an unserious answer. Anchor Lester Holt remarked: “Strange winter: Why it is so cold where it should be warm, and so warm where it should be cold. What is going on with all this extreme weather?” Correspondent Kristen Dahlgren turned to the Weather [...]

Feb
01
2013

A Passion for Job Insecurity

Targeting Europe's 'burdensome' worker protections

Ségolène Royal--Photo Credit: © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons

If there’s one thing the media seem to be convinced of—or at least seem to want to convince the public of—it’s that rules that protect workers kill jobs and are therefore to blame for high European unemployment rates.

Dec
01
2012

'The People Who Supported Austerity Have Been Disproven By Facts'

CounterSpin interview with Costas Panayotakis on the European crisis

credit: Democracy Now Youtube

When there are austerity protests in Europe, New York Times headlines like “Markets Falter in Europe Amid Protests on Austerity” (9/27/12) and “Markets Tumble on Unrest in Greece and Spain” (9/27/12) accurately capture the reports’ primary concerns: how the protests might affect financial markets. Of lesser concern to the Times, it seems, is how austerity affects people. CounterSpin’s Steve Rendall spoke on September 28 with Costas Panayotakis, a professor of social science at the New York City College of Technology, who has been following U.S. media coverage of the economic crisis in Greece. CS: I wonder if you could briefly [...]

Jul
25
2011

Seeing 'Islamic Terror' in Norway

Learning no lessons from Oklahoma City mistakes

Right-wing terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik reportedly killed 76 people in Norway on Friday, by all accounts driven by far-right anti-immigrant politics and fervent Islamophobia. But many early media accounts assumed that the perpetrator of the attacks was Muslim. On news of the first round of attacks--the bombs in Oslo--CNN's Tom Lister (7/22/11) didn't know who did it, but knew they were Muslims: "It could be a whole range of groups. But the point is that Al-Qaeda is not so much an organization now. It's more a spirit for these people. It's a mobilizing factor." And he speculated confidently about [...]

Sep
17
2010

Amitabh Pal on French austerity protests, Hye Jin Rho on Social Security

By

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: As French protestors take to the streets against proposed austerity measures, the U.S. media have taken sides. Expressing scorn for spoiled French workers; and cheering the grown up, responsible attitudes of those, like French President Sarkozy who seek to cut promised retirement benefits. How are these same battles covered back home in the U.S.? We'll talk to Amitabh Pal, columnist and managing editor of the Progressive magazine. Also on CounterSpin today: When pundits talk about solutions to the country's long-term debt and deficit problems, one apparently simple solution is to raise the retirement age. [...]

May
21
2010

Helena Cobban on Iran, Mike Epitropoulos on Greece

By

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: When Brazil and Turkey brokered a deal to get Iran to ship much of its Uranium abroad for enriching, much of the world saw it as a positive step. But not so U.S. officials, who saw it as a threat to their efforts to impose UN sanctions on Iran—though perhaps not that much of a threat as the day after the Iran deal, the U.S. announced it had gotten China and Russia to support Iran sanctions. How has the U.S. media distinguished itself in covering all this Iran news? We'll be joined by Helena [...]

Mar
19
2004

Jeff Cohen on Spanish elections, Jonathan Landay on INC & media

Download MP3 Terror bombings in Madrid came just days before national elections, and Spanish voters delivered a surprising defeat to the Popular Party, which had supported the war in Iraq. On this side of the Atlantic, the election results made journalists wonder if Spain was going soft on the war on terror. But are the media missing the story on Spain? We'll talk to FAIR founder Jeff Cohen. Also on CounterSpin this week: We'll talk to Knight Ridder national security correspondent Jonathan Landay. He's part of a reporting team that has broken many important stories; his most recent tells how [...]

Jan
01
2003

Where the Gray Lady Goes Radical

The New York Times' peculiar German fixation

Election season came to Germany last fall, and in time-honored fashion, the New York Times spent the campaign bemoaning the high wages of German workers. Whether workers in a distant country are overpaid may seem like an odd fixation for an eminent newspaper, but for years the Times has treated no other factor as more crucial to the politics and economics of contemporary Europe. "It's hard to think of a cushier place to live through a recession than Germany," wrote Berlin economic correspondent Mark Landler in a "Week in Review" essay (9/29/02). "With Germany's welfare payments, unemployment compensation, not to [...]

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