Sep
01
2011

In Norway, Footnotes to Mass Murder

Terror Suspect cited Islamophobic blog as inspiration

Anders Breivik--Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/ghostofgoldwater

After self-described "conservative Christian" Anders Behring Breivik was charged with killing 76 in a July 22 bombing and shooting spree in Norway, writers who shared the accused's virulently Islamophobic ideology heatedly denied that anything in their body of work could possibly lead anyone to violence. But Breivik seems to be one of the most articulate ideologues in the history of mass murder, writing a 1,500-page manifesto with hyperlinked footnotes that point precisely to those writings that allegedly inspired him to violence. Breivik's "total lack of respect for human life is not...something he can have picked up from me, or from [...]

Jun
03
2011

Jane Slaughter on NLRB-Boeing, Pamela Newkirk on black journalists

By

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: the National Labor Relations Board has told Boeing that they can't move operations from Washington to South Carolina in order to avoid union organizing. It may seem straightforward that a company can't retaliate against workers for exercising their legal rights but the ruling has anti-labor conservatives in uproar and so-called mainstream reporters aren't doing much to set the record straight. We'll hear from Jane Slaughter of Labor Notes about what the NLRB ruling means. Also on CounterSpin today: If you follow discussions about media diversity, you probably know that the efforts to make newsrooms [...]

Jun
01
2011

Letting Anti-Immigrant Movement Off the Hook By Focusing on Founding Figure's Racism

John Tanton--Photo Credit: Johntanton.org

The April 17 New York Times ran a long front-page piece on the racism of John Tanton, founder of the anti-immigration organizations Federation for American Immigration Reform and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Reporter Jason DeParle included a good deal of damning information about Tanton (long documented here at FAIR—1/1/93—and by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center—Winter/08) and some of Tanton’s own racist words (e.g., his message to a large donor—“One of my prime concerns is about the decline of folks who look like you and me”—and his warning to a friend that “for European-American society and culture to [...]

May
06
2011

Ignoring Trump's Record of Racism

Donald Trump's efforts to delegitimize Barack Obama by suggesting he's not a native-born citizen, and questioning his qualifications for admissions to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, have drawn fire from prominent media figures like MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell (FAIR Blog, 4/29/11), CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer (CBS Evening News, 4/27/11) and even David Letterman (Late Show, 4/28/11), who have pointed out the racism implicit in Trump's smears. But few corporate journalists have so far put Trump's anti-Obama efforts in the context of earlier racist episodes in the real estate developer's career--a history that sheds light on the potential presidential [...]

Dec
24
2010

Trudy Lieberman on health care law, Lee Stranahan on Pigford settlement

By

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Following a federal court ruling in Virginia finding the individual mandate provision of the 2010 healthcare act unconstitutional, there was some solid coverage of the Constitutional issues involved in a policy that will, if ultimately upheld, require every American to purchase private insurance. But what about coverage before the bill was passed? We'll talk with the Colombia Journalism Review's Trudy Lieberman about media coverage of the mandate, before and after its passage. Also on CounterSpin today, if you've caught any media coverage of the Pigford settlement, it probably sounds like good news: Black farmers [...]

Dec
03
2010

Robert Naiman on WikiLeaks-Honduras, Richard Prince on the Scott sisters

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: WikiLeaks strikes again, this time with the release of 250,000 diplomatic cables that shed considerable light on how U.S. foreign policy is conducted. The headlines so far are about Iran's weapons and the perilous situation in Pakistan. But one story hasn't received enough media attention: how the U.S. embassy really saw the 2009 coup in Honduras. How did this cable conflict with official U.S. pronouncements and corporate media spin? We'll talk to Robert Naiman of Just Foreign Policy. Also on CounterSpin today: Two women are serving double life sentences in Mississippi for the alleged [...]

Nov
19
2010

Wenonah Hauter on GE salmon, Rose Aguilar on Native Americans

By

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The FDA is on the verge of approving genetically engineered salmon in spite of opposition by the public, scientists and consumer groups. On November 15 the group Food & Water Watch released internal documents from Fish & Wildlife Service scientists expressing misgivings about the safety of the altered salmon and the legality of the FDA's procedures. We'll talk to Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of Food & Water Watch. Also on the show: A one-minute commentary by a cable TV host brought a swell of public awareness, political attention and money to a snowstorm-devastated [...]

Oct
01
2010

Brian Williams Rehashes Katrina Violence Myth

Remembering media fantasy as reality

For the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, NBC anchor Brian Williams (Dateline NBC, 8/22/10) recalled the experience as his own boy’s adventure tale: You know, I’ve been around a lot of guns and a lot of dead bodies, and a lot of people shooting at people to make dead bodies. But you put them all together and you put it in the United States of America, and boy, it gets your attention.... It was clear already there weren’t going to be enough cops.... Everywhere we went, every satellite shot, every camera shot, we were at the height of the violence [...]

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