Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: A new study from Think Progress shows that cable news stories about the stimulus debate were dominated by Republicans, with GOP guests outnumbering Democrats by 2 to 1. This isn’t an aberration says our guest, but a return to the status quo after a brief decrease in conservative media bias caused by Bush era failures. Robert Parry, the publisher of ConsortiumNews.com, and the veteran journalist who broke many Iran-Contra stories, will join us to talk about current political coverage. Also on CounterSpin today: Congress decided to delay the mandatory switch to digital TV signals [...]
Nov
28
2008
Mark Brenner on Big 3 bailout, Steve Rendall on the Fairness Doctrine
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Bailing out the Big Three. GM, Ford and Chrysler are on the brink of total failure, we're told. In a season of corporate bailouts of all sorts, this one is meeting more resistance—in part because union autoworkers, we're told, are making too much money. Mark Brenner of Labor Notes will join us to talk about it. Also on CounterSpin today, with Democrats poised to take more power in Washington, is there really a plan in the works to muzzle right-wing talk radio? Steve Rendall of FAIR and CounterSpin will join us to dispel some [...]
Oct
31
2008
Bob Dreyfuss on Syria airstrike, Wally Bowen on 'white spaces'
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The election is not over as we record this show, but no matter who wins, the Iraq War was largely a second-tier issue for the media, more of a discussion of the past than the present. Not even the war spilling over into Syria seemed enough to push the war back into the campaign spotlight. We'll ask national security reporter Bob Dreyfuss for his take on the U.S. attack inside Syria, and what he makes of the current political situation in Iraq itself. Also on CounterSpin today, the presidential election is not the only [...]
Jun
20
2008
Tyson Slocum on offshore drilling, Matthew Lasar on the Red Lion decision
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: John McCain says the ban on oil drilling of the U.S. coast should be lifted, to increase oil production and lower prices. Drilling opponents say the drilling won't lower prices and will endanger environments. Who's right? Mainstream reporting is little help, rarely offering more than to say that the story is about a "trade-off" between energy and environmental costs. We'll talk to Tyson Slocum, the director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, about the price of oil. Also on the show: The case Fox vs. FCC that the Supreme Court will hear next fall has [...]
Feb
29
2008
Lori Wallach on NAFTA, J.H. Snider on spectrum policy
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Criticisms of NAFTA from Democratic presidential candidates Obama and Clinton made the New York Times feel a need to explain to readers that, despite appearances, the two politicans are not, actually, “hostile to free trade”. But that says less about the toughness of their criticisms than it does about the rareness in the corporate media world of ANY criticism whatsoever of what they insist on calling ‘free trade’. More on that from Lori Wallach of Global Trade Watch. Also on the show: When we talk about media policy fights over ownership rules or network [...]
Dec
21
2007
Josh Silver on FCC ruling, John Conroy on Chicago police torture
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The FCC voted recently to eliminate the cross-ownership ban that was intended to prevent the same company from controlling tv stations and newspapers in the same market. Pretty par for the course for the industry-friendly agency, but this time, after years of activism, there's more pushback than perhaps was expected. What exactly happened and what happens next? We'll hear from Josh Silver, executive director of the media reform group Free Press. Also this week: The particulars of the cases are the kinds of things you might wish weren't true—the explicit torture of suspects by [...]
Jul
06
2007
Mark Lloyd, Hannah Sassaman, Dory Graham and Bruce Dixon on the state of radio
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin, we're talking all about radio. Perhaps the most democratic medium—cheap to produce and to access—U.S. radio is nevertheless not the most democratic in its content, whether that's music and culture or, especially, political ideas and discussion. How did that happen? What would it take to alter that landscape, and are we seeing an opening for change right now? We'll discuss the political lay of the land with Mark Lloyd from the Center for American Progress. They've just released a study, along with the group Free Press, saying the conservative domination of talk radio is [...]
May
25
2007
Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs
Distorting the Venezuelan media story
The story is framed in U.S. news media as a simple matter of censorship: Prominent Venezuelan TV station RCTV is being silenced by the authoritarian government of President Hugo Chávez, who is punishing the station for its political criticism of his government. According to CNN reporter T.J. Holmes (5/21/07), the issues are easy to understand: RCTV "is going to be shut down, is going to get off the air, because of President Hugo Chávez, not a big fan of it." Dubbing RCTV "a voice of free speech," Holmes explained, "Chávez, in a move that's angered a lot of free-speech groups, [...]
