FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Paid-for pundits. If you’ve ever wondered who the so-called experts pontificating on cable news channels really are, a new investigation published in the Nation magazine gives you some answers. Reporter Sebastian Jones will join us to talk about the secret corporate PR spinners and lobbyists who pose as pundits—without […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Journalists are lining up to tout the Tea Party movement’s relevance and strength, but show little interest in probing its deep contradictions or finding out what actually makes the activists tick. That’s why they can describe as populist a movement closely, if fitfully, allied with the corporate-dominated GOP. In […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: a special look at the state of the media in America. Every week on CounterSpin we talk mostly about what the media are getting wrong. But the big story inside the news industry is the collapse of the business itself. What are the implications for citizens? What can we […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The Supreme Court ruled 5-to-4 that corporations may not be limited in their spending to influence elections, because they have the same free speech rights as people. Among the many questions raised are not just what this means for elections, but what it means for “free” speech. We’ll hear […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Corporate media chatter about the Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts reflects participants’ priorities: which means you’re unlikely to hear advice offered to Democrats other than that they should act more like Republicans. Is that the takeaway? We’ll get another angle from journalist and activist Norman Solomon. Also on the […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Haiti’s status as the poorest nation in the hemisphere has been mentioned time and again by journalists covering the current catastrophe, but where were journalists before the earthquake hit? And how are they doing in explaining the larger context of how Haiti got to this point? We’ll talk to […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin010810 Sam Husseini and Dean Baker @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin010810.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: It had the elements of a nightly news story: Protestors, including some Americans, being abused by officials in an Arab country. But this story was a non-starter with U.S. media. We’ll talk to Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy, […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Some of the current conversations about the future of journalism trade on some pretty rose-colored notions of journalism’s past. The reality is journalism has always been a very mixed bag, with just some reporters doing the challenging, talking truth to power work that later generations may imagine everyone was […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin122509 Best of CounterSpin 2009 @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin122509.mp3″] Download MP3 On this special CounterSpin program we’ll take a look back at some of the stories of the past year, and hear again from a few of the many journalists, activists, researchers and critics that brought those stories to us, or helped us make sense of them. […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin121809 Michelle Chen and Joe Conason @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin121809.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Walkouts and protests at the Copenhagen summit have highlighted the political friction in responding to climate change. But is the press corps that brings us headlines like the New York Times‘ “Poor and Emerging States Stall Climate Negotiations” the right place […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin121109 Curtis Brainard and Corie Wright @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin121109.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The so-called “Climategate” email scandal seems to have thrown media coverage of climate change back a decade, with news outlets giving warming deniers more or less equal time alongside actual climate scientists. Part of the problem has been the media’s general […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin120409 Norman Solomon and Robert Naiman @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin120409.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan at the ‘fastest possible pace,’ President Obama has declared, are in our vital national interest. The Washington Post called it a strong but carefully calibrated to Afghanistan and Pakistan, describing the plan as “a counterinsurgency strategy […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: There’s a lot of controversy around new mammogram guidelines—but it’s not coming from the research community. We’ll talk to Maryann Napoli of the Center for Medical Consumers about that evolving story. Also on the show: Ten years ago a seemingly obscure meeting of a relatively unknown international trade body […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The Stupak Amendment, a last-minute addition to the House’s recently passed healthcare reform plan, would severely restrict abortion coverage for those on the “public option” part of the plan and those buying private insurance using government money. Many House Democrats journalists and pundits have portrayed Stupak as a sacrifice […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin : a source from a senior citizens group quoted in the Washington Post said the group’s main challenge today is simply to try to keep the record straight about what’s actually in the health care reform bill, as opposed to what’s being claimed about it. That would seem to […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: A new investigative series by McClatchy newspapers’ Greg Gordon reveals that in 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs sold more than $40 billion in securities backed by risky home mortgages, “but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Making sense of the health care debate. In the past week we’ve supposedly seen the comeback of public and political support for the public option, in some form or another. We’re also told that Democratic majority leader Harry Reid must gather 60 votes to pass any bill. Is any […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The Performance Rights Act would require broadcasters to pay royalties that would be split between recording artists and record companies. The bill has just passed through house and senate committees, and will presumably be debated and voted on. The legislation, naturally faces strong opposition from the broadcasting industry, who […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Argentina just passed a media law that will severely curb the power of the country’s largest conglomerates by putting a majority of the country’s broadcast licenses in non-corporate hands. How did the law come about, and how is it expected to change Argentina’s media landscape. And what lessons might […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin100909 Cyrus Safdari and Nomi Prins @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin100909.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The story of Iran’s nuclear program certainly isn’t going away; glance at the newsstands this week and you might see the Newsweek cover story ‘After Iran Gets the Bomb.’ And a leaked report suggesting Iran is indeed pursuing nuclear weapons made […]
