FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: No Child Left Behind may be up for reconsideration in Congress soon, but if current coverage of national math and reading scores is an indication, media coverage will need to get a lot deeper to be useful. We’ll hear from Stan Karp of Rethinking Schools about what questions ought […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: While it’s pretty clear that Bush-era torture occurred, and that U.S. and international treaties oblige the U.S. to investigate, the hot media discussion centers not on when investigations will begin, but on whether President Barack Obama—not the Justice Department—thinks they should go forward. We’ll talk to Glenn Greenwald of […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The White House’s proposed military budget comes to some $534 billion dollars, and that’s without including the costs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. So why on earth are some saying Obama is “disarming America”. We’ll hear what this budget does and doesn’t do from Miriam Pemberton, research fellow […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Sick Around America, the recently aired documentary on PBS‘s Frontline purported to ask why the US can’t finance universal health care the way other developed countries do. But the picture was at best incomplete, since it seems some options were considered off the table. We’ll hear from reporter and […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin040309 Mark Weisbrot and Gareth Porter @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin040309.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Barack Obama’s military surge in Afghanistan has caught very little flack in the media, even though experts on the region say it doesn’t make sense and distorts realities on the ground in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. We’ll talk to journalist Gareth […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin032709 Riki Ott and Harvey Wasserman @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin032709.mp3″] 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 […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin052009 Robert Johnson and Laura Carlsen @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin052009.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The AIG executive bonuses account for less than one percent of the money taxpayers are turning over to the insurance giant in the largest of the corporate bailouts. But it’s the bonus story that has riveted the public attention and outrage. […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin031309 Melissa Harris Lacewell and Alex de Waal @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin031309.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The evils of earmarks. Barack Obama signed a spending bill “stuffed with earmarks,” the media tell us–despite the fact that he campaigned pledging to reform that practice. The assumption is that Congressional earmarks are bad; but are they? We’ll […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin030609 Ellen Shaffer and Kristen Lombardi @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin030609.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin:. Obama’s health care reform plans are being called ‘backdoor socialism’ by some, while others say it looks like too much of the same. But how good a job are the press doing in parsing those competing definitions and explaining what’s on […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin022709 Ryan Chittum and Maria Elizabeth Grabe @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin022709.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The on-air rant by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli is making the media rounds, promoted by the network itself in good part. But did Santelli’s outburst, about the Obama White House bailing out “losers” with its mortgage proposal make sense? We’ll […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin022009 Robert Parry and Brandon Lacy Campos @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin022009.mp3″] 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 […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin021309 Lori Wallach and Dan Beeton @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin021309.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The debate over the White House-backed economic stimulus package has featured all kinds of media misdeeds—an overreliance on Republican rejectionists and an absence of actual economists talking about the plan, just for starters. Pundits and editorial writers have warned us about […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin020609 Ken Silverstein and Miranda Spencer @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin020609.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: “If it weren’t for those darn tax problems, Tom Daschle was the perfect choice as Obama’s Secretary of Health & Human Services,” seems to be the establishment refrain over the rise and fall of the Daschle nomination. “No one knows the […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin013009 Dean Baker and Michael Ratner @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin013009.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: After several weeks of media debate, the House passed a nearly 900 billion dollar economic stimulus package. White House efforts to reach out to Republicans resulted in exactly zero GOP voters, leaving some in the media to wonder if Obama was […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin012309 Norman Solomon and Ann Jones @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin012309.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The inauguration of President Barack Obama was undoubtedly historic, and was covered as such by the corporate media. But what are we to make of the idea that the media have gone gaga for Obama? And what are the pundits and […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin011609 Phyllis Bennis and Charles Kaiser @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin011609.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Listeners have likely seen some horrific and affecting images from Gaza, where the death toll has exceeded an estimated 1,000 overwhelmingly Palestinian people as, as the New York Times had it, “the Israeli military operation continued apace.” We’ll hear from author […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin010909 Ali Abunimah and AC Thompson @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin010909.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The carnage in Gaza has provoked international outrage among many journalists outside the U.S., but journalists in the U.S. are largely holding on to a storyline that says that Israel is merely defending itself after Hamas broke a ceasefire. We’ll talk […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin010209 Best of CounterSpin 2008 @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin010209.mp3″] Download MP3 With a longer-than-usual election season and a meltdown in the financial markets, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was certainly no shortage of news to explain and media messages to unspin. We can’t cover it all in one half-hour program, of course, but we can […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin122608 Kali Akuno and Andy Worthington and Francesca Grifo @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin122608.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: December 2008 marks not just the conclusion of another calendar year, but the end of eight years of the George W. Bush administration—an era notable for, among other things, particular predations on civil liberties, the free flow of […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin121908 Michael Ratner and Alfie Kohn @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin121908.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: When the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report finding former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high officials responsible for abusive treatment of detainees in Guantánamo, Iraq and Afghanistan—with few exceptions, the media played the story down, preferring, for instance, […]
