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This week on CounterSpin: A New York Times opinion piece by editorial board member Jesse Wegman says that debunking Republicans’ baseless, self-serving claims of voter fraud “was always a fool’s game,” because “the professional vote-fraud crusaders are not in the fact business.” The suggestion seems to be that even addressing such claims is “giving them oxygen.” But there’s a difference between airing such claims and training a scrutinizing, disinfectant light on them—and it’s really journalists’ choice which of those they do. The spate of new election-meddling laws proposed in Arizona suggests that looking away is not the answer. But Trumpers’ loss in Arizona could also map a way forward, if you’re interested. Our guest is interested. Steven Rosenfeld is editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Transcript: ‘Big Lies Are Built From Lots of Little Lies’
Also on the show: If you think the “little guy” is left out of Wall Street deals, you’re not wrong. But is Bitcoin the answer? Is “cryptocurrency” a leveling force—or just a different flavor of grift that plays on that not-unfounded little guy frustration? Our guest gets at what’s new and what’s old in his description of cryptocurrency as “the people’s Ponzi.” Sohale Mortazavi is a writer based in Chicago; his recent piece on cryptocurrency appears in Jacobin.
Transcript: ‘The Entire Cryptocurrency Market Is Basically a Ponzi Scheme’
A thorough misunderstanding of Bitcoin particularly, and crypto in general.
Please get a real expertise to discuss. Shame on Counter Spin for such irresponsible journalism.
I searched Mortazavi’s latest Jacobin piece for “proof of stake” and came up empty. This guy has been on a crusade against all cryptocurrencies on the basis of Bitcoin’s faults, including high energy costs to “mine” coins according to its “proof of work” functionality. He always leaves out any mention of other methods like PoS which are environmentally friendly and convey many other advantages over the older cryptos like BTC.
Your piece on crypto currency was – by any reasonable gauge of accurate reporting – the very worst I’ve ever heard on your station. Full of glittering generalities and specious metaphors – the individual couldn’t offer up any understandable facts about what crypto currency actually is, other than being a Ponzi scheme. Offering up a comparison to the New York Stock Exchange as the gold standard of fiscal responsibility and prudence shows a complete indifference to facts and common knowledge. Such blatant bias and naivity in subject matter made this a very uncomfortable and embarrassing piece to listen to. Squishy facts and hard bias are Trump’s domain – not appropriate on Counterspin.
Having listened to a CounterSpin’s excellent reporting across the years, this piece only served up a wet, cold, slap in the face to clear, informative and objective reporting – the sting of which has yet to fade after several hours. Colin Powell’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” speech at the UN was no more jarring and out of place than this piece. This sort of take-down’ reporting would be expected at FOX – certainly not FAIR.
OK, but why don’t you tell them how you really feel. Here’s one option: “This Counterspin piece on crypto was the NEW 9/11!!”
janine was honest when she claimed pretty much complete ignorance about crypto. but the guest didn’t know what he was talking about either.
He’s been on a long crusade against all crypto (but only understands BTC) for several years now. The dude is hung up on some of the frauds and hacks that have disrupted BTC, but always totally ignores proof-of-stake crypto like Cardano Ada. He’s a shill on the subject and I wish he’d take the time to educate himself better before writing his inevitable next crypto-bashing piece that’s really just another long winded indictment of BTC.
Excellent coverage of the Maricopa County recount PSYOP conducted by the Cyber Ninjas.
A strange and sad article, completely devoid of relevant facts/ in depth background information. Every journalist can have a bad day…….
WTF are you talking about?
Criticism this intentionally vague and ambiguous tends to indicate dishonest intent.
No matter what the crypto-trolls say above, crypto currency is essentially a con(fidence)-game, with a make-believe ‘construct-currency’ backed by nothing ‘transaction-mining’, and primarily used by people trying to hide from the law and/or techno-hucksters trying to cash-in on the latest ‘pet-rock’ scam. At least the dollars, Euro, pound, yen, ruble, etc have a government backing them up and aren’t going to go up or down 30 or 40% overnight when a fellow huckster like Elon Musk starts tweeting about them..