FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: A few months ago it seemed like Dick Cheney wouldn’t get off your television screen, insisting that secret CIA documents would prove that Bush torture policies saved the United States from further terrorist attacks. Well those documents have surfaced, along with a 2004 CIA inspector general’s report. So what’s […]
Citing a FAIR Action Alert (5/27/09), New York Times ombud Clark Hoyt agreed with media activists who asked him to challenge the Times‘ unskeptical coverage of a leaked Pentagon report on former Guantánamo prisoners. In his column “What Happened to Skepticism?” (6/6/09), Hoyt called the Times‘ May 21 front-page story on the report “seriously flawed.” […]
While former Vice President Dick Cheney has been front and center in the media debate over the current White House’s national security policies, he’s not the only one trying to challenge the White House’s message. The New York Times published a front-page article (5/21/09) that bolstered the notion that former Guantánamo prisoners “return” to terrorist […]
The debate over Bush-era torture tactics like waterboarding has morphed into a full-blown Washington scandal. But the target isn’t the Bush administration officials who ordered the torture; instead, the corporate media’s focus is on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who claims that she was not fully briefed by the CIA on the use of waterboarding in […]
On May 10, CBS‘s 60 Minutes presented a remarkably one-sided report on unmanned Air Force drones firing missiles into Afghanistan and Iraq. Though the drones have been criticized for killing civilians in both countries, CBS viewers heard from no critics of the weapons. Instead, correspondent Lara Logan seemed awed by the drones from the very […]
FAIR associate Norman Solomon on the recently-revealed Pentagon propaganda program. Also this week: Sheldon Rampton of the Center for Media & Democracy joins to discuss corporate greenwashing on Earth Day.
Does the current media frenzy surrounding Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad distract from more important matters—like whether the U.S. is planning military action against Iran? We’ll speak with Baruch College history professor Ervand Abrahamian. Also on the show: A discussion on Al Qaeda and Iraq with Andrew Tilghman, former Stars & Stripes reporter and author of the Washington Monthly report “The Myth of Al Qaeda in Iraq.”
Shifting coverage of the Census Bureau report on income and poverty, with Heather Boushey from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Also on the show: Is a Washington-backed coup in Iraq brewing? We’ll ask Scott Horton of Harper’s magazine.
This week on CounterSpin: University of Wisconsin history Professor Alfred McCoy joins to talk about the shifting narratives surrounding torture, which have emerged in tandem with recent media portrayals of torture as effective and regrettably necessary. Also on the show: Was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent trip to the Middle East really as big of a success as the media is making it out to be, with author Ali Abunimah.
Journalist Robert Parry joins the show to bring us the latest on the coverage of the Plame Wilson affair. Also this week: John Stauber discusses the recent decision by The Washington Post to bring a Bush loyalist to its op-ed page.
On November 2, the Washington Post carried an explosive front-page story about secret overseas prisons set up by the CIA for the interrogation of terrorism suspects. While the Post article, by reporter Dana Priest, gave readers plenty of details, it also withheld the most crucial information—the location of these secret prisons—at the request of government […]
On November 2, the Washington Post carried an explosive front-page story about secret Eastern European prisons set up by the CIA for the interrogation of terrorism suspects. While the Post article, by reporter Dana Priest, gave readers plenty of details, it also withheld the most crucial information–the location of these secret prisons–at the request of […]
The indictment of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in the CIA leak investigation was major news. Libby–who promptly resigned from his position as Dick Cheney’s chief of staff–is portrayed in the indictment as repeatedly, and deceptively, claiming he learned about Valerie Plame Wilson’s classified status at the CIA from reporters. This explains why special prosecutor Patrick […]
Journalist Laura Rozen joins to discuss to scandal currently unfolding in Italy, and what this could mean for the White House. Also on the show: Hip hop journalist Jeff Change on the Village Voice merger and what this means for alternative media.
Andrew Wetzler of the Natural Resources Defense Council on the Endangered Species Act. Also on the show: WBAI radio host and producer Bob Lederer provides some much needed context about current protests and politics in Puerto Rico.
Despite traction in Congress, the Central American Free Trade Agreement is getting minimal media attention. . . Why is that? Also on the program: the London Times recently published a piece validating the legitimacy of the Downing Street memo. And yet there remains very little coverage in the US. Former CIA official Ray McGovern joins CounterSpin to discuss the memo and its significance.
As the Bush administration carries out what the New York Times (4/5/05) describes as a “concerted effort” to block the return of the left-wing Sandinista party to power in Nicaragua, U.S. media are returning to the kind of distorted reporting on Nicaragua that characterized coverage during Washington’s war against that country in the 1980s. The […]
In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy—the Reagan/Bush administration’s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan Contra war in the 1980s. For his brave reporting at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb […]
At 2 a.m.—midnight in San Jose—on August 18, 1996, I was at a party at my best friend’s house in Indianapolis. I excused myself, went into a bedroom, plugged into my laptop, and dialed into the Mercury’s website. A picture of a man smoking crack, superimposed upon the seal of the CIA, drew itself on […]
Professor Stephen Zunes on US coverage of Syria. And reporter Terry Allen talks candidly about John Negroponte, the Bush nominee for National Director of Intelligence.
