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Challenging media bias since 1986.

FAIR

FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.

Challenging media bias since 1986
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Articles about: Crime & Punishment
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July 22, 2011
Mary Bottari on ALEC Exposed, Marjorie Cohn on prison hunger strike

Mary Bottari on ALEC Exposed, Marjorie Cohn on prison hunger strike

[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin072211 Mary Bottari and Marjorie Cohn @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin072211.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: You’ve probably never heard of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. So why do they have so much sway over the laws affecting your life? We may get some sunlight on the actions of this influential “public/private membership organization” with […]

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March 25, 2011
Asli Bali on Libya, Alia Malek on US Muslim prisons

Asli Bali on Libya, Alia Malek on US Muslim prisons

[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin032511 Asli Bali and Alia Malek @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin032511.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The U.S.’s sudden military involvement in Libya raises many questions that have not been answered by officials who’ve plunged the country into a war they say is to protect civilians, or even asked by many journalists who have been too busy […]

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January 7, 2011
Bob Parry on GOP ‘info war,’ Nancy Lockhart on Scott sisters

Bob Parry on GOP ‘info war,’ Nancy Lockhart on Scott sisters

[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin010711 Bob Parry and Nancy Lockhart @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin010711.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: the Tea Party takes power in Washington. The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives brought a certain type of political theater—giant gavels, the reading of the Constitution, and John Boehner’s tears. But there is another kind of theater to […]

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February 1, 2010

Voices from the Hellmouth

On January 31, 2009, John Dannenberg, Prison Legal News’ California correspondent, was released from California State Prison, San Quentin, where he had spent the past 23 years serving a life sentence for murder. Although by Dannenberg’s recollection he has written more than 1,000 articles for PLN since he began working with the publication in 2000, […]

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January 15, 2010
Bill Fletcher on Haiti, Beau Hodai on Charles Overby

Bill Fletcher on Haiti, Beau Hodai on Charles Overby

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 […]

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January 1, 2010

Freedom Forum CEO Tied to For-Profit Prisons

Charles Overby has a foot planted firmly in two very different worlds. In one, he is a champion of the free press. In the other, he is part of a group at the helm of a corporation that has worked hard to limit freedom of information and the ability of the press to inform the […]

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August 28, 2009
Spencer Ackerman on CIA torture documents, Ed Herman on Lockerbie

Spencer Ackerman on CIA torture documents, Ed Herman on Lockerbie

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 […]

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July 3, 2009
Greg Grandin on Honduras coup, Nomi Prins on Madoff verdict

Greg Grandin on Honduras coup, Nomi Prins on Madoff verdict

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Coverage of the Honduran coup ousting president Manuel Zelaya has often included the claim that the coup was prompted by Zelaya’s move to change the constitution, so that he could stay in power. The fact that this central claim is untrue shows how confusing that coverage can be. We’ll […]

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June 1, 2009
Marketing the Media’s ‘Toughest Sheriff’

Marketing the Media’s ‘Toughest Sheriff’

The East Valley Tribune’s Pulitzer-winning series (7/9–13/08) exposing the soaring crime rates that followed from Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s redeployment of law enforcement resources into a campaign against undocumented immigrants (see Extra!, 6/09) offers a fine example of journalism holding the powerful to account. It’s a model of journalism that has been all […]

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May 1, 2009

Does Violence ‘Spill Over’ or Come Home to Roost?

From the New York Times to Fox News, corporate media interest in Mexico’s drug-related violence has risen recently to an almost fever pitch. Initially this was a welcome sign: U.S. media were finally taking notice of a security and political crisis that had been festering for years, and seemingly worsening by the day, right at […]

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February 24, 2009

Jonah Goldberg in Praise of ‘Pack Journalism’

News that an arrest may be in the offing in the Chandra Levy murder case–no, it’s not Gary Condit, but a man currently incarcerated for a similar crime–inspires many unpleasant strolls down media’s memory lane. But the most unpleasant might be Jonah Goldberg’s ode to pack journalism and rushing to judgment (Jewish World Review, 7/11/01; […]

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September 1, 2008

The Illusion of Immigrant Criminality

Immigrants aren’t a crime problem. “The foreign-born commit considerably fewer crimes than the native-born,” as President Herbert Hoover’s National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement concluded in 1931 (National Lawyers Guild Quarterly, 10/39; Immigration Policy Center, Spring/07). While noncitizens now make up more than 8 percent of the U.S. population, the available evidence indicates that […]

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November 1, 2007

Enabling False Convictions

“The science of DNA on Monday cleared the 200th person wrongfully convicted of a crime in the United States, a record that demands that the criminal justice system fix its serious flaws,” editorialized the Philadelphia Inquirer (4/25/07), after Jerry Miller of Illinois became an American exoneration milestone. As milestones often do, Miller’s exoneration gave the […]

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September 29, 2006
Michael Ratner on detainee legislation, Hannah Sassaman on suppressed FCC reports

Michael Ratner on detainee legislation, Hannah Sassaman on suppressed FCC reports

This week on CounterSpin: Despite the recent significant decision by Congress to pass legislation that recognizes some forms of detainee abuse as torture, the media is focused on all the wrong things. Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights joins the show to discuss the situation. Also on the program: Hannah Sassaman of Prometheus Radio Project about the FCC and its habitual suppression of research on media ownership.

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July 1, 2006

Impeachment Not on Media Radar

There is a growing grassroots campaign demanding the impeachment of George W. Bush. Across the nation, towns and cities have been passing pro-impeachment resolutions. Websites promoting impeachment keep springing up. In several states, bills have been introduced in state legislatures that, if passed, would become formal bills of impeachment in the U.S. House of Representatives, […]

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April 1, 2006

Philly Papers Defend Non-Coverage of Mumia Victory

Late in the day on Monday, December 5, 2005, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia issued a surprise ruling in the appeal of Pennsylvania’s most famous prisoner: Philadelphia journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been on the state’s death row for 24 years, following his conviction for the murder of white Philadelphia police officer […]

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