FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
“As a country, we’re looking at racial injustice, we’re looking at policing, we’re talking about these issues. We have to talk about drug possession laws and enforcement. The No. 1 arrest offense, we’ve got to talk about that if we’re talking about race and policing.”
The standoff over the Dakota Access pipeline is not a “harbinger” of the fight to make “Keep It in the Ground” more than a slogan; harbingers are about the future, and climate disruption and the people on its frontlines are stories of today. So who’s telling that story?
Cigarettes are not just a “drug of any kind.” They’re actually a drug that kills far more people in the US than opioid overdoses—480,000 per year, according to the CDC, vs. 28,647 for opioid ODs.
“There’s evidence to suggest that early warning signs that showed how truly addictive OxyContin is were ignored in the approval process, and that the company did not really present evidence showing how dangerous and how likely patients were to overdose on OxyContin.”
the overuse and abuse of powerful drugs like oxycodone is driving what the Centers for Disease Control says is an epidemic in this country, with some 16,000 overdose deaths from prescription opioids a year. Who’s shaping the media story around what looks like a dispute between industry and regulators, in which the public interest —and public health—hang in the balance?
“When you were talking about the first opiate laws, those were against Chinese people. The first cocaine laws are against black people, with the New York Times screaming about the Negro cocaine menace.”
CounterSpin talks about the War on Drugs with asha bandele of Drug Policy Alliance, and also with Laura Carlsen of the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy.
“People talk about the responsibility of the United States in terms of consumption. And yet, when you look at the root problems, it’s corruption in the United States, and it’s also the whole regime of prohibition.”
If the reason the arrest of Mexican drug kingpin “El Chapo” Guzman is so significant is its impact on the war on drugs—what, really, is that impact?
Ryan Grim’s new book sheds new light on the establishment media’s 1996 effort to discredit Gary Webb’s Contra crack revelations by talking to some of the key players. They sleep very well, they want you to know.
This week on CounterSpin: The new film Kill the Messenger tells the story of investigative journalist Gary Webb, whose 1996 Dark Alliance series exposed links between drug traffickers and the US-backed Contras in Nicaragua. Prestige outlets like the New York Times devoted serious resources to going after Webb in an attempt to discredit his reporting. We’ll go back to the CounterSpin archives to hear from Webb himself.
Also on the show: You might think you hear enough about abortion in the press. A new book says: We need to talk about abortion differently. PRO: Reclaiming Abortion Rights is the latest from author, poet and Nation columnist Katha Pollitt. We’ll talk with her about reframing that conversation.
A CounterSpin special broadcast about Gary Webb’s reporting featured excerpts from a talk by Webb, along with an interview with Norman Solomon discussing inaccuracies and distortions in establishment media attacks on Webb.
Bill O’Reilly edited the New York Times editorial calling for marijuana legalization in order to make it easier for him to debunk.
American society devotes significant resources to a punitive approach to one substance, while fully legalizing and normalizing other far more dangerous and addictive substances.
Unscientific claims about Bigfoot can get published in the Weekly World News. Unscientific claims about cannabis get a column in USA Today.
Bill O’Reilly wanted to make clear that the Factor brings viewers some perspectives missing from the bland, liberal newscasts. Let’s look at the episode where he made this claim to see what he might be talking about.
This week on CounterSpin: The 50th anniversary of the launch of LBJ’s War on Poverty is generating a lot of press coverage of an issue corporate media tend to mostly ignore. But what’s missing from these conservations? We’ll ask author and professor Stephen Pimpare.
Also on CounterSpin today, In the wake of successful marijuana decriminalization efforts in Colorado and Washington state, pundit opponents of pot are forcefully objecting. New York Times columnist David Brooks says he smoked when he was young, and it wasn’t so bad, but let’s continue to criminalize it; and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly says marijuana, texting, and video games are sending our youth down an escapist road to ruin. We’ll be joined by Columbia University neuroscientist Dr. Carl Hart, for a very different view.
One of the most satisfying O’Reilly Factor episodes ever aired Monday night when, through some terrible miscalculation, someone who knew what he was talking about managed to get on the show.
It’s important to note what pushed this episode into the spotlight in a culture desensitized to political scandals: A white Canadian mayor smoked crack. And our collective jaws were expected to hit the floor when we saw the “evidence”: video of Ford smoking with a group of black men in a Toronto housing project.
A true re-examination would ask: What is it about media institutions that makes them so willing to write off millions of mainly black children?
