FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
During the 20 years of FAIR’s existence, there have been two periods when mainstream journalists made promises about dedicating themselves to greater coverage of poverty, racism and inequality. The first followed the Los Angeles riots of 1992 (Extra!, 7-8/92); the second was after Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans (Extra!, 7-8/06). Both promises went […]
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: Georgetown law professor and author David Cole about Bush’s supposed torture ban and the press reaction to it. Also on the program: Corporate media’s stock market party, with Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
As Hurricane Katrina tore off roofs and exposed the destroyed interiors of homes, it also peeled back the genteel veneer on elite media opinion about New Orleans—revealing that some pundits and reporters viewed the majority of its residents to be essentially irrelevant, if not an outright impediment, to the restructuring of the city’s devastated economy. […]
“Africa is sexy and people need to know that,” declared U2 singer Bono (New York Times, 3/5/07), promoting his new (RED) line of products that propose to save Africa one iPod at a time. Celebrity interest in Africa is not particularly new, but today more stars than ever seem to be converging upon the continent, […]
Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute talks rich people and taxes. Also this week: Reporter Sunday Dare joins CounterSpin to talk about what’s missing from U.S. media coverage on the upcoming presidential election in Nigeria.
I don’t so much mind that newspapers are dying—it’s watching them commit suicide that pisses me off. Let’s use this as a handy exercise in journalism. What is the unexamined assumption here? That the newspaper business is dying. Is it? In 2005, publicly traded U.S. newspaper publishers reported operating profit margins of 19.2 percent, down […]
This week on the show we’ll hear from FAIR senior analyst Steve Rendall about Air America and what this experiment can tell us about the future of progressive talk. Also on the show: Founder Jeremy Weir Alderson on the upcoming Annual Homelessness Marathon, a radio project that’s been going for 10 years now.
This week on CounterSpin we’ll talk to writer Rick Perlstein about why “Conservatives Still Don’t Get Martin Luther King.” Also on the program: Can journalists be forced to help the military make its case just for doing their job, with independent reporter Sarah Olson.
In August, the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program—popularly known as “welfare reform”—turned 10 years old, sparking a rash of articles looking back on how the new law’s emphasis on time limits and “work activities” requirements has fared. But even with recent figures showing poverty on the rise, by and large news media treated […]
Arianna Huffington of Huffingtonpost.com joins the show to discuss Bob Woodward’s new book and poses the question: Is this just a weak attempt by Woodward to salvage his reputation? Also this week: Sarah Anderson of the Institute of Policy Studies analyzes corporate media’s embrace of retailing giant Wal-Mart.
It has been one year since Hurricane Katrina. . . What’s happened on the Gulf Coast since all the cameras and TV anchors cleared away? Also this week: Another media anniversary, ten years since the passage of the so-called welfare reform. Heather Boushey of the Center for Economic and Policy Research joins to discuss what’s missing from the media’s glowing assessment of this law’s success.
An August 17 article about Democratic politicians criticizing the labor practices of Wal-Mart allowed some of the company’s PR to go unchallenged, while expressing concern that “some Democrats” were worried that the criticisms were going too far. After noting the critical comments by some high-profile Democrats, the Times reported: “Some Democrats expressed concern about the […]
An Extra! analysis of media coverage since Katrina—of the hurricane’s aftermath along the Gulf Coast and of poverty issues in general—found that with few exceptions, the media’s rediscovery of impoverished Americans lasted barely a month.
[Note: this piece is a sidebar to Katrina’s Vanishing Victims] CNN’s Anderson Cooper was the first journalist to be made into a star by Hurricane Katrina: The image of Gloria Vanderbilt’s son leaning into gale-force winds had barely faded from the nation’s screens when he was elevated to replace Aaron Brown as CNN’s top news […]
[Note: this piece is a sidebar to Katrina’s Vanishing Victims] Of the broadcast network news anchors, NBC’s Brian Williams distinguished himself for taking the plight of New Orleans’ poor residents to heart. Shortly after NBC’s Bob Faw (9/1/05) declared that “disasters do not treat everyone alike” and called Katrina “a catastrophe shedding light on class, […]
To several observers in the U.S. media, Latin America’s leftward shift is the misguided product of a naïve populace that can’t understand economics and demagogic leaders who need to be scolded back into line.
L.A. Times media writer Tim Rutten discusses the Enron verdicts. Also on the show: The national press corps and mine safety, with Peter Dreier of Occidental College.
If there were a John Stossel School of Journalism, reporters-intraining would be taught a simple template for any story: Free markets are good. Unions are bad. When consumers get to “choose,” everyone wins; if governments try to regulate, everyone loses. No matter what the assignment, a Stossel-trained reporter would be instructed to merely plug in […]
Independent journalist Aaron Glantz on Bush, Iraq, and the media. Also this week: Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer joins to discuss the economic side of the immigration debate.
