FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin032709 Riki Ott and Harvey Wasserman @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin032709.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Disaster anniversaries are readymade news hooks for media always in search of one. March sees 20 years since the Exxon Valdez spilled at least 11 million gallons (and likely much more) of oil in Prince William Sound, Alaska. It’s also been […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin030609 Ellen Shaffer and Kristen Lombardi @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin030609.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin:. Obama’s health care reform plans are being called ‘backdoor socialism’ by some, while others say it looks like too much of the same. But how good a job are the press doing in parsing those competing definitions and explaining what’s on […]
Syndicated Washington Post columnist George Will and the Post‘s ombud Andrew Alexander are still failing to address the majority of the inaccuracies in Will’s February 15 column on climate change. Facing down critics (including FAIR–Action Alert, 2/18/09), Will claimed in a new column (2/27/09) that his original “column contained many factual assertions but only one […]
Breast cancer is now epidemic, affecting one in eight women, according to the American Cancer Society and others. The leading cause of death in women in their late 30s to early 50s, it’s estimated to have killed 40,000 people in 2008. Known risk factors for breast cancer—such as age, genetics, reproductive history and alcohol consumption—account […]
Think Progress blogger Matthew Yglesias (2/25/09) hits the Washington Post for “standing behind the claim that up is down if George Will says that is”–and then spreads some of the blame around: Meanwhile, one of the Post‘s main competitors in the world of papers with potential to attract a national audience is the New York […]
After eight years of George W. Bush’s rule, popular disapproval of policies that had come to be regarded as grave mistakes–from the invasion of Iraq to the response to the economic crisis–drove the Republicans from power. Unfortunately, the media system has no such built-in check on powerful pundits, as the unchallenged reign of another George […]
George Will’s February 22 column in the Washington Post began: “A simple apology would have sufficed.” Alas, this was not a reference to Will’s error-filled column on climate change the week before (FAIR Action Alert, 2/18/09). But the paper’s new ombud did email a response to some of Will’s critics, which managed to reveal how […]
In a blog post about how it must have been “So Much Nicer to Be George Will Before the Internet” (2/17/09), A Tiny Revolution‘s Jonathan Schwarz looks back over how “on Sunday George Will made things up so he can claim global warming isn’t happening” to “a funny story of Noam Chomsky’s from the book […]
In the wake of a George Will column (Washington Post, 2/15/08) attempting to refute the reality of climate change with a string of inaccurate claims, FAIR has an action alert calling on media activists to write to the Washington Post asking them to retract the falsehoods and explain their fact-checking procedures for columnists. You can […]
Washington Post columnist George Will is among the most widely syndicated in the newspaper business—which means that his recent error-filled column about climate change will misinform the readers of hundreds of papers across the country. Will made several specious claims in his February 15 column in an attempt to argue that climate change is not […]
How distorted is the corporate media concept of critical journalism? Just look at Media Matters‘ write up (2/5/09) of a cable news show that named one commentator its “Muckraker of the Day” for presenting bogus evidence against global warming: On the February 2 edition of MSBNC‘s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, anchor David Shuster let syndicated columnist […]
Just when even the ultimately acerbic political critic Matt Taibbi began (New York Press, 1/14/09) “to lose faith in America’s ability to fall for absolutely anything,” he notes New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman, “resident of a positively obscene 11,400-square-foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains […]
Critic Mark Howard catches (News Corpse, 1/13/09) new Fox hire Glenn Beck spouting more of his “fabulist” views: “On his radio program, Beck spun a tale of McCarthyistic intrigue that slammed President-elect Barack Obama, his designated climate change adviser Carol Browner and environmentalism in general.” Beck’s evidence?: “Browner’s association with the Global Warming initiatives of […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin122608 Kali Akuno and Andy Worthington and Francesca Grifo @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin122608.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: December 2008 marks not just the conclusion of another calendar year, but the end of eight years of the George W. Bush administration—an era notable for, among other things, particular predations on civil liberties, the free flow of […]
For a change of pace from his incessant immigrant bashing, CNN‘s Lou Dobbs recently exclaimed over “unusual storms” and snow in Las Vegas, Southern California and Arizona’s mountains. This “unbelievable” evidence has Dobbs wondering: “So what are those folks talking about global warming?” Posting at Washington Monthly‘s Political Animal blog (12/19/08), Steve Benen describes how, […]
Today’s column by Robert Samuelson (Washington Post, 12/1/08) is a classic of the “why the president-elect must break progressive campaign promises” genre. Usually, of course, the new president should keep such promises: Obama won the election, and in normal times, his campaign agenda ought to be front and center. But these are not normal times, […]
Environmental reporter and activist Harvey Wasserman notices (Columbus Free Press, 11/6/08) that, “as the world media filled with the victory of Barack Obama, a defeat for atomic power in his own back yard sent a Solartopian message to the new administration”: Chicago-area… voters approved by well over two-to-one a referendum asking that “our elected officials […]
San Francisco Bay Guardian founder Bruce B. Brugmann posts (11/3/08) on his paper’s blog about how “the day before the historic vote on the Clean Energy Initiative (Prop H), under vicious multi-million attack by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle continued its campaign of decades to censor and marginalize the […]
Tim Redmond writes (10/22/08) of how “there aren’t many locally-owned independent newspapers left in America,” noting that “even the alternative press has become chain-happy…. In… most of the nation’s biggest cities, the once-upstart weeklies are owned by big national chains.” But, to the great benefit of Northern Californians, the San Francisco Bay Guardian that “Bruce […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin102408 Devin West and Francesca Grifo @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin102408.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Stories about civilian casualties inflicted by the U.S. military in Afghanistan or Iraq may be moving and troubling, but you virtually always come away with the sense that, while regrettable, such deaths are certainly always unintentional and somehow unavoidable in the […]
