FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
“Stories like Flint or other stories out of the Office of Civil Rights can be a jumping off point for us to just start asking more about our communities and asking more about the world that we live in, and looking for the data to back those questions up.”
The government has a responsibility to address the disproportionate infliction of environmental harms on communities of color, from the spraying of toxic pesticides to the siting of polluting factories. But do they do it, and if not, why not?
“It was basically an abridgement of democracy. It was taking away power from elected officials and handing it over to a single person who’s appointed by the governor, and that person made all of the decisions.”
Some children in the largely poor, largely black community have seen lead levels in their blood triple since the decision to take city tap water from the Flint River, but how that decision came to be made is fodder for more than the brief moment of sunlight corporate media generally afford.
“It’s sad that an issue of this importance, that affects literally all Americans, has gotten so little attention from our mainstream press.”
The growing number of people, many with jobs, relying on some form of aid isn’t enough to shake the notion that economic need is something you can shame people out of. And media recite the protests of polluting industries without interrogating them.
Two recent stories that are hard to miss, but about which some might say most media are missing the point. First, an anti-abortion group is releasing ‘sting’ videos claiming to show that Planned Parenthood profits from the sale of fetal body parts, but rather than focus on sorting facts from flame-fanning, media are spending time scoring the grandstanding match among Republican politicians. Jodi Jacobsen of RH Reality Check will join us to talk about who might profit most from this story.
Also on the show: The killing of the popular African lion known as Cecil by a bounty hunter led some into an unhelpful parlor game of lions vs. people: which do you care about? Journalists could move the conversation off that dime with a thoughtful examination of the state of animal preservation and the impact of extinction on us all. What might that look like? We’ll hear from journalist John R. Platt, who writes about extinction as well as other environmental issues for Scientific American among other outlets.
“BP Deal Will Lead to a Cleaner Gulf” is the headline the New York Times put over an editorial that, in its tone and substance, makes a pretty good illustration of why it almost assuredly won’t.
It hasn’t been probing media coverage that’s roughened the road for the corporate power grab known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership; public interest activism is the missing piece in much top-down media coverage. Plus: To hear media tell it, the EPA found that fracking doesn’t pose any widespread harm to drinking water. Is that really what the science said?
Are pesticide-makers’ PR efforts affecting government research into massive bee die-offs? And are occasional blockbuster stories like the NYT piece on labor conditions in nail salons the best media can do for workers rights issues?
One would hope that with Barack Obama talking about expanding offshore drilling, media would take seriously a judge’s conclusion that the Deepwater disaster was not a matter of accidental missteps by a few “bad apples,” but implicates business as usual for an entire industry, as well as those agencies meant to regulate it.
A new study shows that gas leaks from fracking wells are responsible for water contamination. But some media outlets were keen to send the message that fracking isn’t causing these problems.
This week on CounterSpin: A judge has ruled BP was guilty of willful misconduct and gross negligence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 people and dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. With Obama talking about expanding offshore drilling, you’d hope the media would take serious notice. We’ll talk about what that would look like with Antonia Juhasz, author of Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill.
Also on the show: The Economist magazine recently apologized and retracted its review of ‘The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism,’ a review that faulted the author for portraying whites as slavery’s villains, and blacks as its victims. Yes. New York University history professor Greg Grandin will join us to talk about the Economist’s slavery problem.
The Supreme Court hears the Hobby Lobby case, which is about women’s health, reproductive rights and claims of religious freedom–and one more front in the right’s battle against the Affordable Care Act. And 25 years after the Exxon Valdez disaster, the Sound is still not fully recovered, and spills are still in the news.
“If the United States or the world goes down in disaster, I would blame the media first of all, because the people running it are intelligent people.”
Time, Inc newsrooms will soon be reporting to the business side of the company– a concept which, as the New York Times notes, was “once verboten at journalistic institutions.”
This week on CounterSpin: The COP 19 climate talks in Warsaw were filled with intrigue, secret memos and walkouts by green groups and delegations from developing nations. What was accomplished at the summit? We’ll talk with Michael K. Dorsey, the director of the Joint Center’s Energy & Environment Program.
Also on CounterSpin: Is big business breaking up with the Tea Party? Some political observers and pundits seem to think so, seeing a growing divide between the Republican Party and its corporate backers. But historian and journalist Rick Perlstein suggests this storyline isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
This week on CounterSpin: Media tell us this week marks the fifth anniversary of the financial crisis since it was in September 2008 that global financial services firm Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. Meanwhile 6 in 10 tell pollsters they don’t think the country could avoid another collapse, which the Washington Post write-up called a “pessimistic outlook.” But are people pessimistic or realistic in saying they just don’t think there’s been sufficient action taken to really change things? We’ll hear from financial blogger Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute about that.
Also on CounterSpin today, a new study of the controversial gas drilling tactic known as fracking seems to be good news for the industry—no surprise, since they funded it. But are the findings about methane leaks as good as the press reports make them sound? We’ll put that question to Hugh MacMillan of the group Food and Water Watch.
“Beat sweetener” was written all over John Broder’s April 30 New York Times profile of new Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, “a woman of untamed energy, competitiveness and confidence in the boardroom and on a mountain trail.”
Just as the mainstream media are evolving away from the era of false balance (Extra!, 11/04) to accept the reality of what scientists call “anthropogenic global warming,” a different type of denial has taken hold: a refusal to acknowledge the fact that the solution to the climate crisis requires humanity to stop depending on fossil […]
