FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin120911 Michael Dorsey and Karl Grossman @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin120911.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The annual United Nations meeting on climate change is underway. That might be news to you if you rely on television for your information. These international conferences tend to produce stories that dwell on the lack of progress, or the unwillingness […]
Opponents of the Keystone tar sands pipeline project–10,000 of them, by some reports–surrounded the White House on Sunday to call on Barack Obama to reject the deal. That generated a short Metro section story in the Washington Post on Monday. More revealing than that was the Post‘s preview story in Sunday’s paper, which presented the […]
An article in the new issue ofNewsweek (10/24/11)–“Obama’s Big Green Mess: How the White House lost its Eco-Mojo”–presents White House policy as a series of failures. It starts off with federal inspectors finding serious problems with various weatherization projects. That’s just the tip of the iceberg–from Solyndra to stimulus, things aren’t looking good. But writers […]
The New York Times has a story today (9/7/11) by Jeff Zeleny about how both sides are branding Obama: The White House is in the midst of rebranding the president as a pragmatic problem solver prepared to set aside ideology to address a compelling need (see last week’s concession on ozone regulations), a reasonable man […]
The Obama White House made (yet another) move bound to disappoint progressive activists. But good luck trying to get corporate media to explain the impact. Here’s how the September 3 New York Times piece by John Broder started off: WASHINGTON — President Obama abandoned a contentious new air pollution rule on Friday, buoying business interests […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin090211 Lorne Stockman and Faiz Shakir @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin090211.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Why have more than 700 people been arrested at the White House in recent days? Don’t ask nightly news– they’ve so far yet to find anything newsworthy in the largest environmental action in years: a massive protest against the proposed Keystone […]
OK, that headline reflects one of the most common right-wing complaints against the Obama administration. (See Bill O’Reilly’s bullet point on Monday: “Increased federal regulations: Cutting into profits and causing banks to hoard, not lend money.”) That’s the right-wing argument, but it’s also the premise of some news reporting. Take this lead in today‘s USA […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin081211 Karl Grossman and Steve Wing @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin081211.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Japan’s Foreign Minister has told officials to stop claiming Japanese food is safe. This after beef contaminated by radiation from Fukushima’s No. 1 nuclear power plant was sold and consumed around the country. Meanwhile a devastating report from Associated Press reveals […]
If the White House encouraged Americans to prevent colds by wearing sweaters, one would hope that media outlets would point out that there’s no evidence that being chilly has anything to do with catching a cold. Likewise, if the Interior Department green-lights a plan to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean in order to […]
On April 14, a massive storm swept down out of the Rocky Mountains into the Midwest and South, spawning more than 150 tornadoes that killed 43 people across 16 states (Capital Weather Gang, 4/18/11). It was one of the largest weather catastrophes in United States history—but was soon upstaged by an even larger storm, the […]
“There will be cancers caused by the radiation that comes to this country from Japan,” University of North Carolina epidemiologist Steve Wing told Extra! in a May interview. Wing faulted news media for misinforming citizens about radiation risks: “What I’ve seen coming out for weeks were statements that there are no health concerns. That’s astonishingly […]
U.S. media coverage of the nuclear disaster in Japan contains vanishingly little serious discussion of the human health risks posed by the radiation escaping from the Fukushima nuclear facility. In place of a discussion informed by experts on these risks, journalism largely conveys vague, industry-friendly reassurances, frequently including no sources with expertise on the health […]
The story of Michele Bachmann‘s surging campaign momentum continues, this time courtesy of Beltway reporter Mark Halperin of Time magazine: Why has Michele Bachmann suddenly become the It candidate? With her impressive New Hampshire debate performance, Bachmann has gone from a conservative Sarah Palin-lite curiosity to a potential game changer. For two hours onstage with […]
The emerging storyline after the Republican presidential debate this week was that far-right Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann is for real, mostly because she managed to sound, well, a little less crazy than she’s sounded before. (No, they didn’t quite put it like that.) There are stories about Bachmann’s new Bach-mentum in the New York Times […]
The headline above this USA Today op-ed read like a slightly wordier version of a Sarah Palin bumper sticker slogan: “Cut the Red Tape: Free Up Oil Drilling in Alaska.” The author is former George H.W. Bush Secretary of State James Baker, and he writes: Even more domestic offshore drilling will be required if our […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin052711 Bill McKibben and Allison Kilkenny @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin052711.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The deadliest tornado in decabes swept through Missouri, the latest example of what seem to be unusually volatile weather patterns around the world. But when it comes to discussing extreme weather, one thing media don’t want to dwell on is climate […]
The New York Times had a good editorial on May 20 headlined”Gas Prices and Political Pandering.” The paper slammed Republican rhetoric about domestic production and gas prices: [Sen. Mitch] McConnell said his bill would bring relief at the pump by raising domestic output. That is fiction. Production will take years to come online and even […]
Today it’s the New York Times (5/6/11) framing the story according to nonsensical GOP talking points: House Passes a Bill to Expand Offshore Oil Drilling JOHN M. BRODER WASHINGTON — With rising gasoline prices and skyrocketing oil company profits as a backdrop, the House approved a bill on Thursday to force the Obama administration to […]
Calling for more drilling for domestic oil to do something about rising gas prices makes little sense. This should be a simple matter of economics or math–there’s not enough oil to recover from U.S. territory to affect global supply, and since oil is a commodity traded on a global market, only an increase in the […]
When the March 11 earthquake and tsunami shut down cooling systems at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, U.S. government and nuclear industry spin control kicked in, asserting that a similar disaster couldn’t happen here, and that atomic power is here to stay. Corporate news outlets typically got caught up in this spin, relaying distorted and/or […]
