FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
“It’s the right to grow, it is the right to live on the land by rural peoples, it is the right of everyone to be able to eat domestically grown food in a way that supports each nation’s economy and the sustenance of its culture.”
Taking the Black Lives Matter movement seriously has to mean more than prompting presidential candidates to say the words aloud. CounterSpin talks about some potential elements of an actual criminal justice reform agenda.
Is not believing in climate change today really like believing that unchecked population growth would lead to food shortages? Contrary to the New York Times’ David Leonhardt, global food shortages are a serious problem.
Corporate news media paid what looked like sympathetic attention to consumer activism that, within weeks, saw the ingredient known as “pink slime” removed from ground beef sold in major supermarkets and fast food chains and provided to public schoolchildren in their lunch. Reporters seemed as compelled and repelled as many consumers by the realization that […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin060812 Fatima Goss Graves and Alexis Baden Mayer @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin060812.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The Paycheck Fairness Act, aimed at making it easier to fight gender-based wage discrimination, failed to muster the votes to break Republicans’ filibuster in the Senate. Sadly, the measure also failed to muster journalists to address the underlying problem, […]
As Somalia sank deeper into famine in late summer, with 63 percent of southern Somalia’s population at risk of starvation, U.S. media coverage focused on stories of misery and resilience. Measuring children’s emaciated arms and describing the scraps of dignity people struggled to maintain in refugee camps substituted for investigation of causes, or discussion of […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin122410 Trudy Lieberman and Lee Stranahan @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin122410.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Following a federal court ruling in Virginia finding the individual mandate provision of the 2010 healthcare act unconstitutional, there was some solid coverage of the Constitutional issues involved in a policy that will, if ultimately upheld, require every American to purchase […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The FDA is on the verge of approving genetically engineered salmon in spite of opposition by the public, scientists and consumer groups. On November 15 the group Food & Water Watch released internal documents from Fish & Wildlife Service scientists expressing misgivings about the safety of the altered salmon […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: A New York Times report gives the impression that the debate over genetically engineered foods is largely over; the paper’s writeup of new research says that, despite some caveats and critics’ warnings, GE crops are good for the environment and the economy. Others come away with more questions than […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Some 25 million Americans, nearly 9 percent of the population–rely on food pantries. But with rare exceptions, and despite its devastating impact, big media just don’t seem to find a reportable story in chronic hunger. A new book hopes to make the issue more visible, by actually talking to […]
The rising cost of food was all over the news in the spring of 2008, from Fox News (“Food Prices Soaring World-wide,” 3/24/08) to CNN (“Rising Food Prices and Rising Concerns,” 4/21/08) to CBS (“Price of Rice Skyrockets,” 4/23/08). Everyone was covering the story. Many will never forget news clips of desperate Haitians rioting in […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin071808 Charles Knight and Diana Duarte @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin071808.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The idea that we should get U.S. troops out of Iraq is, to hear the media tell it, becoming less attractive by the day. The corporate press also seems to buy the argument that withdrawing U.S. troops would lead to a […]
Eric Holt-Giménez of Food First joins to discuss what is missing from media coverage on recent global food shortages. Also this week: A conversation about American products and chemical exposure, with investigative journalist and author Mark Schapiro.
This past February, the famed lobbying firm APCO was approached by a man named Kenneth Case. Case said he represented the Maldon Group, an obscure firm that wished to improve the public image of Turkmenistan, where it had some investments. It was nothing out of the ordinary—private firms often lobby on behalf of foreign […]
How has media responded to new research from the group Iraq Body Count? Also on the show: Charlie Cray of the Center for Corporate Policy on what’s fueling protests around the new television series, “America’s Heartland.”
It’s the day after U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman announced the first case of mad cow disease in the United States, the telephones at the Center for Media 8c Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin are ringing constantly with press inquiries. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my 30 years of activism!” John Stauber, executive director […]
A famine is raging through southern Africa—a famine that Doctors Without Borders has called among the worst in Africa in the past decade. The international relief organization CARE reports that the famine “is largely the result of one of the worst droughts in a decade” and that “severe hunger—even starvation—threatens millions, particularly among the […]
A study released by Consumers Union in May found that nearly three-fourths (73 percent) of conventionally grown fruits and vegetables had traces of pesticides, while less than a quarter (23 percent) of organic produce had such residues. When organic food did have detectable levels of pesticides, the amounts were generally lower than in conventional produce, […]
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) bills itself as the voice of American agriculture—and often succeeds in getting the media to identify it as such. In an article about an EPA study of insecticides, USA Today (10/28/99) turned to an EPA critic at the AFBF, describing it as a group that “promotes farmers’ interests.” Similarly, […]
If the mainstream media had been doing their job, most Americans would not have been eating genetically engineered food every day for the last six years without their knowledge or consent. Nor would we have allowed 70 million acres of our nation’s farmland to be planted in bioengineered crops without significant public debate and honest […]
