FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
Today the Washington Post gloats over the Honduran election, the results of which they see as a rebuke to left-leaning former President Manuel Zelaya, who was removed from office in a 2009 coup. But the Post isn’t getting the story right
You can count on U.S. corporate media to express alarm about the threat posed by left-wing governments in Latin America. Sometimes it’s military hype (think Soviet MiGs in Nicaragua), but more typically it takes the form of a generalized concern about certain governments’ commitment to democratic ideals. But how do you sound the alarm about […]
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was reportedly involved in the May 11 killing of four innocent civilians on Honduras’ Mosquito Coast. The operation caused condemnation in Honduras, and scrambling among U.S. officials, who mobilized to defend the DEA with on-the-record statements denying the agency did any actual shooting, and anonymous officials casting suspicion on the […]
On Friday (5/18/12) we noted that the New York Times and Washington Post had long pieces about a drug war shooting in Honduras that reportedly killed four innocent bystanders, including two pregnant women. The story got increased attention here in the U.S. because of the apparent involvement of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Honduran officials and […]
The details are somewhat murky, but we know the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency is heavily involved in counternarcotics in Honduras. A shooting incident last Friday reportedly left four innocent people dead–including two pregnant women. Questions are being raised about whether they were shot by DEA agents who were apparently going after a boat carrying drug […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin022412 Yousef Munayyer and Dana Frank @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin022412.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan provided a real-life example of something many corporate pundits say they’ve longed to see: A Palestinian activist pursuing non-violent resistance. And yet his 66 day hunger strike to protest Israel’s policies of detaining Palestinians for months […]
Today’s New York Times (12/20/10) brings the latest from the WikiLeaks cables, an interesting piece about how Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) went to Honduras after the coup to praise the new government and hopefully arrange business deals for his friends. Unfortunately the Times bungles the story of the coup itself: Honduras had grabbed international headlines […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin120310 Robert Naiman and Richard Prince @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin120310.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: WikiLeaks strikes again, this time with the release of 250,000 diplomatic cables that shed considerable light on how U.S. foreign policy is conducted. The headlines so far are about Iran’s weapons and the perilous situation in Pakistan. But one story hasn’t […]
A year after a military coup removed democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya from office, Hondurans are still living under a repressive government—but the U.S. is pushing Latin American countries to join it in normalizing relations with the regionally ostracized nation. Reporting from a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS), the New York Times […]
Kudos to the New York Times for publishing a front-page article (10/8/09) about the U.S. advisers and lobbyists who have been working (in one form or another) on behalf of the coup government in Honduras. But the piece glosses over the U.S. history in the region. Reporters Ginger Thompson and Ron Nixon write that the […]
Ousted President Manuel Zelaya has returned to Honduras, though not to office.Unfortunately, press accounts still manage to mangle the story behind his ouster, relying on those who supported the coup to explain what happened. In today’s New York Times (9/22/09): At the time of his removal, Mr. Zelaya was planning a nonbinding referendum that his […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin091109 Mark Cook and Diana Duarte @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin091109.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The media lie that will not die about the Honduras coup is that ousted president Manuel Zelaya was attempting to change the Honduran constitution in order to extend his time in office. But there is nothing new about this current set […]
The pretext for the Honduran coup d’état is nothing new. In a remarkable replay, bogus charges that the corporate media in the U.S. and Europe have repeated endlessly without attempting to substantiate—that Honduran president Manuel Zelaya sought to amend the country’s constitution to run for another term—are virtually identical to the sham justification for the […]
Foreign Policy In Focus analyst Conn Hallinan (8/6/09) has yet another debunking of “the story most U.S. readers are getting about the coup” in Honduras, being “that Zelaya–an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez–was deposed because he tried to change the constitution to keep himself in power.” Calling this dominant media narrative “a massive distortion […]
Philadelphia Weekly intern and Prometheus Radio Project volunteer Alyssa Figueroa has produced an excellent document of local media activists taking on global news coverage in her video showing how “nearly 100 people marched to the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s office demanding the paper publish more factual pieces about the coup in Honduras.” PW tells us (7/30/09) that […]
When the results of the June 13 Iranian elections were decried as fraudulent (charges that were later backed up by a detailed study by Chatham House—6/21/09), U.S. media instantly became the champions of the oppressed Iranians who took to the streets in protest. Cries of righteous solidarity echoed from virtually all mainstream outlets, and the […]
The L.A. Times has published a commentary from Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Marc Weisbrot (7/23/09) furthering recent exposés on the damaging influence of U.S. lobbyists hired by unlawful regimes throughout the world. Under a headline about “The High-Powered Hidden Support for Honduras’ Coup,” Weisbrot invites us to meet Lanny Davis, Washington lawyer […]
Citing a Committee of Family Members of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras report “detailing hundreds of cases of human rights abuses committed by the coup regime, including four political assassinations,” Ogg Blog‘s Chuck Ogg (7/17/09) notes that “the situation is getting worse in Honduras…but you wouldn’t know this reading the New York Times“: In fact, […]
Just Foreign Policy national Coordinator Robert Naiman has a follow-up (7/15/09) on his July 13 catch of major U.S. new outlets relying solely on Honduras’ La Prensa, “a pro-coup newspaper, with a history of publishing inaccurate information,” to falsely “indicate that a plurality of Hondurans support the military coup against democratically elected President Zelaya.” Naiman […]
Newsweek has a rather curious take this week (7/20/09) on the Honduras coup in a short piece headlined “The World Goes Bananas Over Honduras”: Poor, hot and fractious, Honduras–the original banana republic–rarely draws a second look from the global community. But on June 28, when President Manuel Zelaya was yanked out of bed by the […]
