FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin040811 Harold Meyerson and Lizzy Ratner @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin040811.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin:. Republican Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan unveiled his party’s budget plan this week. Media consumers learned that Ryan is gutsy, that he’s serious as a heart attack, that the plan is bold and sweeping… but what would it mean for peoples’ […]
The big Israel/Palestine news of the week is Richard Goldstone’s op-ed in the Washington Post on Sunday (4/3/11). The short version you pick up from the media is that Goldstone has “retracted” his UN-sponsored report on war crimes during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead war in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. The “retraction” language […]
There’s a long tradition of U.S. pundits wishing for the day Palestinians finally decide touse non-violent means to protest Israeli occupation. Time magazine’s Joe Klein weighs in on the subject this week: Ever since Israel won control of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the Palestinian national movement has been defined by terrorism, intransigence […]
U.S. media coverage of the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah reflected how the corporate press routinely covers high-profile civilian deaths caused by Israel. The Israeli government, it seems, can count on U.S. media to print its anonymous claims—no matter how baseless. Two days after Abu Rahmah, a Palestinian woman from the West Bank village of […]
In his New York Times column today (3/24/11)–headlined “Hugs From Libyans”–Nicholas Kristof boils down the argument in favor of the war in Libya: Then, on Wednesday in Benghazi, the major city in eastern Libya whose streets would almost certainly be running with blood now if it weren’t for the American-led military intervention, residents held a […]
Five members of a family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar were killed in their home on Friday night. Nothing is known about the perpetrators or their motivation. But much of the media coverage assumes the killers were Palestinians, and the murders were apolitical act. The New York Times on March 13: It was […]
The New York Times has a curious reference today concerning the White House’s strategy on a United Nations Security Council resolution critical of Israeli settlements: The new White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said Thursday that he would not say whether the United States would invoke its rarely used veto power in the Council. The […]
Displaying the same allergy to actual democracy shown by Joe Klein (FAIR Blog, 2/3/11), Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer (2/4/11) calls, like Klein, for a military regime in Egypt to impose a “period of stability” for “guiding the country to free elections”–the kind of “free elections” in which the military will “guarantee” that the right […]
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin012811 Laila El Haddad and Robert Weissman @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin012811.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Al Jazeera and the Guardian newspaper are publishing what are being called the Palestine Papers, leaked documents relating to the Israel-Palestine negotiations. The revelations, mostly of significant Palestinian concessions, are mostly being ignored in the U.S. media, dismissed as things […]
Anonymous Israeli officials are weighing in at the New York Times today. Let’s remember the Times has some rules regarding the use of anonymous sources: The use of unidentified sources is reserved for situations in which the newspaper could not otherwise print information it considers reliable and newsworthy. When we use such sources, we accept […]
Today’s Washington Post (12/21/10) brings a story by Janine Zacharia headlined, “Aid groups decry Israel’s Gaza constraints.” The lead: Despite recent moves by Israel to ease construction in the Gaza Strip, restrictions on building materials are hampering international humanitarian efforts while doing little to impede the Hamas-led government they are designed to weaken, aid and […]
The big news in the U.S.-guided Israel/Palestine talks is that a renewal of a so-called “settlement freeze” in the West Bank is basically dead. Ethan Bronner has a post-mortem of sorts in the New York Times (12/9/10), where he describes the backdrop for the previous round of negotiations: The Israelis had insisted that the only […]
Corporate media coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict does not suffer from a lack of creative use of language: the “generous” offer the Palestinians rebuffed at Camp David in 2000, for example (Extra!, 7-8/02), or references to illegal West Bank colonies as “neighborhoods” (Extra! Update, 8/02). The current round of U.S.-backed negotiations brought a new kind […]
There’s a lot to say about Ethan Bronner’s Week in Review piece in the New York Times (11/21/10). The headline says a lot on its own: “Why America Chases an Israeli-Palestinian Peace.” This is ironic, at the very least, given the role the U.S. has historically played in making peace quite difficult. And the current […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The theme in coverage of the current Mideast peace negotiations going on in Washington between Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas appears to be skepticism. But does being critical of this process mean you don’t want peace? We’ll hear from Josh Ruebner, the national advocacy […]
The Washington Post‘s editorial page weighed in (9/7/10) on the Israel/Palestine negotiations by noting that the news in the West Bank has been far less encouraging. In two shooting attacks last week, four Israelis were killed and two others wounded, interrupting what had been nearly three years of peace in the territory. My colleague Jim […]
It really is offensive for commentators to use the word “violence” to mean “violence against one side in a conflict.” As in Martin Indyk’s op-ed in the New York Times yesterday (8/27/10), which argues that there is “For Once, Hope in the Middle East,” because, “First, violence is down considerably in the region.” Here’s his […]
Former Israeli soldier and current writer for the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg has a long cover story (9/10) on the “better than 50 percent chance” that Israel will launch air strikes against Iran by next July, with the aim of taking out the alleged nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic. Based on roughly 40 interviews with […]
In an article (8/10/10) on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony to an Israeli panel investigating the May 31 raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, the Washington Post gets the facts wrong on crucial history and context relating to the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Joel Greenberg writes: Netanyahu said that the naval blockade, imposed by […]
On August 2, the New York Times published an op-ed arguing that Arabs do not care much about Palestinians–and that this is a good thing, especially for Palestinians. But the argument relied on a “poll” of the Arab world that does not exist. The piece, by historian Efraim Karsh, intended to show that the “conventional […]
