FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
When do journalists choose to unleash the weaponized language of “terrorism”—and what effect does that have on public opinion and policy? University of Illinois professor Travis Dixon has researched media patterns on the issue.
Solitary confinement is discussed so matter-of-factly in US media that you wouldn’t guess that many people in the world consider it to be torture. Plus: Despite ever-growing popularity, women’s sports just don’t seem to garner big-time media interest.
It shouldn’t be necessary to spell out, but apparently it is, that sending the Central Park Five to prison for a crime they hadn’t committed was wrong because they hadn’t committed the crime.
[mp3-jplayer tracks=”CounterSpin072211 Mary Bottari and Marjorie Cohn @https://eadn-wc04-3257648.nxedge.io/audio/counterspin/CounterSpin072211.mp3″] Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: You’ve probably never heard of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. So why do they have so much sway over the laws affecting your life? We may get some sunlight on the actions of this influential “public/private membership organization” with […]
Charles Overby has a foot planted firmly in two very different worlds. In one, he is a champion of the free press. In the other, he is part of a group at the helm of a corporation that has worked hard to limit freedom of information and the ability of the press to inform the […]
Independent journalist Robert Dreyfuss on John McCain’s foreign policy vision. Also this week: Corporate media and mass incarceration, with Michael Jacobson from the Vera Institute of Justice.
A recent obituary in the New York Times told about Frank Smith, “who as an inmate leader at Attica prison was tortured by officers in the aftermath of the prisoner uprising of 1971 and then spent a quarter century successfully fighting for legal damages.” Working as a paralegal after his release, Smith was a pivotal […]
One man’s prison rape story doesn’t come close to filling this kind of vacuum and mis-reporting in the newspaper of record. “Newspapers in New York could have a full time corrections reporter, there’s so much out there,” says Gary Craig. Not a bad idea.
There is no shortage of reasons why women end up in jail. Women earn less, are responsible for more and are among the least well-protected people in the country. A recent article in Harper’s magazine (4/94) pointed out that a single mother is almost required to resort to illegal activity if she is to feed […]
