Bombing People Is Not Feminist, No Matter How You Spin It
Some corporate media have recently been taken with the “inspirational” story of Emily Thompson, the first woman to pilot the super-costly F-35 jet in combat.
NYT Erases US Occupation’s Role in Prolonging Taliban Insurgency
The New York Times purported to explain how the Taliban managed to “outlast a superpower through nearly 19 years of grinding war,” without examining at all how the US contributed to reviving and sustaining the Taliban insurgency.
Media Take a Pass on Pentagon’s Systematic Undercount of Civilian Deaths
As the country approaches two decades of endless war, it is more necessary than ever for the public to have a full accounting of the human costs.
Corporate Media Don’t Think Americans Paid to Invade Venezuela Count as Mercenaries
In reports on a for-profit security firm’s invasion of Venezuela, the term “mercenary” was accompanied by scare quotes, as if these men could only be seen that way from the perspective of an Official US Enemy.
A Pandemic Is Not a War
Though many public officials and media outlets seem increasingly convinced that we are fighting a war against Covid-19, framing the pandemic in military terms obscures what we need to know and how we can cope with this virus.
‘It’s Not Doing a Service to Anyone but Defense Contractors’
“The pundits that are put on television have connections to defense contractors, and they see their stocks going up as there’s talk about ‘will America go to war again?’”
Josh Bivens on Coronavirus Economics, Mandy Smithberger on Military Economics
Economic impacts of epidemics of life-saving and of war-mongering, this week on CounterSpin.
‘This Is an Apocalyptic Future That We’re Facing’
“With the US seeking to control space, and, from space, control Earth, to have this dominance, China and Russia are not going to sit back; they’re going to meet us in kind. And other nations will be up there too.”
Karl Grossman on the Weaponization of Space
We’ll talk about the dangers of the weaponization of space, combined with a press corps that can’t get past giggling about it.
To Corporate Media, an Exercise Bike Ad Is More Newsworthy Than 3/4 of a Trillion for the Pentagon
Only the Washington Post covered the NDAA more than Peloton (10 articles versus 5), while every other outlet gave an ad for an exercise bike more coverage than a multi-billion-dollar grant to the military industrial complex.
Are Soldiers Happy? Unhappy? Compared to What?
It’s the unanswered question “compared to what?” that makes USA Today’s lead story, “Soldiers Hate Their Jobs,” a prime example of pseudo-news.
Puffing Petraeus
Newsweek (7/17/11) begins a piece on David Petraeus becoming CIA director with an account of how he got the “short-term job done” after he was named commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan: Now, after 13 months, the 58-year-old Petraeus is coming home to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Since that day in the Oval Office, […]
MSNBC’s Pentagon Pundit
A recent New York Times article (11/29/08) offers fresh documentation of conflicts of interest involving one of TV’s most famous retired generals, Barry McCaffrey, who continues to be employed as an NBC military analyst even as he rakes in profits from military contractors. The story of how McCaffrey and at least 74 other retired generals […]
GOP Rhetoric on Kerry’s Voting Record Goes Unchallenged
After John Kerry emerged as the likely Democratic nominee for president, the Republican National Committee (RNC) began criticizing his record on military spending. The campaign against Kerry’s record escalated on February 22 when the RNC released a list of weapons systems that Kerry allegedly “voted against.” Republican spokespeople used this list to make sweeping claims […]
Civilian Deaths Aren’t News for Fox News
Both Fox and CNN try to marginalize or minimize civilian deaths in Afghanistan, and self-censorship is taking place at smaller outlets.
Why the Tough Questions Aren’t Asked
“How can you be talking about retaliating militarily against terrorism when you haven’t taken responsibility for what you did in Sudan?”
Legitimate Targets?
In their zeal to present the war against Yugoslavia as a moral crusade, members of the media sometimes slipped into the logic of ethnic cleansing.
The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV
It’s become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King’s birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about “the slain civil rights leader.” The remarkable thing about this annual review of King’s life is that several years — his last years — are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.
