Episodes

New York Times (9/22/21) This week on CounterSpin: “Crime wave” politics are a time-honored response to political movements that take on racist policing in this country, dating back at least to Barry Goldwater, as organizer Josmar Trujillo was reminding us back in 2015. But here we are again, as outlets like the New York Times announce a reported rise in the murder rate with coverage steeped in false presumptions about what that means and how to respond. Our guest says prepare to hear a lot abou...

Sludge (8/6/21) This week on CounterSpin: A recent New York Times story about Senate Energy Committee chair Joe Manchin’s conflicts of interest quoted a source saying, “It says something fascinating about our politics that we’re going to have a representative of fossil fuel interests crafting the policy that reduces our emissions from fossil fuels.” A lot of people would say that’s less fascinating than horrific, particularly in the context of a new global survey of people between 16 and 25 that...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s response to Jake Tapper that her proposals would save far more than they cost was ruled to be not an answer at all by Tapper’s colleague Chris Cillizza (CNN, 9/18/18). Jake Tapper’s career is inextricably linked to America’s so-called longest-running war. His travels there, and book–turned–Hollywood film detailing his exploits, are how, more than any other beat, he polished his reputation as a Serious Journalist, and not just another pretty suit behind a desk. He’s rep...

(Kendall Hunt, 2021) This week on CounterSpin: The primary “sense” of Sub-Saharan Africa in corporate media is absence. When Africa is discussed, it’s often been, to put it simply, as a material resource and as a staging ground for Great Nation politics and proxy war. Not as far removed as it ought to be from the Berlin conference in the late 19th century, when the European powers sat down to decide who got which slice of what the genocidal King Leopold II of Belgium called “this magnificent Afr...

Remembering the Last US Retaliation Against Terror by Jeff Cohen (Column, 9/14/01) “Outrage is the natural and appropriate response to the mass murder of September 11. But media should not be glibly encouraging retaliatory violence without remembering that US retaliation has killed innocent civilians abroad, violated international law and done little to make us safer.” Nightly News Glosses Over Anti-Terrorism Act (Action Alert, 9/27/01) “The report—which ends by saying that ‘no one really kno...

(cc photo: Beth Wilson) This week on CounterSpin: Many people will know that the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, enshrining women’s right to access abortion—to choose when and whether to have a child. It seemed to signal recognition that abortion is healthcare, that most women who have abortions are mothers (in other words, they don’t need to have an ultrasound to recognize what’s happening), that medical reality and theology are not the same, and that outlawing abortion doesn’t stop...

Purdue heir David Sackler and wife Joss depicted in Vanity Fair (6/19/19) This week on CounterSpin: The engineers of the crack epidemic were never offered a deal to get out of the biz with impunity as long as they gave some money towards helping the families, communities and healthcare systems broken in the wake of the addiction epidemic they unleashed. Nor were any other neighborhood drug dealers you can think of, caught making money off drugs that, hey, they’re also very sorry if anyone used i...

Image: Charles C.J. Hoffbauer Anyone born before last week can see US news media lying about history as it’s happening. But fast forward to 10, 20 years from now, and those media stories will have hardened into narrative, into the unspoken “given” presented as context for the latest thing. That’s the power of history as told. A power well understood by James Loewen, the historian and author who died August 19 at the age of 79. Some US media are now lauding Jim Loewen, but without ceasing to gen...

(LA Times, 8/16/21) This week on CounterSpin: US news media are full of armchair generals who talk about weapons of war like they’re Hot Wheels, and have lots of thoughts about how “we coulda got ’em” here and “we shoulda got ’em” there. The price of admission to elite media debate is acceptance that the US, alone among nations, has the right to force change in other countries’ governments; and when this results, as it always does, in death and destruction, elite media’s job entails telling the ...

Jeff Cohen co-founded FAIR in 1986 and is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media. This week on CounterSpin: Listeners to this show may take it as a given that, if you care about social, racial, economic justice, you have to also care about media—because corporate news media promote narratives that shape public opinion, public policy and all of our lives. Now we understand that tales that mainstream news media tell every day—”Healthcare for everyone is too exp...

Pro-government rally, Cuba (photo: AP/Eliana Aponte) This week on CounterSpin: Imagine if China used its power to cut off international trade to the US, including for things like medical equipment, because they didn’t like Joe Biden, and hoped that if enough Americans were made miserable, they would rise up against him, and install a leader China thought would better serve their interests. How would you think about Chinese media that said, “Well, we heard a lot of Americans say they were unhappy...

In the wake of the Capitol Hill insurrection, FAIR (1/18/21) noted “a new and refreshing ability to apply accurate labels to people and their behaviors…and to apportion blame based on reality, not a wished-for fantasy of balance.” After January 6, we noted (FAIR.org, 1/18/21) that many in corporate media finally found the courage to cast aside their commitment to false equivalence. Presumably shocked by what they had witnessed, reporters began using words like “sedition” and “incitement” without...

Little Rock, 1957 This week on CounterSpin: You’ve almost certainly seen the documentary photographs; they’re emblematic: African Americans trying to walk to school or sit at a drugstore soda fountain, while white people yell and spit and scream at them. Should no one see those pictures or learn those stories—because some of them have skin the same color as those doing the screaming and the spitting? The most recent attack on anti-racist education is labeled as protective, as avoiding “division,...

Janine Jackson interviewed Black Alliance for Peace’s Chris Bernadel about the Haitian presidential assassination for the July 16, 2021, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin210716Bernadel.mp3 New York Times (7/8/21) Janine Jackson: As we record July 14, there is still uncertainty about what exactly happened in the early hours of last Wednesday, July 7, when Haitian President Jovenel Moïse w...

New York Times (6/22/21) This week on CounterSpin: A June New York Times article about female Asian-American and Pacific Islander golfers reacting to the recent spike in anti-Asian bias began inauspiciously: “Players of Asian descent have won eight of the past 10 Women’s PGA championships, but there is nothing cookie cutter about the winners.” It reads like a TikTok challenge: “Tell me you assume your readership is white without telling me you assume your readership is white.” In other words, it...