Episodes

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240329.mp3 BBC (3/28/24) This week on CounterSpin: A senior UN human rights official told the BBC that there is a “plausible” case that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, a war crime. Meanwhile, US citizens struggle to make sense of White House policy that seems to call for getting aid to Palestinians while pursuing a course of action that makes that aid necessary, if insufficient. Phyllis Benn...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240322.mp3 KXAS (3/19/24) This week on CounterSpin: 2023 was the warmest year on record. The World Meteorological Organization announced records once again broken, “in some cases smashed” (their words), for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea-level rise, Antarctic sea ice and glacier retreat. Climate disruption is the prime mover of a cascade of interrelated crises. At th...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240315.mp3 (image: Repair.org) This week on CounterSpin: About this time seven years ago, John Deere was arguing, with a straight face, that farmers shouldn’t really “own” their tractors, because if they had access to the software involved, they might pirate Taylor Swift music. Things have changed since then, though industry still gets up and goes to court to say that even though you bought a tractor or a washing m...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240308.mp3 Vox (3/4/24) This week on CounterSpin: Among the multitude of harms that could rain on this country should Donald Trump become president again, he could order the Department of Justice to drop any charges against him stemming from his fomenting of an insurrection aimed at overturning by violence the results of the 2020 election. Not to put too fine a point on it, Trump could declare himself above the law...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240301.mp3 This week on CounterSpin: Years ago when media critics called attention to ways corporate media’s profit-driven nature negatively impacts the news, lots of people would say, “But what about the internet?” Nowadays, folks seem to see more clearly that constraints on a news outlet’s content have little to do with whether it’s on paper or online, but on who owns it, who resources it, to whom is it accountab...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240223.mp3 Reuters (2/20/24) This week on CounterSpin: International human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber told Electronic Intifada recently that the International Court of Justice hearings on the legality of Israel’s 56-year occupation of Palestinian land are the largest case in history—more than 50 countries are taking part in this, and the US is virtually alone…in defending the legality of Israel’s occupation. Mos...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240216.mp3 CEPR (1/31/24) This week on CounterSpin: There’s an announcement on the New York City subway where a voice chirps: “Attention, everyone! There are 150 accessible subway stations!” One can imagine an alternate world where we’d hear, “Only 150 of New York City’s 472 subway stations are accessible, and that’s a problem!” But people with disabilities are meant to be grateful, excited even, for whatever acce...

Chart: Washington Center for Equitable Growth (12/9/19) One of the defining features of contemporary US capitalism is rampant inequality. Though there is some scholarly debate about its precise extent, even conservative estimates suggest a rise in income inequality of 16% since 1979 (as measured by the Gini coefficient). Moreover, of the 38 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of mainly high-income countries, the US currently ranks dismally as the sixth-m...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240209.mp3 Other Words (1/31/24) This week on CounterSpin: CNN host Dana Bash asked a question in the Republican presidential debate (1/10/24) in Des Moines, Iowa: The rate of inflation is down. Prices, though, are still high, and Americans are struggling to afford food, cars and housing. What is the single most important policy that you would implement as president to make the essentials in Americans’ lives more ...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240202.mp3 Texas Tribune (1/22/24) This week on CounterSpin: The Supreme Court ruled that federal agents can remove the razor wire that Texas state officials have set up along parts of the US/Mexico border. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that “allows Biden to continue his illegal effort to aid the foreign invasion of America.” Elite news media, for their part, suggest we seek a hallowed middle ground betwee...

When I became a journalist over 15 years ago, I did so to highlight the voices of activists—not top city officials. But things took an unexpected turn in 2014, as the Washington Post sought to end DC Mayor Vincent Gray’s career. As his reelection bid neared, Gray comfortably led all polls—much to the chagrin of the Post, which hadn’t forgiven him for winning office four years earlier. In that prior 2010 contest, Gray, riding a wave of Black support, upended the incumbent DC mayor, Adrian Fenty...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240126.mp3 Guardian (1/8/24) This week on CounterSpin: Elite media can give the impression that problems wax and wane along with their attention to them. And, not to put too fine a point on it, they’re done with police brutality. So if you think news media show you the world, you’ll be surprised to hear that 2023 saw killings by law enforcement up from the previous year, which was up from the year before that. Mor...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240119.mp3 New York Times (10/14/23) This week on CounterSpin: US corporate news media’s initial response to Israel’s terror campaign against Palestinians, unleashed in the wake of the October 7 attack by Hamas, was characterized, broadly speaking, by legitimization, a rhetorical blank check for whatever Israel might do. Israel, the New York Times editorial board said, “is determined to break the power of Hamas, an...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240112.mp3 Yahoo (1/4/24) This week on CounterSpin: The journalists at Yahoo Finance tell us that a Connecticut McDonald’s charging $18 for a combo meal has “sparked a nationwide debate” on escalating prices in the fast food industry. The outrage, readers are told, is “partly attributed” to a recent raise in the minimum wage—which has not yet gone into effect. Spoiler: We never hear about any other “parts” “attribu...

2023 is over, and with it, the great inflation surge of the last few years has essentially come to an end. As the progressive economist Dean Baker trumpeted shortly before Christmas, “This Economy Has Landed, We Are at the Fed’s Target” (Beat the Press, 12/22/23). Inflation is now at 2.6%, according to the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, and is trending further downward. Remarkably, since the Fed began raising interest rates in the spring of 2022, unemployment has maintained a historically ...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240105.mp3 (image: Jewish Voice for Peace) This week on CounterSpin: It was a big deal when Jewish Americans who oppose US support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza filled New York’s Grand Central Terminal. But not big enough to make the front page of the local paper, the New York Times. US journalists invoke the First Amendment a lot, but not so much when it extends to regular folks using their individual voices,...

Transcript: ‘We Have to Do the Hard Work of Looking at Context’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin231229.mp3 Janine Jackson Every week, CounterSpin tries to bring you a look “behind the headlines” of the mainstream news. Not because headlines are false, necessarily, but because the full story is rarely reflected there—the voices, the communities and ideas that are not front and center in the discourse of the powerful, but could help us move toward ...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin231222.mp3 Middle East Eye (12/14/23) This week on CounterSpin: People in the US, the story goes, value few things more than individual freedom and money. So you’d think the way an individual uses their money would be sacrosanct. It’s a sign of where we’re at that there are currently congressional efforts to put people in prison, fine them millions of dollars, for choosing not to buy products from countries that ar...

Transcript: ‘The Only Way to Have Meaningful Climate Policy Is to Beat the Oil Guys’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin231215.mp3 New York Times (12/13/23) This week on CounterSpin: UN Climate talks have ended with an agreement that, most importantly—New York Times headlines would suggest—”Strikes Deal to Transition Away From Fossil Fuels.” Headlines, all that many people read, are often misleading, and sometimes they aggressively deflect from the ...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin231208.mp3 (CC image: Jewish Voice for Peace) This week on CounterSpin: As we record on December 7, the news from Gaza continues horrific: The Washington Post is reporting, citing Gaza Health Ministry reports, that Israel’s continued assault throughout the region has killed at least 350 people in the past 24 hours, which brings the death toll of the Israeli military campaign, launched after the October 7 attack by ...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin231201.mp3 ABC (6/22/23) This week on CounterSpin: “Abortion Politics Reveal Concerns” was the headline one paper gave a recent Associated Press story, language so bland it almost discourages reading the piece, which reports how right-wing politicians and anti-abortion activists are seeking to undermine or undo democratic processes when those processes accurately reflect the public desire to protect reproductive ri...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin231124.mp3 Washington Post (11/19/23) This week on CounterSpin: The new president of Argentina opposes abortion rights, casts doubt on the death toll of the country’s military dictatorship, would like it to be easier to access handguns and calls climate change a “lie of socialism.” Many were worried about what Javier Milei would bring, but, the Washington Post explained: “Anger won over fear. For many Argentines, t...

Overflowing morgues. Packed hospitals. City blocks reduced to rubble. In response to Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack, Israel has unleashed mass destruction on Gaza. Into a region the size of Las Vegas, with a population of 2.1 million, nearly half children, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tons of bombs, the equivalent of nearly two Hiroshimas. It has killed journalists and doctors, wiped out dozens of members of a single family, massacred fleeing Palestinians, and even bombed a densely p...

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin231117.mp3 Time (11/6/23) This week on CounterSpin: Coverage of what is quite possibly not the most recent mass shooting, as we record the show, but the recent one in Lewiston, Maine, leaned heavily on a narrative of the assailant as a “textbook case” of a shooter, because he had some history of mental illness. FAIR’s Olivia Riggio wrote about how that storyline not only gets the relationship wrong—mental illness i...