CounterSpin

We talk about what just happened, and corporate media’s role in it, with Julie Hollar, senior analyst at the media watch group FAIR, and FAIR’s editor Jim Naureckas.

News media start with the premise of immigration itself as a “crisis,” with the only debate around how to "stem" or "control" it.

Trump’s “Big Lie” attorneys are not so much returning to the field, but actually never left.

Defending Rights & Dissent has started a project called the Gaza First Amendment Alert, which is going to come out every other Wednesday.

A new book doesn’t just illuminate the thicket of effects of systemic racism as it affects where people live; it reframes the understanding of the role of housing.

Why are events we pay insurance for a "crisis" for the industry we pay it to? The unceasing effects of climate disruption will only throw that question into more relief.

As every day brings news of new carnage, US citizens have a duty not to look away, given our government’s critical role in arming Israel and ignoring its crimes.

Jen Senko’s film and the book based on it are an effort to engage the effects of that yelling, punching down, reactionary media.

Why do the press corps need a constitutional amendment to protect their ability to speak if all they’re going to say is, “oh well”?

A people-centered press corps would spell out the meaning of economic “indicators” in relation to where we want to go as a society that has yet to address deep historical and structural harms.

Kroger is currently raising the prices of things like eggs and milk above inflation rates, simply because they can get away with it.

How do we acknowledge the fact that many people’s opinions are shaped by messages that are created and paid for by folks who work hard to hide their identity and their interests?

The crickets you’re hearing about efforts to eviscerate the right to protest the impacts of climate disruption? That’s all intentional.

Does the company that "corners the market" do so because people simply prefer what they sell? The anti-monopoly ruling against Google challenges that idea of how things work.

The right wing has gotten much more overt about their intention to defeat the prospect of multiracial democracy, as demonstrated by its latest weaponized trope—the “DEI hire.”

If voting were made easier, Donald Trump said, "You'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."

Years from now, we’ll hear about how everyone saw the nightmare and everyone opposed it. But history is now, and the world is watching.

At some point, we will get tired of hearing news reports on "record heat"—because "heat" will have stopped meaning what it once may have meant.

Algorithms create an environment where organizations enact rules for workers’ behavior, reward and sanction them based on that, but never allow workers to see these accountancies.

The cynical maneuvers of Medicare Advantage don’t lead to good health outcomes, but they serve the real goal: netting private insurers more money.

This week on CounterSpin: Donald Trump told a Las Vegas crowd earlier this month that, if elected, the “first thing” he would do would be to end the IRS practice of taxing tips as part of workers’ regular income. “For those hotel workers and people that get tips, you’re going to be very […]

Will elite news media now suggest we just go back to considering the Supreme Court a neutral body, deserving of life terms because they’re above the fray of politics?

It is a moment to examine the right-wing media that have fomented this scary nonsense, but also to look to reporting from the so-called “mainstream” to go beyond the “some say, others differ” pablum we often see.

Some courts are indulging the bizarre notion that regulation should be illegal, essentially, because it forces companies to say stuff they’d rather not say.

The violent attacks on college students and faculty across the country showcase the abandonment by many educational institutions of their responsibility to protect not only students, but the space in which they can speak and learn freely.

The 2020 election was not stolen from Donald Trump through skullduggery--but many people who vote do believe that.

US press are so used to driving the narrative they don’t know what to do except yell “shut up shut up shut up” and send in the cops.

Different media, telling different stories, can change our understanding of our past, our present and our future.

Colleges’ official responses to protests are gutting the notion that elite higher education entails respect for the free expression of ideas.

The long-fought effort to get legal acknowledgement of the abuse of Iraqi detainees in the Iraq War is coming to a federal court in Virginia.

What needs to change in Haiti includes Western media presentations that ignore or erase even recent history.

Corporate profit margins are at a level not seen since the 1950s, as abject greed was whistled past by the press corps.

A senior UN human rights official says there is a "plausible" case that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, a war crime.

Elite media still can’t quite connect images of floods or fires to the triumphant shareholder meetings of the fossil fuel companies.

Industry still argues that that cellphone isn't really "yours," in the sense that you can't fix it if it breaks.

Donald Trump could declare himself above the law—and that’s just been enabled by a recent Supreme Court ruling.

If we don’t ask different questions about what we need from journalism, we will arrive at the same old unsatisfactory responses.

As the US falls more out of step with the world, many in the US press seem divorced from the idea of US responsibility.

Acheson v. Laufer is another example of “weaponizing the courts to dismantle labor protections, housing rights and health guidelines.”

The same people who earn wages also buy groceries, and pretending that we’re pitted against one another is not just mis- but disinformation.

What if there isn’t a "border crisis" so much as an absence of historical understanding, of empathy, of community resourcing?

Communities are hard at work reimagining public safety without punitive policing. There’s new work on those possibilities.

How does the New York Times’ assertion that “what Israel is fighting to defend is a society that values human life” stand up now?

Elite reporters are so removed from daily reality that they assume a raise in wages means fast food employees have to lose their jobs.

US journalists invoke the First Amendment a lot, but not so much when it extends to regular folks saying NO to the US government.

CounterSpin is thankful to all the activists, researchers, reporters and advocates who appear on the show to help us see the world more clearly.

Powerful institutions, including the media, combine a selective understanding of free expression with a vehement desire to enforce it.

We can't have a public conversation about how fossil fuels cause climate disruption in a corporate media moneyed by fossil fuel companies.

The devastation of Gaza, and the vehement efforts to silence anyone who wants to challenge it, is the story for today.

Too many outlets seem to have trouble shaking the framing of abortion as a "controversy," or as posing problems for this or that politician.

Argentina's new president questions the death toll of the country's military dictatorship and calls climate change a “lie of socialism.”

The question is whether the Court’s conservative majority can use its special brand of backwards-looking to determine this country’s future.

Shouldn't the press corps be actively involved in informing us about the person third in line for the presidency?

“The newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Paxlovid's "transition" to the commercial market entails hiking the cost of the treatment to 100 times the cost of production.

The primary food aid program, SNAP, while the constant target of the racist, drown-government-in-the-bathtub crowd, keeps on keeping on.

This week on CounterSpin:  In the wake of the October 7 attacks by Hamas and the ensuing bombing campaign from Israel on the Gaza Strip, many people were surprised that CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria aired an interview with a Palestinian activist who frankly described the daily human rights violations in Gaza, the right of […]

Corporate media tell us to be mad at the rando taking toilet paper from Walgreens, but not the executive who’s skimming your paycheck.

The story is mostly about the political fortunes of an individual; the huge numbers of less powerful people impacted are, at best, backdrop.

An unprecedented labor action is underway as thousands of Midwest autoworkers working for the Big 3 went on strike at the same time.

September 11, 2001, is the exemplar of a past that isn’t dead, or even past, and for no one more particularly than Muslims.

Media have an active disinterest in telling the story of the Korean peninsula in anything other than static, cartoonish terms.

It does no disservice to the education battles of the current day to connect them to previous battles and conversations.

The ADA demands all kinds of attention, every day—not a once a year pat on the back about "how far we’ve come."

Unlike elite media’s misty memories, the lawsuit is a stubborn indication that those responsible for Abu Ghraib haven't been called to account.

Facial recognition, a technology that has been proven wrong, has been deemed harmful, in principle and in practice, for years now.

Elite media are deeply accustomed to calling any union action a harm, and any company acknowledgment of workers’ value a concession.

Advocates have long declared that Biden’s asylum restrictions are not just harmful but unlawful. And a federal judge has just agreed.

Say Her Name is about adding Black women to our understanding of police violence—to help make our response more meaningful and impactful.

White supremacy and economic policy are completely different stories for the press, but not for the people.

There is no way to fight climate disruption without fighting climate disrupters.

The impacts of the Dobbs ruling are still reverberating, as is the organized pushback that we can learn about and support.

When Daniel Ellsberg died, media burnished their own reputation as truth-tellers while somehow dishonoring the practice of truth-telling.

Narrative is an important tool for folks looking to change the world for the better, in part by changing the stories we tell one another.

What will the legalization, and profitizing, of marijuana mean for the people and communities most harmed by its criminalization?

Asian-American students are being used as the face of attempts to eliminate affirmative action or race-consciousness in college admissions.

Many corporate news reporters seem unable to present a labor action as other than an unwonted interruption of a natural order.

Some officials fully intend to treat anyone who stands in opposition to whatever they decide they want to do as enemies of the state.

Whether the Supreme Court gets away with its rejection of ethics depends in part on journalists' willingness to stick with the stories.

Republican brinkmanship could devastate millions of people—along with the harm to public understanding of what's actually going on.

Hate-fueled and hate-fueling media have political and historical impacts—and interpersonal, familial ones as well.

A Texas judge revoking FDA approval of mifepristone may be a "confusing legal battle" for media--but for most people, it's just frightening.

Tax season leads some of us to ponder what we get in return for our resources—streets and stop signs, to be sure, but also wars.

Crushing Starbucks workers' attempts to work together is against the law—but it's not the sort of crime elite media seem able to identify.

Do Black and brown people have a right to move freely in the world? The Ciudad Juárez fire and what it tells us about immigration policy.

What passes for debate about why we must remain at war with whomever is designated has roots in 2003 worth studying.

The corporate press corps seems intent on forcing a vital, important situation into old, tired and harmful frames.

Media interest in historic breakthroughs should extend to the barriers disabled people face in 2023, and how policies could address them.

Jackson, Mississippi, residents who have been harmed many times over are being told that the appropriate response is to take away their voice.

Our past has not been fully grappled with or understood, and that has everything to do with what’s happening now.

Saying how hard you want to be on "dealers" is really an admission of a failure to address a public health issue as a public health issue.

What could be happening if Biden's long-languishing nomination of public interest advocate Gigi Sohn were put through?

Electric utilities have disconnected US households more than 4 million times since the beginning of Covid, preceding the Ukraine War.

The message from many politicians and their media amplifiers: Cheating on taxes is a luxury only the rich can, or should be able to, afford.

Lumumba's assassination, judging by attention, has no lessons for US citizens or the press corps about the past, the present or the future.

The public still look to news media to give them accurate, independently sourced and documented information to help them make decisions.

There's an unarticulated underpinning to elite media conversation that as a consumer, you don't have anything called a "right."

CounterSpin is thankful to every activist, researcher, reporter and advocate who appeared on the show, of whom this is just a small selection.

The Very Smart People will tell us that what we really ought to do, what the intelligent people would do, is, well, nothing.