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

The post Kamau Franklin on Cop City Protests appeared first on FAIR.

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

The post Kim Knackstedt on Disability Policy, Algernon Austin on Unemployment & Race appeared first on FAIR.

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

The post Makani Themba on Jackson Crisis appeared first on FAIR.

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

The post Ellen Schrecker on the New McCarthyism appeared first on FAIR.

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.

The post Maritza Perez Medina on Fentanyl, Nancy Altman on Social Security appeared first on FAIR.

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

The post Evan Greer on the Fight for the FCC appeared first on FAIR.

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

The post Shelby Green and Selah Goodson Bell on Utility Shutoffs & Profiteering appeared first on FAIR.

Engaging with posts on social media is a meaningful way of supporting journalism organizations you are sympathetic to.

The post Independent Media Need You to Get the Word Out on Social Media appeared first on FAIR.

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.

The post Michael Mechanic on Underfunding the IRS appeared first on FAIR.

"The same forces that were at play in the '60s to remove Lumumba are at play today in terms of keeping the Congolese from advancing."

The post ‘The Cry Is “Lumumba Lives”—His Ideas, His Principles’ appeared first on FAIR.

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 post Maurice Carney on Patrice Lumumba appeared first on FAIR.

Another company silently snuck a forced arbitration clause into its terms of service—and that company is the New York Times.

The post NYT Moves to ‘Stack the Deck of Justice’ Against Its Subscribers appeared first on FAIR.

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

The post David Sirota on Accountability Journalism appeared first on FAIR.

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

The post Paul Hudson on Airline Meltdown, Melissa Crow on Asylum Policy appeared first on FAIR.

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

The post Best of CounterSpin 2022 appeared first on FAIR.

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

The post Lisa Gilbert on the January 6 Report appeared first on FAIR.

Those who want to eliminate the Indian Child Welfare Act are opposed by the reality that made the Act necessary in the first place.

The post Jen Deerinwater on Indian Child Welfare Act appeared first on FAIR.

The New York Times parrots the implausible suggestion that cities cracking down on unsheltered people constitutes efforts to help them.

The post Media’s Crime Hype and Scapegoating Led to Crackdown on Unhoused People appeared first on FAIR.

The struggle for pay and dignity at the University of California is part of a bigger fight about whether educators are actual workers.

The post Nelson Lichtenstein on UC Strike, Marjorie Cohn on Evangelicals’ Supreme Court Lobbying appeared first on FAIR.

The African continent as a playing field for white people to test their theories, extract resources and stage proxy wars is time-tested.

The post Milton Allimadi on Media in Africa appeared first on FAIR.

Before Bankman-Fried’s transition from financial genius to possible financial criminal, he received little scrutiny in the media.

The post While Crypto Bro Scammed Clients, Reporters Scammed Readers appeared first on FAIR.

It's hard not to imagine the use that a differently focused press corps might make of Brazil's change of direction.

The post Brian Mier on Lula Election Victory appeared first on FAIR.

  For the Western press, the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party offered a number of signals which—if read in good faith—could have been perceived as reassuring. Instead, establishment outlets reverted to familiar narratives regarding China’s Covid mitigation strategy and tied these into renewed predictions of a long-prophesied economic disaster—one that would inevitably […]

The post US Media Searched for Crisis at China Party Congress appeared first on FAIR.

The affordable housing crisis is not just capitalism run amok, because that doesn't happen without government involvement.

The post Gene Slater on Housing Crisis, Rakeen Mabud on Inflation Coverage appeared first on FAIR.

US news media ignore the role US intervention has played throughout Haitian history in order to push for the same sort of intervention again.

The post Jake Johnston on Haiti Intervention, Jeannie Park on Harvard Affirmative Action appeared first on FAIR.

"The culture of imprisonment tells a deeper story about America. We're not going to get it if we don't go to the prisons and get those voices out."

The post ‘This Is America. That’s the Kind of Trial Mumia Abu-Jamal Had.’ appeared first on FAIR.

Overt, proud-of-it bias has shaped coverage of Mumia Abu-Jamal's case from the outset, and current mentions suggest little has changed.

The post Noelle Hanrahan on Mumia Abu-Jamal Update appeared first on FAIR.

Election coverage should be judged not by how reporters "treat" Democrats or Republicans, but about how they inform and engage the public.

The post Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas on 2022 Midterms appeared first on FAIR.

  Janine Jackson interviewed San Francisco State University’s John Logan about Amazon and Starbucks organizing for the October 7, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.   Janine Jackson: Between well-paid people telling you that the solution to high prices is unemployment, and the news of the latest weather catastrophe separated by […]

The post ‘People Are Taking Inspiration From Union Victories at Amazon and Starbucks’ appeared first on FAIR.

Growing numbers of people have concerns, not just about uncritical US support for Israel, but also about the shutdown of critics.

The post Ahmad Abuznaid on Israeli Human Rights Crackdown, Sohale Mortazavi on Cryptocurrency appeared first on FAIR.

With tens of thousands of workers walking out around the country, the notion that this is somehow not meaningful should be hard to maintain.

The post John Logan on Amazon & Starbucks Organizing appeared first on FAIR.

Tax giveaways to non–Puerto Ricans mean money not going to Puerto Rico's energy systems, schools, hospitals, housing.

The post Julio López Varona on Puerto Rico Colonialism, Guerline Jozef on Haitian Refugee Abuse appeared first on FAIR.

US news media need to not only acknowledge inflicting racist harms, but take seriously the idea of repairing them.

The post Alicia Bell and Collette Watson on Media Reparations appeared first on FAIR.

For corporate media, being a paid flack for the police in no way disqualifies you to offer analysis of law enforcement.

The post Sumayyah Waheed on CNN’s Copaganda Hire, Chris Becker on Inflation Coverage appeared first on FAIR.

Please ask CNN to explain why a person who misrepresents the evidence on the causes of crime trends should be offered as an expert.

The post ACTION ALERT: Crime Claims of CNN’s New Police Expert Don’t Hold Up to Facts appeared first on FAIR.

News media missed an opportunity to interrogate the media outlets and politicians who repeatedly invoke the white replacement idea.

The post Matt Gertz and Eric K Ward on White ‘Replacement’ Theory appeared first on FAIR.

The film Powerlands covers Indigenous people around the world, and the resource extraction stealing their water, minerals and homelands.

The post Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso on Indigenous Resistance, Alex Vitale on the End of Policing appeared first on FAIR.

The corporate media narrative on Israel/Palestine makes it hard to make sense of the recent assault by Israeli forces on the Gaza Strip.

The post Ahmad Abuznaid on Palestine Human Rights Crackdown, Andrew Perez on Dark Money Donation appeared first on FAIR.

We have some questions about the US government's claim that this time, they're really bringing stability and security to Central America.

The post Azadeh Shahshahani on Central America Plan, Jon Lloyd on Facebook Disinformation appeared first on FAIR.

Alex Jones' lawyer says talking about his white supremacism would "distract from the main issues." What are the "main issues" about Jones?

The post Angelo Carusone on Alex Jones Trial, Karl Grossman on Nuclear War appeared first on FAIR.

This week on CounterSpin: The crises we face right now in the US—a nominally democratic political process that’s strangled by white supremacist values, a corporate profiteering system that mindlessly overrides human needs to treat the environment as just another “input”—are terrible, but not, precisely, new. People have fought against these ideas in various forms before; […]

The post Luke Harris and Joe Torres on America’s Racist Legacy appeared first on FAIR.

There's a way to tell the story of heat waves that connects to policy and planning, but that centers human beings.

The post Vivek Shandas on Climate Disruption & Heat Waves, Jamie Kalven on Laquan McDonald Coverup appeared first on FAIR.

This week on CounterSpin: The internet has changed the way we communicate, access information and even organize, which means concerns about digital privacy are concerns about privacy, period. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, allowing for the criminalization of abortion, our ability to safely access information and health care […]

The post Nora Benavidez on Post-Roe Data Privacy, Dorothee Benz on January 6 Insurrection appeared first on FAIR.

This week on CounterSpin: The Supreme Court’s reversal on abortion rights is so actually and potentially devastating that it’s hard to know where to look. It’s worth tracing things back—Katherine Stewart in the Guardian, among others, walks us through how, at a time when most Protestant Republicans, including the Southern Baptist Convention, hailed the liberalization […]

The post Jessica Mason Pieklo on Abortion Rights, Preston Mitchum on Reproductive Justice appeared first on FAIR.

"That kind of legal philosophy could seriously endanger not just the environment, but the ability of Congress to pass all sorts of laws protecting the environment, health, safety and civil rights."

The post ‘Whether You’re on the Supreme Court Shouldn’t Depend on How Many People You Give Your Phone Number to’ appeared first on FAIR.

A film that offers an entirely uncritical and glowing portrait of the UAE ought to make PBS take a closer look at the film's funding.

The post Did Public TV Doc Promote Peaceful Coexistence—or the UAE?  appeared first on FAIR.

A Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts has gutted multiple legally and societally established precedents.

The post Adele Stan & Elliot Mincberg on John Roberts, Chip Gibbons on Why Assange Matters appeared first on FAIR.

  This week on CounterSpin: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion on Kennedy v. Bremerton that “the Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.” The case was about whether there was a problem with a Washington […]

The post Dave Zirin on Football Prayer Ruling, Howard Bryant on Black Athletes & Social Change appeared first on FAIR.

It's hard to parse corporate media coverage of Biden's Saudi visit, because that coverage obscures rather than illuminates what's going on.

The post Raed Jarrar on Biden’s Saudi Trip, Lindsay Koshgarian on People Over Pentagon appeared first on FAIR.

It's 40 years since Vincent Chin's murder, with a depressingly resonant context of anti-Asian hatred and scapegoating,

The post Helen Zia on Vincent Chin Legacy, Alec Karakatsanis on Chesa Boudin Recall appeared first on FAIR.

Modest legal steps that would go unnoticed in most countries are—in Nicaragua’s case—clear evidence that it is “inching toward dictatorship.”

The post Nicaragua a ‘Dictatorship’ When It Follows US Lead on NGOs appeared first on FAIR.

US officials have free rein to continue inflicting collective punishment on Venezuelans without challenge or scrutiny.

The post ‘Calibrated’ Dishonesty: Western Media Coverage of Venezuela Sanctions appeared first on FAIR.

On Biden’s and Trump’s favorable ratings, Gen Xers find themselves mostly in the middle among generations.

The post Politico Paints Gen X as ‘Trumpiest Generation’—on Flimsiest Evidence  appeared first on FAIR.

There are people and policies, with names, preventing developing countries from accessing life-saving Covid vaccines.

The post Lori Wallach on Vaccine Equity, Steffie Woolhandler on Insurance & Covid appeared first on FAIR.

While alternative media are up in arms about the Supreme Court's ruling, corporate news media don't seem to think there's much to see there.

The post Liliana Segura on Supreme Court v. Innocence appeared first on FAIR.

  This week on CounterSpin: CBS News‘ website featured a story about the “grim task” of planning funerals for 19 children—shot dead, along with two teachers, in a Texas elementary school on May 24—right next to a story about Oklahoma’s governor signing the country’s strictest abortion ban, the prominent sign behind him declaring “life is […]

The post Igor Volsky on Ending Gun Violence, Pat Elder on Junior ROTC appeared first on FAIR.

The Buffalo killer is a white supremacist who believes there's a plot run by Jews to "replace" white people with Black and brown people.

The post Matt Gertz, Eric K. Ward on the Buffalo Massacre & ‘Replacement Theory’ appeared first on FAIR.

Elite media are interested in abortion as an issue, but it is not understood as a human right but rather as a partisan football.

The post Julie Hollar on Roe Reversal, Tesnim Zekeria on Baby Formula Shortage appeared first on FAIR.

A new website uses critical race theory as a prism to explore the range of threats to multi-racial democracy and our ability to fight for it.

The post Chris Lehmann on Multi-Racial Democracy, Mike Rispoli on Funding Local News appeared first on FAIR.

"If it bleeds, it leads" journalism lets news outlets look as though they're tracking an important event in real time.

The post Josmar Trujillo on Hyper-Policing appeared first on FAIR.

Who pays taxes, how much, and why? We revisit two conversations about tax policy racism and taxing the rich on this week's show.

The post Dorothy A. Brown and Dean Baker on Tax Policy appeared first on FAIR.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's "A More Perfect Union" project is aimed at examining racism in US institutions, including media institutions.

The post Layla A. Jones on ‘Lights. Camera. Crime’ appeared first on FAIR.

  This week on CounterSpin: He wanted to go to the Capitol on January 6, Donald Trump tells the Washington Post, but the Secret Service wouldn’t let him. He hated the violence, and was furious Nancy Pelosi wasn’t putting a stop to it. He doesn’t remember getting many phone calls, and he didn’t destroy any […]

The post Marjorie Cohn on Prosecuting Trump, Mike Liszewski on Marijuana Justice appeared first on FAIR.

Will we keep having a Supreme Court justice declaring himself "one being" with a spouse who declares the 2020 election an "obvious fraud"?

The post Sarah Lipton-Lubet on Ginni Thomas Conflict, Dave Maass on Transparency and Journalism appeared first on FAIR.

It's a good time to recall that we had a war in this country in which many people declared that they cared more about white supremacy.

The post Carol Anderson on History, Race and Democracy appeared first on FAIR.

Yemen is not a rhetorical device. It's a country of human beings in crisis.

The post Shireen Al-Adeimi on Yemen, David Arkush on Fed Climate Veto appeared first on FAIR.

Economic pressure is presented as a way of avoiding violence. But there's a problem with seeing sanctions as an alternative to war.

The post Khury Petersen-Smith on Economic Sanctions, Greg LeRoy on Amazon Subsidies appeared first on FAIR.

Is what we call "higher" education an individual investment or a public good? The way news media talk about it could be decisive.

The post Braxton Brewington on Student Loan Debt, Andy Marra on Trans Youth Rights appeared first on FAIR.

Some state-backed journalists must register as “foreign agents” with the US government. But others don't have to.

The post Foreign Agents Designation Causes Media Cold War appeared first on FAIR.

  This week on CounterSpin: Black History Month has always been something of a double-edged sword: It implies that Black history is somehow not “history,” that it has to be shoehorned in, “artificially,” to garner any value, with the corollary implication that if you choose to ignore it, you aren’t missing anything crucial. The idea […]

The post Joseph Torres on Tulsa Massacre appeared first on FAIR.

Understanding the Ukraine crisis involves letting go of the storyline in which the US equals benevolent democracy and Russia equals craven imperialism.

The post Bryce Greene on Ukraine appeared first on FAIR.

Why has the system broken down? You could say media's reluctance to critically break down systems is itself a system problem.

The post Rakeen Mabud on Supply Chain Breakdown appeared first on FAIR.

The  spate of new election-meddling laws proposed in Arizona suggests that looking away from Trumpists' "audit" is not the answer.

The post Steven Rosenfeld on Arizona ‘Audit,’ Sohale Mortazavi on Cryptocurrency appeared first on FAIR.

A judge has approved a debt restructuring deal for Puerto Rico and the deal's architects are saying it means a "new day" for the territory.

The post Natalia Renta on Puerto Rico Debt Deal appeared first on FAIR.

While corporate media have largely let the water crisis in Flint go, the story isn't over, nor has justice been served.

The post Jordan Chariton on Flint Water Crisis, Maurice Carney on Lumumba Assassination appeared first on FAIR.

New York Times coverage of Covid in China, with its casual Nazi analogies, reaches a level of partisan hyperbole on a par with Fox News.

The post ACTION ALERT: NYT’s China Covid Coverage Needs to Acknowledge Reality appeared first on FAIR.

We are a long way from understanding the full meaning of Guantánamo. But we can get the remaining detainees out.

The post Pardiss Kebriaei on Guantánamo Prisoners appeared first on FAIR.

The loss of an information source—a particular place for debate, for conversation, on issues relevant to you—is incalculable, but very real. 

The post Craig Aaron on Local Journalism, Barbara Briggs on Workplace Disasters appeared first on FAIR.

Each aspect of Chinese propaganda complained about in Battle at Lake Changjin is routinely employed by US media, and have been for years.

The post Beijing’s Movie War Propaganda—and Washington’s appeared first on FAIR.

This annual round-up reflects all the conversations we hope have offered a voice that might help you interpret the news you read.

The post Best of CounterSpin 2021 appeared first on FAIR.

This week on CounterSpin, we talk about the recent Honduran election and signs of hard-won hope in that country.

The post Suyapa Portillo Villeda on Honduran Election appeared first on FAIR.

Libraries aren't just a meaningful reality, but a meaningful symbol of the fact that there is a thing called the public interest.

The post Caleb Nichols on Defending Public Libraries appeared first on FAIR.

A small group of people, willing to confront entrenched ideas and power, really can make change in the public interest.

The post Ralph Nader on Journalism and the Public Interest appeared first on FAIR.

As the year nears its end, it’s hard not to think back to how it started—with the violent assault on the Capitol.

The post Dorothee Benz on January 6 Insurrection, Vera Eidelman on Anti-Protest Laws appeared first on FAIR.

This can be a turning point, if more of us understand that history isn't something that happens to us, but something we DO.

The post Carol Anderson on White Supremacy vs. Democracy appeared first on FAIR.

That the Times has been prohibited at least for a time from publishing journalism about Project Veritas, and must fight off the possibility that the right-wing activist group may be able to essentially edit and censor a story after it is published, has press freedom advocates worried.

The post Legal Wrangle Between NYT and O’Keefe Puts Press Freedom at Risk appeared first on FAIR.

You don't need to understand inflation, elite media seem to say, but you do need to be mad about it.

The post Jon Schwarz on Inflation, Enrique Armijo on Alex Jones appeared first on FAIR.

"Processing people and allowing them to come into the country is the best public health policy."

The post ‘The Anti-Blackness of the US Is Extending to Black Asylum Seekers’ appeared first on FAIR.

Drugs are developed by the government, and then pharmaceutical companies get patents on them and sell them back to the public.

The post Peter Maybarduk on Moderna Patent, Tracy Rosenberg on Aaron Swartz Day appeared first on FAIR.

  This week on CounterSpin: The impacts of climate disruption are not theoretical; they are happening. Those already worst off are facing the worst of it, and those who profit from it continue to profit. There are finer points, but that’s reality. And it’s fair to measure journalism not by its cleverness, or by demonstrated […]

The post Michael K. Dorsey on Climate Summit, Nekessa Opoti on Haitian Refugees appeared first on FAIR.

  This week on CounterSpin: An early October survey showed that while 60% of those polled knew that the Build Back Better legislative package was “$3.5 trillion,” only 10% had any sense of what was in it. That is many things, but preeminently a failure of news media—the demonstrably harmful effect of months of reporting […]

The post Karen Dolan on Build Back Better, Tim Karr on Changing Facebook appeared first on FAIR.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell received virtually wall-to-wall adulation in corporate media coverage of his death.

The post The Media’s Lies About Colin Powell’s Lies appeared first on FAIR.

If "experts are more certain than ever" about climate change, why does WaPo keep printing arguments for inaction based on uncertainty?

The post ACTION ALERT: The New Climate Denial: Don’t Worry, Do Nothing appeared first on FAIR.

"The spark of inspiration for OAN [One America News] and its right-wing bent came from a meeting with AT&T executives."

The post ‘OAN Would Not and Could Not Exist Without AT&T’s Blessing’ appeared first on FAIR.

Chevron v. Donziger is a case a major fossil fuel company wanted to see silenced that has in fact had that effect.

The post Paul Paz y Miño on Chevron v. Steven Donziger appeared first on FAIR.

Henry Olsen presented a red herring argument that ignored all the polls showing support for the reconciliation plan.

The post Cherry-Picking Polls to Hide Public Support for Biden’s Spending Plan appeared first on FAIR.

OAN's audience has been told that Trump really won the 2020 election and that chemical cocktails are better for Covid than vaccines.

The post Bobby Lewis on One America News, Jean Su on People vs. Fossil Fuels appeared first on FAIR.

Though the Postal Service has always been a public good, its current leaders seem intent on driving it into the ground.

The post Lisa Graves on the Fight for the Post Office, Stevana Sims on Defending Anti-Racist Education appeared first on FAIR.

Media announce a rise in the murder rate with coverage steeped in false presumptions about what that means and how to respond.

The post Alec Karakatsanis on ‘Crime Surge’ Copaganda, Jane Manning on Gender-Based Crime appeared first on FAIR.

"We’re going to have a representative of fossil fuel interests crafting the policy that reduces our emissions from fossil fuels."

The post David Moore on Manchin’s Conflict, Jim Naureckas on Covid and Media appeared first on FAIR.

High-profile media brands like Jake Tapper simply do not view the expense of empire maintenance to be subject to critical analysis.

The post Why Jake Tapper Never Asks How We Pay for War appeared first on FAIR.

Racist fables, omissions and hypocrisy have plagued US media's Africa reporting through history and up to today.

The post Milton Allimadi on US Media’s Africa Reporting appeared first on FAIR.

A retrospective look at FAIR's coverage of two decades of media self-censorship, scapegoating and stenography.

The post September 11’s Never-Ending Story appeared first on FAIR.

The Supreme Court refused to address, which amounts to an endorsement, what is overwhelmingly understood as an unconstitutional Texas law.

The post Marjorie Cohn on Texas Abortion Law, Kimberly Inez McGuire on Abortion Realities appeared first on FAIR.

A bankruptcy ruling shields the Sackler family, profiteers on Oxycontin, responsible for, conservatively, half a million deaths by overdose.

The post Rick Claypool on OxyContin Bankruptcy, Dean Baker on Economic Disconnects appeared first on FAIR.

Some US media are now lauding Jim Loewen, but without ceasing to generate the very sort of misty misinformation he fought against.

The post James Loewen on Lies Historians Tell Us appeared first on FAIR.

US media consumers may need not a broom but a shovel to deal with the self-aggrandizing, history-erasing misinformation headed our way.

The post Phyllis Bennis and Matthew Hoh on Afghanistan Withdrawal appeared first on FAIR.

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.

The post Jeff Cohen on FAIR’s Beginnings appeared first on FAIR.

The hardships facing Cubans—and the actions the United States could take to stop contributing to those hardships.

The post James Early on Cuban Embargo, David Cooper on ‘We All Quit’ appeared first on FAIR.

As Trump has solidified his grip on the right, elite journalists have largely returned to their perfunctory both-sides reporting.

The post Both-Sidesing Democracy to Death appeared first on FAIR.

Media have misinformed the public about a campaign whose own architects say is about disinforming, confusing and inflaming people.

The post Luke Harris on Critical Race Theory, Cindy Cohn on Pegasus Spyware appeared first on FAIR.

"We have to stand up against these calls for occupation, these calls for intervention. And we have to support the Haitian people's right to self-determination."

The post ‘The Haitian People Aren’t Looking for Foreign Powers to Impose a New System’ appeared first on FAIR.

Media's prescription of law enforcement as the primary response is called by many Asian Americans a problem presenting itself as a solution,

The post Bianca Nozaki-Nasser on Anti-Asian Bias appeared first on FAIR.

The long history of the US using state force to kill Haitians and their aspirations is sufficient and appropriate context for current events.

The post Chris Bernadel on Haitian Assassination, Michael Carome on FDA Alzheimer’s Investigation appeared first on FAIR.

Nestle's profitability relies on a chocolate supply chain that includes literal slave labor in the Ivory Coast.

The post William Dodge on Nestle Slave Labor, Michael Ratner on Donald Rumsfeld appeared first on FAIR.

How do we protect our society from campaigns to stop people from voting or speaking or going into the street to protest things that are wrong?

The post Vera Eidelman on Fourth of July Freedoms, Vivek Shandas on Addressing Climate Change appeared first on FAIR.

The notion of real change after Donald Trump is undermined by a close look at Biden's actual immigration policy.

The post Laura Carlsen on Biden’s Central America Policy, Greg LeRoy on Texas Corporate Subsidies appeared first on FAIR.

TV news coverage of the southern US border largely ignores the experiences and voices of those most impacted by the immigration system.

The post TV News Coverage of Southern Border Lacks Refugee Sources, Historical Context  appeared first on FAIR.

The filibuster is the crucial backdrop to any conversation about the Biden agenda, though media don't always bring that point home.

The post Andrew Perez on the Filibuster appeared first on FAIR.

In the way they balance worker health and company success, worker co-ops complicate corporate media's economic storyline.

The post Jaisal Noor on Worker Co-Ops, Duncan Meisel on Fossil Fuel Greenwashing appeared first on FAIR.

Journalism has been central to public reckoning with the Tulsa massacre ever since that late May night 100 years ago.

The post Joseph Torres on Media & Tulsa Massacre appeared first on FAIR.

US corporate media don't seem to see a story worth telling in India, beyond how Modi might hold on to power despite some unfortunate "missteps."

The post Vijay Prashad on India, Covid and Modi appeared first on FAIR.

With Liberty, Spotify and public radio (via NPR and PRX) in the drivers seat, and Amazon, Apple and the New York Times not far behind, the new podcast oligopoly has arrived, and monopoly is on the horizon.

The post The New Podcast Oligopoly appeared first on FAIR.

Who's speaking for the actual majority of US citizens who support a person's right to determine whether and when to have a child?

The post Preston Mitchum on Roe and Reproductive Justice, Steven Rosenfeld on Arizona Audit appeared first on FAIR.

Do elite media have space for people who don't want to risk their lives for less money than they need to live?

The post Michael Hiltzik on ‘No One Wants to Work!’ appeared first on FAIR.

"People who have less power and less money around the world are the people last in line—and that line is going to be pretty long if you don't speed up the production."

The post ‘Government Money That’s Gone Into Vaccine Development Is Being Privatized by a Handful of Companies’ appeared first on FAIR.

Where elite media present a frozen he said/she said, never-the-twain-shall-meet debate over Israel/Palestine, more and more people see a different way forward.

The post Ahmad Abuznaid on Israel/Palestine Apartheid, James Love on Bill Gates & Vaccine Politics appeared first on FAIR.

"The money that the company spent on buying those outstanding shares in the stock buyback could have been used to develop new products, it could have been used for innovation, it could have been used to maintain and attract talent."

The post ‘Hedge Fund Managers Bleed Companies of Their Capabilities’ appeared first on FAIR.

Western corporate media overwhelmingly reserve the word "aggression" for official enemy nations—whether or not it's warranted. In contrast, US behavior is almost never categorized as aggressive,

The post It’s Aggression When ‘They’ Do It, but Defense When ‘We’ Do Worse appeared first on FAIR.

Tucker Carlson spews harmful nonsense like it's his job, which it is, and he gets some $10 million a year from it—but did you know that, if you have cable, you're paying into that income?

The post Tim Karr on Paying for Fox News Racism, Lynn Parramore on Hedge Funds vs. Green New Deal appeared first on FAIR.

If the Chauvin verdict is testament to the power of protest, so too are the vigorous efforts to squelch that power. Plus: Right-wing legislators target trans kids at the state level.

The post Elly Page on Anti-Protest Bills, Christy Mallory on Targeting Trans Youth appeared first on FAIR.

While recognizing that it's not the sole source of inequality, there are things we can do about blatant, enduring and powerful unfairness in US tax policy.

The post Dorothy A. Brown and Amy Hanauer on Tax Unfairness appeared first on FAIR.

Daniel Hale stands convicted of revealing things the US government didn't want known about its drone warfare programs—the ones elite media have often presented as precise in separating "bad guys" from "innocents."

The post Chip Gibbons on Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale appeared first on FAIR.

Western news outlets have deceptively omitted the centrality of media-promoted Sinophobia to the latest spike in hate crimes toward anyone perceived to be Chinese.

The post Western Media Incite Anti-Asian Racism When They Join in Cold War Against China appeared first on FAIR.

If we don't learn from this pandemic that none of us can be healthy unless all of us are healthy, how many chances will we get?

The post Peter Maybarduk on Global Vaccination, Jane Chung on Big Tech Lobbying appeared first on FAIR.

"The idea that they were invading Iraq based on faulty intelligence has it exactly backwards. They had already decided they wanted to invade Iraq. So the intelligence was then used to justify a pre-existing policy."

The post ‘Someone Was Out There Deliberately Manufacturing Evidence’ appeared first on FAIR.

"Regurgitating claims that the Second Amendment somehow impedes us from doing anything about this problem is a real hindrance, I think, to the kind of conversations we have publicly about this issue."

The post ‘Where There Are More Guns, There Are More Gun Deaths’ appeared first on FAIR.

At local and national levels, the initial media response focused primarily on the gunman’s story and police statements.

The post Atlanta Murders Reporting Relied on Law Enforcement Narratives appeared first on FAIR.

Many are simply fed up with the idea that change is too hard. Will media conversation shift to keep up with them?

The post Igor Volsky on Ending Gun Violence, Robert Dreyfuss on Iraq War appeared first on FAIR.

  Increasing numbers of migrants are attempting to cross the US/Mexico border, and unaccompanied children and teenagers are exceeding the capacities of government-run detention facilities. The right has declared a crisis, and national corporate media have largely followed suit. Department of Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas appeared on five of the six Sunday Beltway talk […]

The post For Sunday Shows, Border Is ‘Political Crisis,’ Not Humanitarian Emergency appeared first on FAIR.

It's almost as if the corporate press accepted the existence of information haves and have-nots, because that's how goods get divided in this country—even if it doesn't make technological, economic or humanitarian sense.

The post Ernesto Falcon on Internet for All, Alexander Kaufman on Future-Proofed Housing Codes appeared first on FAIR.

Do elite media think that whether or not the US, in 2021, under pressure from racists, goes back on the whole "one person one vote" thing is a legitimate topic for debate?

The post Ari Berman on the Attack on Voting Rights appeared first on FAIR.

In article after article, the New York Times failed to share important information on the Lava Jato investigation. This helped normalize the 2016 coup and the removal of Lula from the 2018 presidential elections, which in turn opened the door for a neofascist/military takeover of Brazil.

The post NYT Fails to Examine Its Participation in Brazil’s ‘Biggest Judicial Scandal’ appeared first on FAIR.

While a federal minimum wage increase would affect millions of workers and the social fabric, it would have particular impact on one "essential" yet somehow expendable group: Black women.

The post Michelle Holder on Black Women & Minimum Wage, Alice O’Connor on the War on Poverty appeared first on FAIR.

"You’re forced to resolve your case in a private, secret, rigged arbitration system that’s controlled by the company."

The post ‘Workers Are Increasingly Required to Sign Away Their Rights’ appeared first on FAIR.

If media really expect people to actively challenge the promises pushed—aggressively and constantly—by the energy industry, maybe they could do a little more challenging themselves.

The post Mitch Jones on Texas Freeze-Outs, Joe Torres on News for All the People appeared first on FAIR.

We get some background on forced arbitration and why it matters from previous CounterSpin conversations--plus we talked about the Trump-era NLRB while it was happening.

The post Celine McNicholas and Joanne Doroshow on Forced Arbitration, Kate Bronfrenbrenner on NLRB appeared first on FAIR.

Puzzling out what's behind the "more war will lead to peace" argument in Afghanistan--and listening to people in North and South Korea who seek an end to the militarized tension they've lived under for more than 70 years.

The post Ending the Forever Wars: Phyllis Bennis on Afghanistan, Hyun Lee on Korea appeared first on FAIR.

The disasters of climate disruption have next to no relationship to what corporate media say is "feasible" to address them.

The post Basav Sen on Biden Climate Policy, Hannah Sassaman on Prometheus v. FCC appeared first on FAIR.

For many women, overturning Roe v. Wade would not suddenly shut down access to abortion, simply because many women already lack that access.

The post Kimberly Inez McGuire on Abortion Realities, Bama Athreya on Defending Gig Workers appeared first on FAIR.

Conversations about Flint on CounterSpin, in its particulars and in terms of how it fits into bigger questions around environmental racism, resource control and local governance.

The post Chris Savage, Talia Buford & Peggy Case on Flint Water Crisis appeared first on FAIR.

Historians are shaking their heads as media talk about January 6 as "unprecedented"; while shocking and dispiriting, it has layers and layers of precedent that need to be learned and engaged, if we are ever to actually have the racial reckoning that corporate media are forever insisting we've already had.  

The post Keri Leigh Merritt on the New Lost Cause, Elisabeth Rosenthal on Troubled Vaccine Rollout appeared first on FAIR.

The $2,000 check is indeed far from a perfect plan to help ordinary Americans, yet if it is the only plan currently on the table, many in corporate media are inclined to leave it there.

The post Billionaire-Owned Media Look Out for Neediest by Demanding They Get No More Money appeared first on FAIR.

Media who egged on Trump's candidacy, trivialized his venality and normalized as extreme-but-within-range his and his party's every anti-democratic outrage, are poorly placed to take principled umbrage when that juggernaut takes the course that everyone and their mother said it would.

The post Dorothee Benz on January 6 Insurrection, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard on Police Responsibility appeared first on FAIR.

"Just as we know that trickle-down, giving money to the rich, doesn't help—we know long-term unemployment hurts. A lot of the people that are unemployed six, eight, ten months, they may never work again."

The post ‘We Structure the Market to Create Inequality’ appeared first on FAIR.

A reflection of the sorts of conversations we hope have offered some voice or context or information that you might not have heard elsewhere, or that might help you assess the news you are hearing.

The post Best of CounterSpin 2020 appeared first on FAIR.

While we await the day that Trump's face and voice are no longer at the top of every newscast, it ain't over til it's over. And harms he does as a lame duck are harms nonetheless.

The post Lisa Gilbert on Lame Duck Trump, Dean Baker on Trickle-Down Economics appeared first on FAIR.

Workers in fields, factories and hospitals, endangered by the pandemic, are now held up as pawns, as some lawmakers look to make workers' health and safety a "tradeoff" for Covid relief.

The post Jessica Martinez on Gutting Worker Protections, Mitch Stoltz on Breaking Up Big Tech appeared first on FAIR.

"Critical Race Theory [is] basically the idea that we still have problems with structural racism, and we don't get away from those problems by not talking about it, by having the 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' approach."

The post ‘This Order Puts the Weight of the Federal Government Behind Anti-Antiracism’ appeared first on FAIR.

Trump's obviously suppressive executive order has been largely shrugged off by media that ought to be sounding the alarm.

The post Kimberlé Crenshaw on the Equity Gag Order appeared first on FAIR.

"Family members of the condemned are often erased and have been, for the most part, throughout this process, and I try to really keep that at the center of my work."

The post ‘These Executions, Disturbing as They Are, Have Flown Largely Under the Radar’ appeared first on FAIR.

"He's failed in his job to make sure that the people come first, and not these companies."

The post ‘The Chairmanship of Ajit Pai Has Been a Disaster’ appeared first on FAIR.

As with many aspects of his presidency, the execution spree is both Trump being especially gruesome, and his simply making use of a gruesome machinery he certainly didn't create.

The post Liliana Segura on Trump’s Execution Spree, Gaurav Laroia on Ajit Pai’s FCC appeared first on FAIR.

"We say, on the one hand, that they’re essential; we would like to compel them to go to work so that the rest of us could have the comfort of still ordering in our T-bone steaks and what have you. But we don’t pay these people in a way that reflects how essential they are."

The post ‘Emancipation Never Really Came to Agriculture’ appeared first on FAIR.

'We've had decades-long underfunding of state and local public health departments, and just myopic funding cuts for pandemic preparedness. And this hampers coordinated access, and leaves us ill-prepared to reach the very populations that are the most affected by this virus."

The post ‘The Ones With the Most Risk Are the Ones We’re Most Ill-Prepared to Reach with the Vaccine’ appeared first on FAIR.

"Historically, siege was considered an act of war; to undertake a siege against a foreign population was considered an act of war. And these sanctions are basically a form of siege against a civilian population, to extort some sort of political goal from their leadership."

The post ‘Trump Has Let the Military Establishment Do Everything It Wants to Do’ appeared first on FAIR.

As those of who do so celebrate Thanksgiving, we ought also to acknowledge the work that brings the harvest from the earth to the plate.

The post Ricardo Salvador on US’s Dysfunctional Food System appeared first on FAIR.

"It's the false balance that is putting us into a dangerous position, because you don't want to give any sort of balance to the autocratic side here."

The post ‘Media Sources in the Democratic Party Tend to Be More Right-Wing’ appeared first on FAIR.

The coronavirus crisis highlights the urgent need to reimagine our vaccine infrastructure.

The post Ravi Gupta on Vaccine Infrastructure, Murtaza Hussain on Trump’s War on Yemen appeared first on FAIR.

"Centering workers in a genuine recovery, and really trying to rebuild economic security, it's going to take movement on a bunch of fronts."

The post ‘We Basically Made Recovery Much, Much Harder Than It Has to Be’ appeared first on FAIR.

Blaming the left has been the practice of elite Democrats and their media abettors for decades.

The post Julie Hollar on Moving Democrats to the Right, Josh Bivens on Pandemic Unemployment appeared first on FAIR.

"We've seen the most explosive and energetic worker organizing on the ground that has ever been present in the gig community."

The post ‘Proposition 22 Is a Backlash to Victories Workers Have Had’ appeared first on FAIR.

"The number of ballots that they might be able to throw out...[is] really small, and it's not likely to jeopardize or change the outcomes in these elections."

The post ‘These Lawsuits Are Incredibly Rinky-Dink’ appeared first on FAIR.

Even after election 2020, corporate media fail to highlight the break between those who believe in the democratic project and those who do not.

The post Steven Rosenfeld on Vote Counting, Rey Fuentes on Rigging the Gig Economy appeared first on FAIR.

"I think we also have to be wary of not taking advantage of this moment, because it’s unveiling what the system truly is meant to do."

The post ‘We Have the World’s Largest System to Imprison and Exile Immigrants’ appeared first on FAIR.

"In addition to all of the environmental problems, and the public health issues, the climate issues that we just mentioned, the business model that fracking is built upon is essentially almost a Ponzi scheme."

The post ‘The Candidates Who Are Opposed to Fracking Are Winning’ appeared first on FAIR.

"The Nixon administration went about policing drugs...as if it were a real war. The same way that we would fight foreign adversaries, we were fighting our own citizens."

The post ‘We Have a Long History of Criminalizing Communities of Color Through Drugs’ appeared first on FAIR.

That Bolivia's MAS won this month’s election in an apparent landslide hasn’t meant an end to US media hostilities.

The post US Media Lie About Bolivia’s Movement Toward Socialism—Before, During and After Election appeared first on FAIR.

In our final pre-election show,  we use the lens of one issue, immigration, to look back at four years of Trump policy and of coverage.

The post Special Program on Trump & Immigration appeared first on FAIR.

By accepting "court packing" as "the term for" expanding the court, journalists lend a hand to anti-democratic forces.

The post Journalists Pick Sides When They Call Adding Justices ‘Court Packing’ appeared first on FAIR.

Corporate media prioritize the supposed "risks" to the electoral prospects of Democrats who call for banning fracking over the prospects for human civilization’s survival.

The post Mitch Jones on Fracking’s Hazards, Matt Sutton on Drug War’s Victims appeared first on FAIR.

"The media often talk about these things in a very abstract way, and do not talk about the real-world consequences for ordinary people, and there are very huge real-world consequences for ordinary people."

The post ‘It’s a Very Determined Power Play to Pack Our Court’ appeared first on FAIR.

"It's not to anyone's benefit to intimidate voters. It's not to anyone's benefit to have armed, non-publicly accountable individuals, private armies, on the streets."

The post ‘All 50 States Bar Private, Unauthorized Paramilitary Activity’ appeared first on FAIR.

Understanding how we got to this place requires looking behind the curtain of the "partisan tug of war" narrative corporate media present every day, to see how a powerful minority in this country manages to use public institutions to do unpopular things.

The post Lisa Graves on the Story Behind Amy Coney Barrett appeared first on FAIR.

"Julian Assange is accused of publishing information about war crimes, about human rights abuses and about abuses of power, that have been tremendously important, not just for the public's right to know, but also have made a real difference in advocacy around those issues."

The post ‘Persecuting Assange Is a Real Blow to Reporting and Human Rights Advocacy’ appeared first on FAIR.

"You can't say that Donald Trump is just doing whatever the law allows; Donald Trump was part of why this is in the law."

The post ‘There Is a Different Set of Rules for Someone Like Donald Trump’ appeared first on FAIR.

Unlawful militias manage to be part of the political landscape while somehow escaping rigorous media scrutiny.

The post Mary McCord on Unlawful Militias, Chip Gibbons on Assange Extradition appeared first on FAIR.

"The reality that we live in today is not immutable. It is the product of choices, of power dynamics, of motivations of certain sectors over others, a set of priorities that we can shift. And not just in some abstract, pie-in-the-sky, theoretical thinking, but actually right here, right now."

The post ‘Independent Media Is About Introducing People to Each Other’ appeared first on FAIR.

Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, discusses the takeaways from Trump's taxes.

The post Steve Wamhoff on Trump and Taxes appeared first on FAIR.

Janine Jackson interviewed journalist Antonia Juhasz about the end of oil for the September 18, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. MP3 Link Janine Jackson: Dow Jones dropped ExxonMobil from its blue chip stock market index, a spot it had occupied since 1928. Major banks are talking, anyway, about divesting from […]

The post ‘Investment in Fossil Fuels Yields Much Less Returns Than the Green Sector’ appeared first on FAIR.

Laura Flanders, the original host of CounterSpin and the former director of the Women's Desk at FAIR, practices a kind of journalism that's meant to encourage engagement, not just in the stories it tells, but in the people who tell them. 

The post Laura Flanders on Journalism of Engagement appeared first on FAIR.

While we welcome the demise of an oil industry that does such harm, we have to remember that a creature can do tremendous damage in its death throes, and that a better way forward isn't guaranteed, unless we fight for it.

The post Antonia Juhasz on the End of Oil appeared first on FAIR.

"Most Americans believe that they have a very robust right to protest...but the courts haven't felt that way necessarily."

The post ‘The Court Has Refused to Fashion Concrete Legal Standards About the Rights of Protesters’ appeared first on FAIR.

"If we can't deal with the problem of pharmaceutical monopolies, if we can't deal with the problem of politics influencing health criteria, before there is a safe and effective vaccine, then we can see that we're in for a world of hurt."

The post ‘A Vaccine Can Be a Public Good’ appeared first on FAIR.

"It’s a health problem, it’s an environmental problem, it’s a racial justice problem at this point, because of the way it’s distributed throughout the country and the world."

The post ‘They Put the Blame of Waste on Individuals as Opposed to Companies’ appeared first on FAIR.

  Independent journalist Chris Hedges (ScheerPost, 8/25/20) wrote: The flagrant corruption and misuse of the legal system to abjectly serve corporate interests in the Donziger case illustrates the deep decay within our judiciary and democratic institutions. One of those deeply decayed institutions is the corporate media, as a review of several years of Reuters coverage […]

The post Manufacturing Disgrace: Reuters Distorts Chevron v. Donziger appeared first on FAIR.

There is a connection—underexplored —between brutish police responses to peaceful protests and a history of Supreme Court rulings around the First Amendment.

The post Peter Maybarduk on Covid Treatments, Kia Rahnama on the Right to Protest appeared first on FAIR.

"The Black athlete is the most important and most influential and most visible Black employee in the 20th century, because they’re the ones who were allowed to integrate the society."

The post ‘These Players Have Had a Very Special Place in American History’ appeared first on FAIR.

"Foreign policy has to be grounded in global cooperation, human rights...respect for international law, privileging diplomacy over war."

The post ‘Foreign Policy of This Country Has to Reject US Exceptionalism’ appeared first on FAIR.

This week on CounterSpin, we feature three archived but relevant conversations.

The post Heidi Beirich on White Supremacist Violence, Howard Bryant on Black Athlete Activism, Sharon Lerner on Plastic Recycling and PR appeared first on FAIR.

"It's more important than ever not just to be registered, but to really, really make sure your registration information is correct."

The post ‘The Whole Voting Universe Has Been Turned Upside Down by Covid’ appeared first on FAIR.

"We need to be protecting large swaths of land like the Arctic Refuge, and using them for the future preservation and mitigation of climate change."

The post ‘Drilling Would Have Devastating Impacts on This Fragile Ecosystem’ appeared first on FAIR.

"To blatantly ignore the Supreme Court's ruling, ignore the Census Bureau's own employees’ determination that it could not be done in an accurate and efficient way, is amazing,"

The post ‘Not to Have an Accurate Count  Is Shooting Ourselves in the Foot’ appeared first on FAIR.

If the US wants it, it's "good"; accepting and internalizing that is the price of admission to Serious Political Conversation.

The post Phyllis Bennis on Foreign Policy Visions appeared first on FAIR.

Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling is being reported as a Trumpian bad idea. Is that enough?

The post Karlin Itchoak on Wildlife Refuge Drilling, Steven Rosenfeld on How to Vote appeared first on FAIR.

The United States has been conducting the census for some two centuries, but Donald Trump and his cronies have a new idea of how to do it that involves screwing it up entirely in service to a racist, nativist project.

The post Liz OuYang on Census Sabotage appeared first on FAIR.

"Sentencing in the United States is way too extreme and has racist roots, and there should be an intentional effort to revisit them and recalibrate them."

The post ‘There’s Been Very Little Attention, Despite a Great Deal of Advocacy, to Our Incarcerated Residents’ appeared first on FAIR.

"Bureaucratic violence, that’s the array of policies that have been pooled together to figure out, 'How do we get around the 15th Amendment, while targeting those that the 15th Amendment was designed to protect?'”

The post ‘What We’re Seeing Now Is Jim Crow 2.0’ appeared first on FAIR.

More thoughtful attention to the "how" of re-opening is necessary, but for that, you'd need to listen to people who actually know—and care—rather than constantly handing the mic to Mr. “It Is What It Is."

The post Neil deMause on Reopening Coverage, Nicole Porter on Covid and Prisons appeared first on FAIR.

"The mainstream media...took these statements from the OAS at face value, and ran with them, didn’t even try to form any kind of assessment of their own as to the value of these statements."

The post ‘Media Took These Statements From the OAS and Ran With Them’ appeared first on FAIR.

To the extent the Bolivian coup story's being told, it's being told too late. But CounterSpin listeners learned in real time.

The post Alex Main on Bolivia Coup, Carol Anderson on Voter Suppression appeared first on FAIR.

"There are lawsuits being filed in support of the real power, and that is the power of the people."

The post ‘Trump’s Troops Are Breaking the Law and Creating Chaos’ appeared first on FAIR.

Does it make sense to describe the alleged actions of Russian and Chinese hackers as a form of “theft”? If so, what kind of “theft” is it?

The post Worries About Foreign ‘Hacking’ of Vaccine Research Place Corporate Profits Ahead of Public Health  appeared first on FAIR.

"Charles Koch, who's one of the richest billionaires in the world...has been staking efforts by people who have been working to privatize the Postal Service for more than five decades."

The post ‘A Combination of Forces Puts Our Postal Service at Grave Risk’ appeared first on FAIR.

Militarized federal agents have been deployed with a mission reflected in Defense Secretary Mark Esper's comment that city streets are a "battlespace," filled with what Homeland Security Acting Chief Chad Wolf called "violent mobs."

The post Marjorie Cohn on Portland Secret Police appeared first on FAIR.

"Allowing homelessness and housing poverty to exist in our country has always been a public policy choice, and we can instead choose to end it."

The post ‘Without Immediate Action, Millions of People Will Be Evicted in the Coming Months’ appeared first on FAIR.

"We keep hearing, of course, from the private insurance companies and from the pharmaceutical companies and from politicians, principally on the right, that we really can't afford Medicare for All. This is nonsense. We can afford it."

The post ‘If We Had Single-Payer Healthcare, People Would Get the Care They Need’ appeared first on FAIR.

We’re looking at 20 to 28 million people facing eviction between now and September. Making folks homeless in a pandemic is just a flashpoint of this country's affordable housing crisis.

The post Diane Yentel on Eviction Crisis, Lisa Graves on USPS Under Attack appeared first on FAIR.

"There's a real question over whether Facebook is just too damn powerful, and whether we need further regulatory and legislative interventions to hold this company accountable to the people."

The post ‘Hate Speech and Disinformation Flow on Facebook’ appeared first on FAIR.

A conversation that excludes sheriffs from talk of police abolition and/or reform is missing a critical element.

The post Brenda Choresi Carter on the Power of Sheriffs, Gordon Mosser on Medicare for All & Covid-19 appeared first on FAIR.

Facebook has accommodated Donald Trump, allowing him to post false, incendiary and racist comments that would get another person sanctioned.

The post Jessica González on Facebook’s Promotion of Hate appeared first on FAIR.

"It's particularly critical, in a moment where we are protesting police brutality and over-surveillance and the over-militarization of police, to take into account how advanced technologies like face recognition play into historical injustices and over-surveilling of communities of color."

The post ‘Face Recognition Risks Chilling Our Ability to Participate in Free Speech’ appeared first on FAIR.

"While we have been acting like we've done a good enough job on the coronavirus, and now can get back to what we were doing before, other countries have really taken seriously the fact that they have this deadly pandemic going on."

The post ‘The Decision to Not Combat the Coronavirus Was a Choice’ appeared first on FAIR.

By relying on CIA testimony, media shift the focus away from the tyranny in our own backyard in favor of pointing fingers at the “despotic leaders” of “the Third World”—never mind the fact that the US has no qualms with oppressive leadership in the Middle East when it aligns with our interests.

The post Corporate Media Looks to Purveyors of State Violence Abroad to Condemn State Violence at Home appeared first on FAIR.

Trump's bizarre delusions on Covid-19 aren't just bats in his attic; they've driven a response that is nothing short of disastrous.

The post Jim Naureckas on Covid’s Preventable Nightmare, Clare Garvie on Police Facial Recognition appeared first on FAIR.

"Generally applicable nondiscrimination laws protect everyone, including unpopular groups, including, in this specific instance, LGBT people; and we're not going to read extratextual exceptions into them."

The post ‘You’re Not Allowed to Read Transgender People Out of Protection Because You Dislike Them’ appeared first on FAIR.

The reaction from corporate media to Trump's threat to crush an anti-racist rebellion was to chastise his move as “un-American,” obscuring the domestic sources of inspiration for his vicious crackdown.

The post Media Project Trump Crimes Onto Empire’s Enemies appeared first on FAIR.

A historic Supreme Court ruling declared that Title VII of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 does in fact make it illegal for employers to discriminate against a worker because of their sexual orientation or their transgender status.

The post Ezra Young on Supreme Court LGBT Ruling appeared first on FAIR.

"Guess what won't instill consumer confidence? A law that immunizes businesses if they don't do what's right to keep people safe. Why, in Heaven's name, would I decide to go back to restaurants and movie theaters if they have no incentive to do the right thing to keep me safe?"

The post ‘Immunity Shouldn’t Be Part of the Conversation’ appeared first on FAIR.

"I think this bill really does fail to imagine what public safety could look like. That's our biggest problem with it. They're not listening to people on the ground."

The post ‘We Should Be Committed to Decriminalizing if We Want to Help Communities of Color’ appeared first on FAIR.

"What we see from President Trump's nominees to these powerful courts of appeals and the Supreme Court is a consistent right-wing ideology, frankly going further even than some Reagan and Bush appointees."

The post ‘Trump Judges Are Showing Just How Extreme They Are’ appeared first on FAIR.

"It does make sense that for the people who are trying to amplify the voices of people who are resisting police violence, that the police might not be too happy about that."

The post ‘To Tell Stories of Communities That Are Authentic and Genuine, You Have to Have a Conversation’ appeared first on FAIR.

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.

The post NYT Erases US Occupation’s Role in Prolonging Taliban Insurgency appeared first on FAIR.

Overpolicing and violent policing have much to do with the so-called war on drugs, which serves as a pretext for the harassment of individuals and entire communities of black and brown people.

The post Maritza Perez on Overpolicing & Drugs, Remington Gregg on Corporate Immunity appeared first on FAIR.

Will police attacks on journalists lead reporters to back off, covering racial injustice from a safe distance? Or will they encourage them to work more deeply and consistently to amplify precisely those voices that the "forces of order," as CNN called them, so vehemently want to silence?

The post Alicia Bell on Police Attacks on Journalists, Elliot Mincberg on Trump’s Judges appeared first on FAIR.

"More people are coming to consider that racist policing cannot be 'reformed' with an occasional lawsuit and some implicit-bias classes. CounterSpin has had unfortunate occasion to discuss the issue many times."

The post ‘The People Capturing Police Violence on Video Are the Ones Enhancing Public Safety’ appeared first on FAIR.

More people are coming to consider that racist policing cannot be "reformed" with an occasional lawsuit and some implicit-bias classes. CounterSpin has had unfortunate occasion to discuss the issue many times.

The post Alex Vitale, Chase Madar and Shahid Buttar on Racist Policing appeared first on FAIR.

"I would like to see them expose this hoax that somehow, promoting privatization benefits the neediest children, when, in fact, privatization hurts the neediest children."

The post ‘The War on Public Schools Continues, Only Now It’s Considered Reinvention’ appeared first on FAIR.

We talk with Diane Ravitch about the latest scheme for rich folks to decide what's best for schools their children don't attend. 

The post Diane Ravitch on Pandemic School Privatization appeared first on FAIR.

  Many Americans now recognize the racism at multiple junctures of the criminal punishment system. Especially now, as our leaders refuse to release the disproportionately black and brown incarcerated people from prisons and jails, despite their being sites of serious COVID-19 outbreaks across the country.  But even before the pandemic, some media have played a […]

The post Morningside Case Shows Media Learned Few Lessons From Exonerated Five appeared first on FAIR.

Election Focus 2020: "The Wisconsin opinion seemed to signal that Republicans can do whatever they want to make voting more difficult, even in a pandemic, and the Supreme Court's going to say, 'That’s OK.'”

The post ‘Efforts to Make Voting More Difficult Are Magnified in a Pandemic’ appeared first on FAIR.

Election Focus 2020: No amount of ponderous, prize-winning books written in the aftermath will substitute for tough reporting done now to protect the integrity of the vote going into one of the most monumental presidential elections in the country's history.

The post Ari Berman on Voter Suppression and Coronavirus appeared first on FAIR.

"Emancipation never really came to agriculture, in the sense that we still don't pay the full value of the labor that's required to make the entire system work."

The post ‘Our Food System Is Very Much Modeled on Plantation Economics’ appeared first on FAIR.

"If one country fails to control the pandemic, other countries are going to pay a price. And so we all need to be working together on it."

The post ‘We Can Pool the World’s Science to Develop Better Medical Tools’ appeared first on FAIR.

There is hope that the spotlight the pandemic is putting on problems in our food system could be the light by which we make changes.

The post Ricardo Salvador on the Food System & Covid-19 appeared first on FAIR.

"You do see a lot of coverage that assumes that the two choices are to sit in our homes and have people basically go bankrupt as they can't work, or else to force them back into the workplace and have them take their chances with the coronavirus."

The post ‘There’s a Perceived Need to Get This Over With So We Can Get Back to Work’ appeared first on FAIR.

"Exxon, as far back as the 1960s, really knew the extent to which climate change was going to be the path that we were on, the modern kind of climate disruption that we’re seeing, almost a climate disaster happening every week."

The post ‘The Industry Chose to Protect Billions of Dollars a Year in Its Own Profit’ appeared first on FAIR.

"We have to make sure that everybody in America can get the healthcare they need at a price they can afford."

The post ‘There Are People Dying and Suffering Because They Can’t Get Healthcare’ appeared first on FAIR.

For a perfect illustration of how corporate media function as ruling class propaganda, watch how they spin a titanic upward redistribution of wealth as a “rescue plan” for the US economy, and paint a robber baron like US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin as a “savior” of the American public.

The post Corporate Looting as ‘Rescue Plan,’ Robber Barons as ‘Saviors’ appeared first on FAIR.

Corporate media are constitutionally committed to leaving unchallenged the notion that our choice is between sending folks back to workplaces and public spaces that might be unsafe, and letting them stay home and give up paychecks and health insurance.

The post Jim Naureckas on Coronavirus False Choices, Peter Maybarduk on Pharmaceutical Price-Gouging appeared first on FAIR.

Before millions were unemployed, before Covid-19 began its sweep, healthcare was already a crisis, and the arguments against overhauling it were already visibly tired and specious.

The post Diane Archer on Medicare for All, Sriram Madhusoodanan on Fossil Fuel Accountability appeared first on FAIR.

"This is a huge opportunity for California to create an energy system that’s rooted in climate justice, that’s rooted in the realities of the changing climate, and how they’re going to ensure that they actually are creating a resilient California."

The post ‘Public Ownership Can Eliminate Some of Those Warped Incentives Associated With Monopoly’ appeared first on FAIR.

"This is really an opportunity to think bigger and think in a bolder way than we have before about what it's going to take, not just to fill the gaps in our infrastructure that the crisis has so clearly laid bare, but also to think beyond, about what we want our economy to look like."

The post ‘The Federal Government Has the Resources That Could Stave Off the Economic Pain People Are Already Feeling’ appeared first on FAIR.

"If there were an opposition movement in countries like Canada and the United States and Europe, the demand wouldn't just be, 'You gotta stop this'; the demand would actually be, 'Hey, we’ve got to prosecute the people involved with this. This is killing people. This is a crime. People should be facing legal consequences for this.'”

The post ‘The US Reaction to Pressure to Ease Sanctions Was to Double Down’ appeared first on FAIR.

The $150 billion designated for state, local and tribal governments as relief from the Covid-19 crisis is nowhere near what those governments will need—and not just that, but forcing them to cut budgets just as they need to be spending more is going to drive a cycle that only hurts more those already hurting.

The post Naomi Walker on Covid-19 Relief, Johanna Bozuwa on the Last ‘New Normal’ appeared first on FAIR.

"Frontline, essential workers are seen as heroes. And that type of energy is really going to change the conversation. Nobody really thought of grocery store workers as heroes before this."

The post ‘This Many Strikes Says That Something Fundamentally Is Changing in the Country’ appeared first on FAIR.

In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, many in corporate media are still engaging in class warfare by continuing their crusade against universal healthcare.

The post Pandemic Doesn’t Stop Corporate Media From Crusading Against Universal Healthcare appeared first on FAIR.

What would it look like to call corporate media's bluff on their sudden, serious respect for working people who didn't start being important because there's a contagious disease going around?

The post Mike Elk on Frontline Worker Rights, Joe Emersberger on Pandemic Sanctions appeared first on FAIR.

"The fact is, the kind of economy that's being celebrated by the 1% is, frankly, the same economy that's existed in a lot of other countries for a long time."

The post ‘The Gig Economy Is Really Just Pushing People Into Precarious Work’ appeared first on FAIR.

"We now have 28 years of experience with Reaganism. The average income of the bottom 90% of Americans is today what it was back in 1980, when you adjust for inflation, and the incomes of the top tenth of 1% and above have gone through the roof. It doesn't work."

The post ‘These Devices Making the Super-Wealthy Super-Wealthier Will Have to Come Apart’ appeared first on FAIR.

Strikes going on around the country right now are an indication of how workers are reacting to this moment, in which it's being made painfully clear that they are deemed both essential and expendable at once.

The post Bama Athreya on Gig Economy & Covid-19 appeared first on FAIR.

"The first thing that the CDC tells you to do to help prevent the spread of disease is to wash your hands. But if you don't have water at home, you can't take that simple action to protect yourself or your family or your community."

The post ‘Millions of People Lose Water Service Because They Can’t Afford Their Water Bills’ appeared first on FAIR.

Along with many other things, Covid-19 has underscored the individual and communal harms of a water affordability crisis in this country that usually remains hidden.

The post Mary Grant on Water & Covid-19, David Cay Johnston on the Last Bailout appeared first on FAIR.

"We see high prices, recurring shortages and declining innovation, but also these issues about drug safety and mass marketing, as the natural outcomes of an industry that is oriented around the singular goal of maximizing profit."

The post ‘There’s Never Been More Attention on the Ills of Profit-Motivated Pharmaceutical Production’ appeared first on FAIR.

"The economic system has got to shut down. It is not an option to leave the economy running while we fight this virus; that is not a possibility."

The post ‘We Need to Not Just Slow Down the Disease, but Stop It’ appeared first on FAIR.

As we now sit, eyes glued to every media, journalists carry a great responsibility: to translate evolving information, projections and recommendations into accessible news that reflects appropriate gravity without being unhelpfully alarmist.

The post Jim Naureckas on Covid-19, Dana Brown on Public Ownership of Pharmaceuticals appeared first on FAIR.

"For people to actually understand that we need to audit the debt, that we need to understand the debt, and that we shouldn't be paying any debt that was created illegally, has been a struggle in itself."

The post ‘The US Has Played With Puerto Rico’s Economy for the Last 122 Years’ appeared first on FAIR.

The vast majority of Venezuela’s voting machines were incinerated on March 7 in a fire that engulfed the main warehouse of the National Electoral Council. Corporate outlets followed the familiar script of blaming the victim, repeating the US State Department talking point that the Venezuelan electoral system is “rigged” and floating outlandish conspiracy theories.

The post Corporate Media Condone Destruction of Venezuela’s Voting Machines appeared first on FAIR.

"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?'”

The post ‘It’s Not Doing a Service to Anyone but Defense Contractors’ appeared first on FAIR.

Puerto Rico is a living lesson about climate disaster capitalism, the failure and cruelty of austerity, and the need for new ways forward.

The post Julio López Varona on Puerto Rico’s Disaster Capitalism appeared first on FAIR.

"In an epidemic like this, the absolute worst thing is people who don't get tested, or don't get treated, because they're worried about cost. But that's a reality of life in America; lots of people forgo healthcare because they think it's going to be too expensive."

The post On Coronavirus, ‘You Have to Combine Economic and Public Health Measures’ appeared first on FAIR.

Election Focus 2020: News organizations seemed unable to process that a major national political figure could say something positive about a socialist country, leaving these outlets flailing around in absurd ways.

The post Media Malfunction as Sanders Notes Positive Aspects of Latin American Socialism appeared first on FAIR.

Economic impacts of epidemics of life-saving and of war-mongering, this week on CounterSpin.

The post Josh Bivens on Coronavirus Economics, Mandy Smithberger on Military Economics appeared first on FAIR.

MIT researchers concluded that there “is not any statistical evidence of fraud that we can find,” and that “the OAS’s statistical analysis and conclusions would appear deeply flawed.”

The post WaPo Prints Study That Found Paper Backed an Undemocratic Bolivia Coup appeared first on FAIR.

Election Focus 2020: "All of these things have the aura of trying to protect democracy, trying to protect the integrity of the ballot box, but it's based on the lie of massive rampant voter fraud."

The post ‘We Are Going to Be Back to Where We Were After Reconstruction—Unless We Stop It’ appeared first on FAIR.

Election Focus 2020: The real Sanders attack machine isn't the mythical machine run by Sanders to take down his opponents; it's run by the establishment Democrats and their media counterparts to take down Sanders.

The post As Democrats Began to Vote, Pundits Hit the Panic Button appeared first on FAIR.

Media debate hosts use their platform less to inform voters in an even-handed way than to define which positions—and candidates—are acceptable, and which are not.

The post Debate Moderators Frame Questions to Define Acceptable Politics appeared first on FAIR.

Election Focus 2020: When it comes to voter suppression, the fight is less between parties than between democracy and its demonstrated opponents

The post Carol Anderson on Voter Suppression appeared first on FAIR.

"Environmental degradation is about... these US corporations, backed by US government, that are allowed to run roughshod over peoples’ lands in the name of, again, profit."

The post ‘We Have to Look at the Underpinnings of Environmental Degradation’ appeared first on FAIR.

“The question then shifts from, ‘How can the “law and order” approach address or eradicate sex work?’ to ‘How are resources divided up in our societies, and why are people trading sex for survival?’” 

The post ‘What Does Criminalizing People Get Us, and What Does It Get Them?’ appeared first on FAIR.

There will only be an increasing number of frontline struggles between extractive, climate-disrupting industry and those willing to stand up to it.  Corporate media's inadequate attention, and unwillingness to truly call out the moneyed interests causing present and future harms, make them more often part of the problem than the solution.

The post Paul Paz y Miño, Saqib Bhatti & Beverly Bell on Environmental Justice & Cross-National Solidarity appeared first on FAIR.

Election Focus 2020: "The Democratic electorate has been told, in no uncertain terms, that Bernie Sanders is not electable and that is your signal, people, that you should not vote for him, because the punditocracy has spoken."

The post ‘Corporate Media Are Not Observers of the Electoral Process; They Are Participants’ appeared first on FAIR.

"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."

The post ‘This Is an Apocalyptic Future That We’re Facing’ appeared first on FAIR.

Election Focus 2020: The Democratic primary process has foregrounded far more "radical" ideas—and public receptivity to them—than corporate elites are comfortable with.

The post Jim Naureckas on Democratic Primaries, Nina Luo on Decriminalizing Sex Work appeared first on FAIR.

We'll talk about the dangers of the weaponization of space, combined with a press corps that can't get past giggling about it.

The post Karl Grossman on the Weaponization of Space appeared first on FAIR.

"We need to ensure that as the news evolves, our thinking about what is protected by the First Amendment, and by free speech laws internationally, also evolves."

The post ‘These Are New Tactics Being Employed to Silence Journalism’ appeared first on FAIR.

"We are looking at a situation where the two-state solution may no longer be possible, and it may be time for a struggle for equal rights between Palestinians and Israelis in the entire land from the river to the sea."

The post ‘This Is an Apartheid Proposal and It’s a Nonstarter’ appeared first on FAIR.

MP3 Link This week on CounterSpin: It is strange to think that you could create a plan to shape the relationship between two entities, in consultation with one but not the other, and then not just declare it, yourself, a “win-win,” but also say to the unconsulted party, “You better take it, or else.”  Yet […]

The post Omar Baddar on Israel/Palestine ‘Peace’ Plan, Rainey Reitman on Greenwald Persecution appeared first on FAIR.

"What level of state violence is going to be seen as tolerable? Because these protests are not going anywhere."

The post ‘This Is About Making a Very Large Number of Indians Second-Class Citizens’ appeared first on FAIR.

Election Focus 2020: The New York Times has a distinctly poor record of picking winning candidates, often making tragically comical predictions and assertions in its endorsements.

The post The New York Times Endorsement Has Often Been a Boost for the Unendorsed appeared first on FAIR.

"This is really an assault against the self-determination of countries when they try to enact responsible environmental policies, or other kinds of policies in the public interest."

The post ‘The Continuation of This Neocolonial System Is Not Being Dismantled’ appeared first on FAIR.

"In the last decade alone, they've spied on Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Abolish ICE movements, Palestinian solidarity movements, environmental movements. Obviously, that's only the tip of the iceberg."

The post ‘This Type of Surveillance Threatens Us All’ appeared first on FAIR.

The far-right Modi government's discriminatory ideas around citizenship have been a trigger for the massive demonstrations, but our guest explains that is not the whole story.

The post Vijay Prashad on India Demonstrations, Manuel Perez-Rocha on NAFTA 2.0 appeared first on FAIR.

"This, I think, is one of the more central and deeper and troubling assumptions in imperialist media, that the United States and its partners are allowed to kill whomever they want, wherever they want, and no resistance to that is legitimate."

The post ‘This Is Already a Hot War the US Is Prosecuting Against Iran’  appeared first on FAIR.

"The upshot is that climate will just be ignored, as if climate change is not happening, when it comes to environmental reviews moving forward."

The post ‘The Driving Force Is to Help Polluters Get Their Permits Faster’ appeared first on FAIR.

The ability of citizens to speak out against injustice is a living, vital tool; interference in political expression by the state cuts democracy off at the root.

The post Chip Gibbons on FBI vs. 1st Amendment appeared first on FAIR.

The overt saber-rattling may be slowing now, but is that any thanks to media? Does it even mean an end to violence?

The post Gregory Shupak on Iran Assassination, Brett Hartl on Biodiversity Loss appeared first on FAIR.

"I don't argue that we simply need to equalize how individuals finance their education.... We need to be changing the system of education, not simply individual access."

The post ‘The People With the Least Resources Are Now Shouldering the Greatest Burden’ appeared first on FAIR.

"We work toward the longer-term work of building solidarity across difference, and of trying to think about, 'How do we address the root causes of the hate that’s coming to the surface today?'”

The post ‘This Is a Moment to Be Really Vigilant Against All Forms of Oppression’ appeared first on FAIR.

"The more we can drag it into the sunlight, the more we can force them to defend the fact that they're proposing stealing our benefits, the less they're going to want to do it."

The post ‘Say No to Stealing Our Social Security Benefits’ appeared first on FAIR.