KPFA - CounterSpin

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week’s major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).

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CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week’s major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).

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This week on CounterSpin: FAIR, the nonprofit collective that produces CounterSpin, had a T-shirt early on that called for the “separation of press and state.” That’s still meaningful, of course, but it feels a little odd now to talk about media bias without using the word “corporation.” Interrogating the role of profit-driven corporations in today’s journalism is crucial, but it’s important to see it as another part of a deep-going questioning of corporations’ power over our lives in general.

We talk this week with a veteran of that work. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.–based Corporate Crime Reporter, and editor and writer at Capitol Hill Citizen. He joins us this week on CounterSpin.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of “Alligator Alcatraz.”

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week’s major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).

The post CounterSpin – September 20, 2026 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Some 3,000 people died when planes hit the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. One hundred twenty-five people died at the Pentagon in Virginia, and at least 265 people were killed—passengers and crew—on the planes used to carry out the attacks. It was a day of horror and grief. But then it became an excuse for more horror and more grief, inflicted “in the names of” people who were no longer here to say whether that was what they would want.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is currently striving for relevance by declaring that current Mayor Zohran Mamdani should not attend commemorative ceremonies. We hear about what Giuliani did when he was mayor with a 2007 interview with Wayne Barrett, then senior editor at the Village Voice and co-author, with Dan Collins, of Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11.

Also on the show: Giuliani isn’t alone in saying that New York city’s mayor should stay away from anything to do with September 11, 2001, because, because, well because, you know! The same reason no Germans are allowed in the Holocaust Museum. And no white Americans are allowed in the South. Hatred, fear, accusations against Muslims have been around forever, but some people—and some media—leapt on that day’s crime to use as cover for a bigotry they always harbored, now free to weaponize wherever they chose. CounterSpin talked about Islamophobia many times with writer and organizer Maha Hilal, author of Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11. We hear just one of those conversations this week.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Donald Trump’s sanity.

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week’s major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).

The post CounterSpin – Wayne Barrett (2007) on Giuliani and 9/11, Maha Hilal (2023) on Innocent Until Proven Muslim appeared first on KPFA.

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week’s major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).

The post CounterSpin – September 6, 2026 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Corporate news media obscure it, almost like it’s their job, but we still understand that laws and policies land on differently situated people differently. I can believe that there are millionaire congressmembers who genuinely cannot imagine pushing through a sickness, or ignoring a health concern, because they can’t afford the doctor visit…people who haven’t even ever waited for an appointment, or struggled to fit it around a work schedule. But that’s the reality of millions of us, most of us.

So current corporate media talking about how universal care, or Medicare for All, is, as Forbes magazine puts it, “a brand, not a plan”? Media who elitesplain that “oh, you don’t want to live in Canada, just trust me on that”? They don’t speak for the most of us, who just want to see a doctor, in a regular way, please. But they can speak OVER us.

We’ll talk about Medicare for All—and the things you’re likely to read about it—with Abdullah Shihipar, public health researcher and writer, from the Brown University School of Public Health.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of press pool censorship and “reverse surgery.”

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CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week’s major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).

The post CounterSpin – Abdullah Shihipar on Medicare for All appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: The US news media marked the anniversary of August 2021’s nominal withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. A New York Times story explained that Taliban flags were “flying high along the streets of Kabul,” but that the deeper truth is that “the Taliban are holding Afghan society in a chokehold that spares no one.” But, the paper alleges, “The Taliban know the world wants a stable Afghanistan—one that isn’t a source of refugees, drugs or terrorism.” I don’t have enough breath to describe the hypocritical fantasizing in that sort of statement.

But CounterSpin has hosted numerous reporters, researchers and activists over the course of the decades of devastating US intervention in Afghanistan—which did not, in fact, suddenly and righteously begin in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks. We’ll hear some of those conversations this week.

And I will say, there has been some attention rightfully paid to the abandonment of Afghans who, at great danger to themselves, helped US troops, and who are now treated as yet more brown hordes seeking to sneak into the US. But those historical, human rights–based conversations are being overwhelmed by storylines like that from the Times, that talks about Afghanistan’s “fragile peace” being “already at risk,” every bit as though the United States hasn’t played a monumental role in making that peace impossible.

And while we’re reimagining history, please recall Dan Rather, on David Letterman on September 17, 2001, describing his definition of his job as journalist: “George Bush is the president, he makes the decisions, and, you know, as just one American, if he wants me to line up, just tell me where.”

We’re going to hear from Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies; from Matthew Hoh, senior fellow with the Center for International Policy; and Sonali Kolhatkar, host/producer of Rising Up With Sonali, and author—most recently—of Breaking ICE: Community Defense Against State Terror and MAGA Fascism. And there is much more about Afghanistan on FAIR.org.

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week’s major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).

The post CounterSpin – Phyllis Bennis (2021), Matthew Hoh (2021) and Sonali Kolhatkar (2010) on Afghanistan CounterSpin appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: It was not a shock when Donald Trump’s Justice Department greenlit the merger of Paramount—owned by the scion of the Trump-adjacent Ellison family—with Warner Bros Discovery. Who cares if a single entity (that loves Donald Trump and all he stands for) controls a vast empire of the movies, cable TV and streaming services we have access to? It turns out a lot of people care, and that’s why the merger, presented as a done deal weeks ago, is actually on the ropes. We’ll get a state of play from Jessica Gonzalez, co-CEO of the public advocacy group Free Press.

Also on the show: A sitting congressperson stated publicly: “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic. We refuse to be silent.” The fig leaf, if there were one, is off. Folks are just out here saying all Muslims (well, except for Dr. Oz) are devils, criminals, evil—and woe betide anyone who doesn’t sign up for that perverse, hateful view. News media could declare such racist, ignorant, ahistorical, anti-democratic—did i say racist?—they could call all that out, and remove anyone spouting it from respectful public conversation. But: We have the media we have, so people who hate Muslims because they’re Muslim have a seat at the grown-up table, and a microphone.

Islamophobia in media is not new. It wasn’t new when FAIR produced a report about it in 2008. We’ll hear today a conversation we had around that report, which we called Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation, with former FAIR staffers Isabel MacDonald and Steve Rendall.

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week’s major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).

The post Jessica Gonzalez on Paramount Merger, Isabel MacDonald and Steve Rendall (2008) on Islamophobia appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

If you look for media coverage about the Farm Bill that’s currently passing through Congress, you can find it–at sites like agriculture.com or agri-pulse.com, or those outlets that have “ag” sections. If you look for coverage of SNAP, the largest food assistance program in the country, you can find that lots of other places. And while some of those headlines are about “Deadbeat Parents” and “SNAP Fraud,” these days many more say things like “Nearly 19K State Kids Have Lost SNAP Benefits Over Past Year” (that’s Connecticut) or “Illinois Launches New Program to Provide Food Benefits to People Who Lost SNAP,” or “Small Grocery Stores Cutting Inventory, Considering Layoffs as SNAP Dollars Decline.”

Overwhelmingly, local reporters are documenting how cuts to SNAP are hurting people and communities. But the lack of major media stories linking the program to the Farm Bill seem somehow emblematic of the opacity around this country’s lawmaking on critical questions around food.

We get an update from Gina Plata-Nino, director of SNAP policy and advocacy at the Food Research & Action Center.

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week’s major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).

The post CounterSpin – Gina Plata-Nino & Crystal FitzSimons (2025) on Food Aid Cuts appeared first on KPFA.

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week’s major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).

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