KPFA - CounterSpin

This week on CounterSpin: a special look at two stories. One of them has received significant media attention that you might not always understand; the other is a story that’s flown under the media radar altogether. Turmoil in the housing market has been pinned on Wall Street’s appetite for so-called subprime mortgages. With house prices declining and foreclosures heading the other direction, the media are now sifting through the debris to tell us what happened. But what should we have known all along? And who exactly is being rescued now? Journalist Nomi Prins will join us to explain.

The post Counterspin – December 28, 2007 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: The FCC voted recently to eliminate the cross-ownership ban that was intended to prevent the same company from controlling tv stations and newspapers in the same market. Pretty par for the course for the industry-friendly agency, but this time, after years of activism, there’s more pushback than perhaps was expected. What exactly happened and what happens next? We’ll hear from Josh Silver, executive director of the media reform group Free Press.

The post Counterspin – December 21, 2007 appeared first on KPFA.

The Huckabee surge is officially the campaign story of the moment. How did the supposedly second-tier Republican contender become the man to beat? And what has the national media done to boost him to front-runner status? We’ll speak with a reporter who’s covered Huckabee up close for years—Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times.

The post Counterspin – December 14, 2007 appeared first on KPFA.

Old official assumptions about Iran have been swept away by a National Intelligence Estimate that says Iran scuttled its nuclear weapons program years ago. But will journalists question the whole new set of official (and in many ways no less belligerent) assumptions that seem to be emerging in the wake of the NIE? We’ll talk to lawyer and peace and security expert Asli Bâli.

Also on the show: If you’re looking for a thoughtful balanced explanation of the constitutional referendum in Venezuela that was narrowly defeated this past week, the U.S. corporate press corps is not going to be your best bet, what with all the gleeful crowing about "shutting up" Hugo Chávez, as a New York Times op-ed had it. It requires some effort to understand how a story about a referendum could be presented as underscoring a president’s dictatorial nature. We’ll get some help from Venezuela-watcher Mark Weisbrot, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.Glenn Greenwald on Joe Klein, Dave Tomlin on Bilal Hussein

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The documentary "Independent Intervention" examines the overlap between the military industrial complex and the media in this country. (Part 2)

The post Pushing Limits – October 19, 2007 appeared first on KPFA.

The documentary "Independent Intervention" examines the overlap between the military industrial complex and the media in this country. (Part 1)

The post Counterspin – October 19, 2007 appeared first on KPFA.