KPFA - CounterSpin

By KPFANews Politics

KPFA - CounterSpin episodes

May 20, 2005 Counterspin – May 20, 2005 at 3:30pm
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5 min
May 13, 2005 Counterspin – May 13, 2005
This week on CounterSpin: international trade is on the agenda in
Washington, with the White House pushing for Congress to vote on the
CentralAmerican Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. The trade pact is getting
next to no mainstream media attention, even though the political fight over it is heating up. We’ll talk to Karen Hansen-Kuhn of the Alliance for
Responsible Trade about that.
Also this week: On May 1, the London Times reported on the secret
British intelligence memo that seems to confirm suspicions that the Bush
White House manipulated intelligence to make the case for war. The ‘smoking gun memo’was a jolt to British Prime Minister Tony Blair reelection campaign, but has garnered surprisingly little coverage in the United States. We’ll talk to former CIA official Ray McGovern about the memo and its significance.
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5 min
May 06, 2005 Counterspin – May 6, 2005
Dean Baker on Social Security, Rory O’Connor on CPB
This week on CounterSpin: The debate over Social Security privatization will be heating up again now that George W. Bush is endorsing a specific proposal. Are the media sorting out the truth about Bush’s push for so-called progressive indexation? Does the math really show that Bush is, as one New York Times column put it, Robin Hood? We’ll get the details from Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Also on the show: The conservative cat seems to be further out of the bag at CPB. Now PBS president Pat Mitchell is being criticized in public by the new Republican head of the CPB, which gives PBS some $30 million a year. Ken Tomlinson says he was joking when he said public TV programming needed to reflect the Republican ‘mandate.’ Mitchell says it didn’t sound like a joke to her. We’ll hear from veteran public television producer and journalist Rory O’Connor about this ongoing story. – www.fair.org
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5 min
April 29, 2005 Counterspin – April 29, 2005
Christy Harvey on Senate Filibuster, Ross Gelbspan on Climate Change
This week on CounterSpin: Senate rules are suddenly big news, as Republicans charge that Democrats are unfairly—and perhaps unconstitutionally—blocking the White House’s judicial nominees. With all the claims and counter-claims, are reporters sorting out the facts? We’ll ask Christy Harvey of the Center for American Progress.
Also on the show: The media debate on climate change and global warming continues to lend credence to a small group of industry-paid commentators and scientists whose denial of global warming is contradicted by the overwhelming scientific consensus. We’ll talk with journalist Ross Gelbspan, whose article, "Snowed," is part of a package on the climate change debate in the May–June issue of Mother Jones magazine.
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5 min
April 22, 2005 Counterspin – April 22, 2005

Sam Zia-Zarifi on Marla Ruzicka & Jeff Chester on CPB

This week on CounterSpin: Marla Ruzicka, whose mission was documenting and securing compensation for civilian victims of U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was honored in the U.S. press this week after she was killed by a car bomb in Baghdad. But will the same press corps that didn’t raise a peep when a military leader declared that the US army "don’t do body counts," now honor Ruzicka’s work as well? We’ll talk with Sam Zia-Zarifi of Human Rights Watch, the group for whom Ruzicka prepared her last report.
Also on the show: There are big changes at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB. Earlier this month, president of the CPB appears to have been force out and replaced by a more conservative overseer, and the CPB, which is suppose to shun politics, has hired two ombudsmen to monitor for objectivity and balance. We’ll talk about these changes with Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.
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5 min
April 15, 2005 Counterspin – April 15, 2005

David Swanson on Bankruptcy Bill, Sarah Posner Low-Power Radio

As we record this week’s show, the House is voting on bankruptcy legislation that’s been under discussion for week. Our guest says despite the quantity of coverage, the public still may be confused about what the changes would actually do — and not do — and that media have to take some blame for that. We’ll hear from David Swanson of debtslavery.org on that story.
Also on the show: when the FCC legalized low power radio back in 1999, media activists saw it as a real challenge to the media giants, and a return to radio’s localism roots. But something else happened too– right-wing Christian broadcasters figured out how to take local programming national. Reporter Sarah Posner will join us to explain how it all happened.
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5 min
April 08, 2005 Counterspin – April 8, 2005

Emily Whitfield on Torture Memos, John Prados on Intelligence Commission
This week on CounterSpin: New memos about the Bush administration’s torture and interrogation policies in Iraq have come to light. There’s big news here, but you wouldn’t know it by the media’s indifference to the story. What is actually in these new torture documents? And why aren’t journalists picking up on the story? We’ll ask Emily Whitfield of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Also this week: The presidential commission assigned to look into intelligence failures in Iraq and elsewhere, delivered a report placing nearly all the blame for bad information about Iraq’s weapons on the CIA and the intelligence community-and none on senior Bush administration officials. We’ll talk to John Prados of the National Security Archives about the commission and its report.
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5 min
April 01, 2005 Counterspin – April 1, 2005
Bob McChesney on FCC and Indecency, Daniel Ellsberg on Whistleblowers
This week on Counterspin: the FCC is on an anti-indecency crusade that’s already led to broadcasters self-censoring such controversial things as a nude lithograph on Antiques Roadshow. Who’s fighting back? And what happened to all those other issues of media reform we were talking about just last year? We’ll hear from author and media historian Bob McChesney on that story.
Also on the show: Daniel Ellsberg’s leaking of the Pentagon papers 35 years ago exposed the US government’s cynicism and disregard for the human cost of the Vietnam War. Today Ellsberg joins us to talk about two important current whistleblower stories the media is neglecting.
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5 min
March 25, 2005 Counterspin – March 25, 2005

Norman Solomon on Iraq and withdrawal, Katha Pollitt on op-ed diversity

This week on CounterSpin: the two-year anniversary of the Iraq war came and went with relatively little media fanfare. What’s the state of the Iraq debate? And what ideas are unmentionable in mainstream media circles? We’ll ask FAIR associate and syndicated columnist Norman Solomon.
Also on the show: Everything old would appear to be new again, at least when it comes to arguments of why women aren’t fully represented in, in this case, opinion pages of US newspapers and magazines. We’re hearing once again– or is that still? — that women just don’t have what it takes for high-profile punditry or that they just don’t want to, or that if there were more spaces for women, then that would block the advance of people of color. Is there anything new in this latest round of debate about women and media? We’ll hear from author and Nation columnist Katha Pollitt.
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5 min
March 18, 2005 Counterspin – March 18, 2005
Mark Jones on "forgotten crises," Jack Shaheen on Arabs on TV
This week on CounterSpin: Humanitarian catastrophes claim millions of lives every year– from brutal civil wars to disease and famine. Which stories make the headlines, and which are all but ignored by the press? We’ll talk with Mark Jones of Reuters Alertnet about these ‘forgotten crises.’
Also this week: The vilification of Arabs and Muslims by American media is a longstanding tradition, well documented by author and researcher Jack Shaheen. Shaheen will join us today to talk about how American television is now targeting Arab and Muslim Americans with bigoted stereotypes, and what can be done about it
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5 min

About KPFA - CounterSpin

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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. Combines lively discussion and…