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).

The post CounterSpin – August 28, 2015 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 – August 21, 2015 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: The LA Times described Caitlyn Jenner at the ESPY Awards as like a goddess on a pedestal, teaching the world that trans people deserve respect. At the same time, people like Ashley Diamond, incarcerated in Georgia, have to break legal ground to try and get basic protections and medical care. It’s for sure that big media are giving more, and more fact-based, coverage to trans issues, even if a lot of it has to do with the rich and famous. But it’s also true that media “visibility” can mean a lot more to, well, media, than to the people whose lives and experiences are supposedly being elevated. Exploring the particular struggles that affect gender non-conforming people requires asking some difficult questions, not just about this country’s attitudes toward gender but about its respect for human rights. How deep are media willing to go?

Dean Spade is the author of the book, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law. He teaches at Seattle University School of Law and is founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. We’ll be talking with Dean Spade in a special look at media coverage of trans justice — on this week’s CounterSpin.

The post CounterSpin – August 14, 2015 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Two recent stories that are hard to miss, but about which some might say most media are missing the point. First, an anti-abortion group is releasing “sting” videos claiming to show that Planned Parenthood profits from the sale of fetal body parts, but rather than focus on sorting facts from flame-fanning, media are spending time scoring the grandstanding match among Republican politicians. Jodi Jacobson of RH Reality Check will join us to talk about who might profit most from this story.

Also on the show: The killing of the popular African lion known as Cecil by a trophy hunter led some into an unhelpful parlor game of lions vs. people: Which do you care about? Journalists could move the conversation off that dime with a thoughtful examination of the state of animal preservation and the impact of extinction on us all. What might that look like? We’ll hear from journalist John R. Platt, who writes about extinction as well as other environmental issues for Scientific American, among other outlets.).

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This week on CounterSpin: Puerto Rico’s governor, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, told the New York Times the island’s debt is “not payable.” The debt crisis has already meant closing schools, losing jobs and shutting off healthcare options, so what does it mean that on the mainland, what’s happening in Puerto Rico is just a business story–and not a story story? We hear about that from Ed Morales, author of Living in Spanglish and currently a lecturer at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.

Also on the show: If media couldn’t use phrases like “despite big strides, barriers remain,” it’s not clear they could even report on the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The legislation made it illegal to discriminate against people with disabilities in accommodation, transportation and employment, in order to encourage independent living and economic self-sufficiency. But with only some 20 percent of people with disabilities in the workforce, it’s very clear that barriers remain–and less clear that media are really committed to talking about them. Joining us to talk about that is Beth Haller, professor of mass communication at Towson University and author of Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media.

And first, as usual, we take a look back at the week’s press, including Chinese foreign investment, the Samuel DuBose killing and the US’s failing grade on human rights.

The post CounterSpin – July 31, 2015 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin, a sort of theme show on how media cover government corruption disguised as business as usual. First up: A Wisconsin court has just handed Gov. Scott Walker a “big victory,” headlines in the Washington Post and elsewhere declared. One might’ve hoped they’d lead with what the ruling–about Walker’s abuse of campaign finance rules–did for democracy and the public’s right to know who’s paying what to whom in public office. We’ll talk with Brendan Fischer, general counsel at the Center for Media and Democracy, about what just happened in Wisconsin.

Also on the show: The sense is that the joke is on anyone who’s at all surprised to see former US Attorney General Eric Holder miss nary a beat going from investigating big financial interests to representing them at law firm Covington & Burling. Elite media’s utter lack of interest in the move suggests that outrage is outre, but how might journalists talk about this sort of democracy-mocking shenanigan without normalizing it? Reporter Lee Fang writes for The Intercept and The Nation, among other outlets. He’s followed the revolving door for years; we’ll talk with him about that.

The post CounterSpin – July 24, 2015 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: The New York Times tells readers Barack Obama was moved to negotiate a deal with Iran because of his personal “faith in diplomacy.” Is that an appropriate way to understand how these negotiations came to be? Our guest has an alternate view. We’ll hear from investigative journalist Gareth Porter, author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

Also on the show: Almost as disheartening as it is that this week marks the first time a sitting president will visit a federal prison is the notion that such symbolic acts — like that of commuting the sentences of a few dozen prisoners — might be mistaken for substantive movement toward fundamental change in the criminal justice system. How hopeful is current talk of “reform”? And should reform define the limit of the change we want to see? We talk with Mohamed Shehk of the group Critical Resistance about that.

The post CounterSpin – July 17, 2015 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: “Greek Tragedy: Nation Commits Economic Suicide.” OK, it’s the tabloid New York Post, but it’s only yelling what was spoken elsewhere: that Greek voters invited ruin with their “No” vote on an austerity referendum. It’s unclear what will happen now, but the assumption by many in media that the wiser thing would’ve been to just go along with creditors’ terms suggests a disturbing view of how democracy works. We’ll talk about the “No” vote in Greece with Costas Panayotakis, professor of sociology at NYC College of Technology at CUNY and author of Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy.

Also on the show: “Strangers are going door to door late at night and threatening to burn people’s houses down,” a Haitian border guard told the New York Times. These reported attacks on people of Haitian descent (and others) in the neighboring Dominican Republic come in the wake of that country’s move to strip citizenship from tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants and their children. These newly stateless people present a humanitarian crisis, but one that so far US media don’t seem very interested in. We’ll talk about the situation with Rachel Nolan, author of the article, “Displaced in the DR,” which appeared recently in Harper’s Magazine.

The post CounterSpin – July 10, 2015 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past,” recited Winston Smith in Orwell’s 1984. Nowadays, news media have a good deal of control over our knowledge and understanding of the past: The Fourth of July weekend will doubtless feature media chatter about what America “stands for,” and how our history has shaped us.

But much of the talk will bear little relationship to the country’s actual history, which is roughly a million times more complicated and conflict-riddled than the image we are usually presented: a more or less steady march of “progress,” with perhaps a few bumps in the road. Someone who’s thought a lot about how we mis-learn history and how that shapes our political life is James W. Loewen. He’s the author of the classic book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, which assesses the textbooks used in US classrooms, turning up falsehoods, elisions and distortions. He explains some of the reasons students say they hate history–and non-white students hate it most of all.

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