PodcastDirectory.com's listings of the CounterSpin Podcasts

Robert McChesney and John Nichols on The Death and Life of American Journalism

This week on CounterSpin: a special look at the state of the media in America. Every week on CounterSpin we talk mostly about what the media are getting wrong. But the big story inside the media business is the collapse of the business itself. What are the implications for citizens? What can we do about it? And how concerned should we be about the failures of corporate owners that have done so little to promote good journalism in the first place? We'll talk about all that and more with our ...

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This week on CounterSpin: The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that corporations may not be limited in their spending to influence elections, because they have the same free speech rights as people. Among the many questions raised are not just what this means for elections, but what it means for 'free' speech. We'll hear from Charlie Cray of the Center for Corporate Policy on that story. Also on the program: Amidst the misery, there are a many feel-good stories being reported in the US press abo ...

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This week on CounterSpin: Corporate media chatter about the Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts reflects participants’ priorities: which means you're unlikely to hear advice offered to Democrats other than that they should act more like Republicans. Is that the takeaway? We'll get another angle from journalist and activist Norman Solomon. Also on the show: Anonymous news sources are a journalistic scourge, abetting some of the worst policies of our times, and allowing the powe ...

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This week on CounterSpin: Haiti's status as the poorest nation in the hemisphere has been mentioned time and again by journalists covering the current catastrophe, but where were journalists before the earthquake hit? And how are they doing in explaining the larger context of how Haiti got to this point? We'll talk to Bill Fletcher, former president of TransAfrica Forum and executive editor of The Black Commentator. Also on the show: Charles Overby is CEO of the Freedom Forum, a foundatio ...

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This week on CounterSpin-- It had the elements of a nightly news story: Protestors, including some Americans, being abused by officials in an Arab country. But this story was a non-starter with U.S. media. We'll talk to Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy, who just left Egypt where a delegation of human rights activists were abused by Egyptian police when they protested that country’s refusal to let them cross the Egyptian border into Gaza for a Freedom March. Also on ...

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This week on CounterSpin: Some of the current conversations about the future of journalism trade on some pretty rose-colored notions of journalism’s past. The reality is journalism has always been a very mixed bag, with just some reporters doing the challenging, talking truth to power work that later generations may imagine Everyone was doing. This week on the show we’re going to take a look back at a couple critical institutions in the history of what we now think of as inves ...

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On this special CounterSpin program we’ll take a look back at some of the stories of the past year, and hear again from a few of the many journalists, activists, researchers and critics that brought those stories to us, or helped us make sense of them.

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This week on CounterSpin: Walkouts and protests at the Copenhagen summit have highlighted the political friction in responding to climate change. But is the press corps that brings us headlines like the New York Times' "Poor and Emerging States Stall Climate Negotiations" the right place to look for an understanding of concerns about the inequality of climate change's human impacts? We'll get a different perspective from writer Michelle Chen, who’s been following the story. Also on t ...

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This week on CounterSpin: The so-called Climategate scandal seems to have throw media coverage of climate change back a decade, with news outlets giving climate deniers more or less equal time alongside actual climate scientists. Part of the problem has been the media's general laziness in explaining what is actually in the hacked emails that are the source of the scandal; Curtis Brainard of Columbia Journalism Review will join us to provide some of that missing context. Also on the show: ...

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This week on CounterSpin: 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan at the 'fastest possible pace,' President Obama has declared, are in our vital national interest. The Washington Post called it a strong but carefully calibrated to Afghanistan and Pakistan, describing the plan as "a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at protecting the Aghan population." Perhaps some message shifting going on, about whether US actions are aimed at helping Afghans or defending ourselves, (or maybe you can take your pic ...

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LINKS: --Center for Medical Consumers --The Battle of the Story of the "Battle of Seattle"

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This week on CounterSpin: The Stupak Amendment, a last-minute addition to the House’s recently passed healthcare reform plan, would severely restrict abortion coverage for those on the "public option" part of the plan and those buying private insurance using government money. Many House Democrats journalists and pundits have portrayed Stupak as a sacrifice that must be made to get healthcare reform. Reproductive health advocates and many others differ, saying it could enormously impac ...

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This week on CounterSpin : a source from a senior citizens group quoted in the Washington Post said the group’s main challenge today is simply to try to keep the record straight about what's actually in the health care reform bill, as opposed to what’s being claimed about it. That would seem to be the basic challenge facing reporters, too, but have they been too caught up with coverage of congressional politicking to do justice to it? We’ll hear from journalist Trudy Lieb ...

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This week on CounterSpin: A new investigative series by McClatchy newspapers’ Greg Gordon reveals that in 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs sold more than $40 billion in securities backed by risky home mortgages, "but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting." Sounds important. We’ll talk to Greg Gordon about his story. Also on the show: Israel/Palestine is in headlines at the moment as ...

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This week on CounterSpin: Making sense of the health care debate. In the past week we've supposedly seen the comeback of the public option, in some form or another. We're also told that Harry Reid must gather 60 votes to pass a bill. Is any of this right? And what about a true public health system like single-payer? Author and activist David Swanson will join us to try and untangle these story lines. Also on the show: Progressives and others interested in truly universal healthcare, as in ...

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This week on CounterSpin: The Performance Rights Act would require broadcasters to pay royalties that would be split between recording artists and record companies. The bill has just passed through house and senate committees, and will presumably be debated and voted on. The legislation, naturally faces strong opposition from the broadcasting industry, who say it will hurt stations and artists alike. Kristin Thomson, of the Future of Music Coalition, a group that supports the bill, will joi ...

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This week on CounterSpin: Argentina just passed a media law that will severely curb the power of the country’s most powerful conglomerates by putting a majority of the country’s broadcast licenses in non-corporate hands. How did the law come about, and how is it expected to change Argentina’s media landscape. And what lessons might US media activists take from Argentina’s example? We’ll talk with Marie Trigona, an independent journalist and filmmaker based in A ...

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This week on CounterSpin: The story of Iran's nuclear program certainly isn't going away; glance at the newsstands this week and you might see the Newsweek cover story 'After Iran Gets the Bomb.' And a leaked report suggesting Iran is indeed pursuing nuclear weapons made its way to the front page of the New York Times. What should we make of that story, and the general media consensus on the Iranian threat? Analyst and Iranaffairs.com blogger Cyrus Safdari will join us to share his thoughts ...

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This week on CounterSpin: Did the White House really disclose the existence of Iran’s new Uranium enrichment plant, and does the plant, as many news stories seem to indicate, really violate the law? And what evidence is there that the plant has anything to do with a nuclear weapons program, as certain prominent US media figures have claimed? We’ll talk to historian and free lance journalists Gareth Porter about the latest wave of allegations against Iran. Also this week: The c ...

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This week on CounterSpin: the highest-level conference yet on climate change took place this week at the UN. The press made much of the obstacles faced on the way to any international agreement -- but if the front page of the country's paper of record is saying that temperatures haven't risen in 10 years, maybe one of those obstacles is media coverage? We'll talk to Joseph Romm of Climate Progress.org Also on the show: Words mean things and the way reporters use them can shade the way we s ...

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