CounterSpin

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

CounterSpin is the weekly radio show of FAIR, the national media watch group.

  1. −4 D

    Angelo Carusone on Media Matters v. FTC, Rachel K. Jones (2023) on Mifepristone

    https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260508.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Media Matters (11/16/23) This week on CounterSpin: In 2023, the group Media Matters reported that social media platform X was placing ads for major brands like Apple and IBM alongside content touting Hitler and the Nazi Party—despite the claim of X’s CEO that brands are “protected from the risk of being next to” toxic posts on the platform. Musk threatened a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters for reporting the truth, and many in state and federal government were happy to take that work on. Three years and several court cases later, Media Matters announced victory in what wound up being Media Matters v. Federal Trade Commission. The case and the victory are not just hopeful but instructive, offering what the group calls a “roadmap” for other newsgathering and nonprofit organizations facing, or at risk of, government retaliation. We hear about the case and the outcome from Media Matters president Angelo Carusone. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260508Carusone.mp3   Washington Post (4/19/23) Also on the show: Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the dominant method of abortion in the US has become mifepristone, particularly as it can be administered by telehealth, without the need for an in-office visit. But now Louisiana, which has a near-total abortion ban, sued the FDA over telehealth, and though it got support from a federal appeals court to block remote prescription, a visit by the drug’s makers to the Supreme Court led to a temporary stay on that. As the debate continues, we revisit a conversation we had a few years ago with Rachel K. Jones, principal research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, who knows more than most about mifepristone. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260508Jones.mp3

    28 min

  2. 1 MAJ

    Derek Kravitz on Dynamic Pricing

    https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260501.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Yahoo Finance (4/25/26) This week on CounterSpin: A CNN headline a few months back told us that Instacart—which used to call itself a company that delivers groceries, but now, as its CEO told investors, is the “leading technology and enablement partner for the grocery industry”—was now using AI to “Gauge Customer Price Sensitivity.” “Price sensitivity” apparently means whether or not you care that you pay more for the same can of beans as another person—or, to be more clear, whether or not you notice. While some states look into banning it, so-called algorithmic or “dynamic” pricing is being presented by the corporate press as a fait accompli, the only question remaining being how to make sure consumers understand that they have no choice. We’ll hear more from investigative reporter Derek Kravitz, from Consumer Reports. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260501Kravitz.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at press coverage of the White House Correspondents Dinner attack. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260501Banter.mp3

    28 min

  3. 24 APR.

    Jesse Rabinowitz on Harassing the Unhoused, Maritza Perez Medina on Rescheduling Marijuana

    https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260424.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). NHLC (3/24/26) This week on CounterSpin: From the federal level on down, many laws and policies that claim to be about “ending homelessness” seem to be clearly more about hurting homeless people than changing their circumstance. Even if you, or anyone you know, has never been unhoused: How hard is it to understand the difference between charging poor people monetary fines they obviously can’t pay, and then throwing them in jail when they don’t—and addressing homelessness with, oh I don’t know, housing? That would be a commonsense conversation, about what resources we have and how we deploy them; but instead we see power actors, with the support of the White House and the Supreme Court, telling us that “ending homelessness” means tearing up people’s tents, throwing away their belongings; a new law in Kentucky says officials can use “stand your ground” laws to shoot homeless people that don’t “cooperate” with their eviction from private or public land. So: Is this really about addressing homelessness? Because we know how to do that. And if it’s not: What is it about? And can we have an honest conversation about that? Jesse Rabinowitz is the campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Center. We hear from him this week. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260424Rabinowitz.mp3   Marijuana Moment (12/18/25) Also on the show: You may think weed is “legal” because you see so many people smoking it on the street. Including your grandma and your next-door neighbor who just a few years back would’ve called the cops. But just as the criminalization of marijuana affected different communities very differently, the current supposed de-criminalization continues to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. Though that is not at all the understanding you would get from a casual view, or for that matter from media coverage that makes it seem like the debate over weed is all over, and now we’re all just talking about which strain is the best. Maritza Perez Medina is director of federal affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance. She joins us to talk about what the “rescheduling” of marijuana does and doesn’t do. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260424Medina.mp3   With both homelessness and drug policy, it’s useful to see how many current legislative measures, with a cultural backwind from corporate media, are fooling people that things have changed, while actually things are still harming the people who have always been harmed. So these moves are not something to “tweak”; we need conversation and action based on a different understanding of why things are as they are, and of how things can be.

    28 min

  4. 17 APR.

    Sarah Anderson on Poverty Wages, Lia Holland on the Wayback Machine

    https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260417.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Inequality.org (3/4/26) This week on CounterSpin:  Tesla reported $5.7 billion in US profits in 2025 and paid $0.0 in taxes. As Rebecca Crosby and Judd Legum at Popular Information report, there’s little mystery to this miracle: Tesla used corporate tax breaks, proffered by Trump and co. in what reporters with straight faces call the “One Big Beautiful Bill”—including 100% bonus depreciation; and they exploited a long-standing deduction for executive stock options. At least 88 profitable corporations have reported paying $0 in federal income taxes last year, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy. Citigroup, CVS, Walt Disney—they “made” billions but, weirdly it turns out, they somehow owe the federal government bupkis, whereas you and I are playing a chump’s game, evidently. Cheaters cheat, grifters grift, but why do news media label companies “successful” when that success stems from cheating and grifting and, crucially, shafting their workers? Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-edits the site Inequality.org. She’s written a new report that gets to the heart of America’s “Low-Wage Employers and the Affordability Crisis.” We hear from her this week. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260417Anderson.mp3   Fight for the Future (4/13/26) Also on the show: The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is a nonprofit digital library with the fundamental mission of preserving web pages. For example, a union organizer used it to look up old job listings and check how what the company says it offers has shifted over time. When police edited a press release after a journalist reported on it, and then said her report was false, she was able to prove that the department had changed their statement. It’s kind of Information 101. But it’s under threat. We hear about that from artist and activist Lia Holland, campaigns and communications director at the group Fight for the Future. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260417Holland.mp3

    28 min

  5. 10 APR.

    Sina Toossi on War on Iran, Chip Gibbons on Impeaching Trump

    https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260410.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   New York Times (4/8/26) When a president commits war crimes, including what the Nuremberg trials established as the “supreme international crime” of plotting and waging an aggressive war, as Trump has done, and then blithely threatens more war crimes, as Trump has done, you would hope major news outlets would do much more than type up reports, like one from the New York Times, on how Trump currently “faces new diplomatic tests.” It’s important to call out Trump and his enablers’ particular hatefulness and weirdness, but we’re missing something if we don’t see how they’ve been pulling on pre-existing threads, making use of old narratives that have proven useful before and left unexamined. We’ll hear about that from Sina Toossi, senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260410Toossi.mp3   Defending Rights & Dissent (4/6/26) Also on the show: What can you do about a president like Trump? No, really: What can you do? Impeachment is often talked about in the press as a mean thing that partisan officials threaten each other with, but it was intended as a genuine response to presidents who were deemed unfit for public office. More and more people are saying unto shouting that about Trump now; so what next? We’ll hear from activist/author Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights and Dissent. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260410Gibbons.mp3

    28 min

  6. 3 APR.

    Shannon Minter on ‘Conversion Therapy’ Ruling, Alex Frandsen on Local News Day

    https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260403.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   USA Today (4/1/26) This week on CounterSpin: In Chiles vs. Salazar, the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado’s law prohibiting health practitioners from employing the widely discredited practice of trying to “convert” young people from their sexual orientation or gender identity violates healthcare workers’ First Amendment rights.  We’ll hear about what the ruling does and doesn’t do, and how news media might better explain it, from Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260403Minter.mp3   Local News Day Also on the show: April 9 is Local News Day, a new project aimed at lifting up the value of truly local news outlets in an increasingly consolidated media landscape. Alex Frandsen helps lead a group, the Media Power Collaborative, that’s looking to forge a way forward that draws on the particular value of local news, to communities and those representing them, and that doesn’t involve revisiting an imagined past age of benevolent media giants. We’ll hear from him as well on the show. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260403Frandsen.mp3

    28 min

  7. 27 MARS

    Arlene Martinez on Sunshine Week

    https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260327.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Good Jobs First (3/23/26) This week on CounterSpin: Sunshine Week, based on a popular statement from Louis Brandeis that “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” is an effort to spotlight open government and its importance to the public’s right to know what’s being done in our name. The Michigan Press Association usually honors a public official who advances open government, but this year they said they’re giving no award because “this year’s legislative and policy landscape does not reflect the progress or commitment to openness that the award is designed to celebrate.” Ooof. So Sunshine Week, introduced decades ago by the National Association of Newspaper Editors, is meant to be both a celebration and a call to arms. To information advocates—and to journalists who should be natural partners with anyone seeking to bring the actions of the powerful to light. We talk about it with a group that stays on top of government transparency; Arlene Martinez is deputy executive director and communications director at Good Jobs First. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260327Martinez.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at Washington Post prices, the actual cost of oil, the Cuba blockade and Breonna Taylor. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260327Banter.mp3

    28 min

  8. 20 MARS

    Jim Naureckas on MAGA vs. 1st Amendment, Baher Azmy on Abu Ghraib Justice

    https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260320.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Truth Social (3/14/26) This week on CounterSpin: Those not in vigorous denial understand that we in the US are in the midst of not just “foreign” wars—today on, most prominently, Iran—but also a war against our ability to talk about it all, to dissent from it, to hear from people who have different ideas about ways forward. It doesn’t seem too much to say: If we cut off our ability to have a widespread public debate, whatever “solutions” we’re told “we” came up with have nothing to do with democracy. We’ll hear from FAIR editor Jim Naureckas about what news media could call, if only they would, “the Trump administration vs. the First Amendment.” Transcript: ‘A Media System Built on Profit Is Incredibly Fragile’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260320Naureckas.mp3   Just Security (3/17/26) Also on the show: US news media told us that the images of Iraqis tortured at the infamous “hard site” in Abu Ghraib have been “seared into the American consciousness.” That would imply that those US news media were genuinely interested in the horrors meted out at the Iraqi prison where the CIA and the Army committed what Wikipedia comfortably calls a “a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees.” Those media would surely want all of us “consciousness-seared” people to know what was being done to answer for it all, to bring people to account, to make sure it never, ever happened again. (That shouldn’t sound like a joke.) The Center for Constitutional Rights has been in back of the last remaining lawsuit on behalf of victims of Abu Ghraib; and, though you might not have heard about it, they won. We’ll get the update from Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Transcript: ‘This Is the Only Post-9/11 Case Seeking Accountability for Torture to Reach a Jury’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260320Azmy.mp3

    28 min
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Om

CounterSpin is the weekly radio show of FAIR, the national media watch group.

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  • Skapad av
    Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
  • Aktiva år
    2005 - 2026
  • Avsnitt
    274
  • Åldersgräns
    Barnvänligt
  • Programmets webbplats
    CounterSpin

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