KPFA - CounterSpin

Dec 08 2024 886 ep. 11 mins 1.2k

KPFA - CounterSpin Podcast artwork

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 thoughtful critique. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).

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Arlene Martinez on Amazon Misconduct / Neil deMause (2019) on Amazon HQ Fight

Dec 08 2024 29 mins

This week on CounterSpin: Few corporations have changed the U.S. business and consumer model more than Amazon. So when that corporate behemoth buys one of the country’s national newspapers — it’s a conflict writ large as can or should be. But things as they are, reporting on Amazon has in general looked more like representing that conflict than confronting it. Good Jobs First

Katherine Gallagher on Abu Ghraib Verdict

Dec 01 2024 29 mins

This week on CounterSpin: It wasn’t the horrific abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, but rather, the pictures of it that forced public and official acknowledgment. The Defense Department vehemently resisted the pictures’ release, with good reason. Yet when, after the initial round, Australian TV put out new images, Washington Post executive editor Len Downie said the

Amos Barshad on Legalized Sports Betting

Nov 24 2024 29 mins

This week on CounterSpin: Passed by a whisker in Missouri on November 5, legal sports gambling is the apple of the eye of many corporate and private state actors — but how does it affect states, communities, people? Journalist Amos Barshad wrote in-depth on the question ahead of the election. He is senior enterprise reporter for the Lever and author of the book No One Man Should

Adam Johnson on Charlottesville March (2017) / Jacinta Gonzalez on Criminalizing Immigration (2018)

Nov 17 2024 29 mins

This week on CounterSpin: We revisit the conversation we had in August 2017 in the wake of the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia. Writer and podcaster Adam Johnson had thoughts about the way so-called “mainstream” news media responded to a straight-up celebration of white supremacy. If we’re to believe the chest-thumping, high on Trump’s agenda will be the

Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas on Placing Blame for Trump

Nov 10 2024 29 mins

This week on CounterSpin: We talk about what just happened, and corporate media’s role in it, with Julie Hollar, senior analyst at the media watch group FAIR, and FAIR’s editor Jim Naureckas. We also hear some of an important conversation we had with political scientist Dorothee Benz the day after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at no

Nicole Foy on Immigration and Labor

Nov 03 2024 29 mins

This week on CounterSpin: Reading the news today, you might not believe it, but there was a time, not long ago, in which it was acceptable to say out loud that immigration is a boon to this country, and immigrants should be welcomed and supported. Now, news media start with the premise of immigration itself as a “crisis,” with the only debate around how to “stem” or “cont

Shawn Musgrave and Orion Danjuma: Vote Fraud Hoax as Voter Suppression

Oct 27 2024 29 mins

This week on CounterSpin: Dropped by her law firm after being exposed as an advisor on the post-2020 election call where Donald Trump told Georgia officials to “find” him some votes, Cleta Mitchell has leaned in on the brand of “election integrity.” Platformed on right-wing talk radio, she’s now saying that Democrats are “literally getting people to lie” to exploit la

Chip Gibbons on Gaza First Amendment Alert

Oct 20 2024 29 mins

The official death toll in Gaza is now roughly 43,000 people, very conservatively. As the Lancet and others remind, armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence, including deaths from causes such as reproductive, communicable and non-communicable diseases. In Palestine, the death toll is exacerbated by displacement; destroyed healthcare inf

George Lipsitz on the Impacts of Housing Discrimination

Oct 13 2024 29 mins

This week on CounterSpin: For many people and for media, the idea of “racial discrimination in housing” invokes an image of individual landlords refusing to rent or sell homes to black and brown people. But that understanding is so incomplete as to be harmful. A new book doesn’t just illuminate the thicket of effects of systemic racism as it affects where people live; it refr

Derek Seidman on Insurance and Climate / Insha Rahman on Immigration Conversation

Oct 06 2024 29 mins

This week on CounterSpin: “How Hurricane Helene Could Impact Florida’s Home Insurance Crisis” was a recent Newsweek headline, on a story with a source saying smaller insurers were “especially in danger.” A layperson might wonder why events we pay insurance for should present a crisis for the industry we pay it to. Writer and historian Derek Seidman joins us to help unders