CounterSpin

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin261016.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   “Electrocution,” George Bellows (1917) Donald Trump has apparently called off plans to livestream an execution. It’s impossible to imagine that Trump—the guy who thought it was cute to post video of a tiger killing a man, video that international press had withheld out of human decency, followed by an AI-generated video of himself wrestling the tiger—did any of what anyone else would call introspection. The firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan is still set for December 3. About 7,000 people were executed in the US between 1900 and 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, and some 1,700 people after 1976. The group recently described the “failed execution,” if you can take in those words, of Christa Pike, as unprecedented, and possibly changing the conversation around lethal injection—which we’ve been told to think of as the clinical, tidy way for the state to murder people. CounterSpin has spoken about the death penalty and the way it’s meted out. We hear again this week a conversation from 2014 with journalist Dahlia Lithwick, about the Oklahoma execution of Clayton Lockett, and one from 2020 with journalist Liliana Segura about the death penalty itself and media coverage of it. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin261016Executions.mp3   Also on the show: “But had she been drinking? And what about their futures?” Yes, they are the oldest, stalest, most hateful things said about women who are violently assaulted by men. And yet here we are. Again. CounterSpin spoke in 2016 with writer and activist Soraya Chemaly about the myriad costs of downplaying and misunderstanding domestic violence, and in 2021 with Women’s Equal Justice project director Jane Manning about the justice system’s failures. We’ll hear from them again today as well. An unfortunate understanding that the past is not even past, this week on CounterSpin. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin261016Domestic.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin261009.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Fortune (9/13/26) This week on CounterSpin: When Fortune magazine is telling you “corporations are raking in cash, but American workers are reaping less and less of the rewards,” something is afoot. The not-notoriously capitalist-critical magazine reported recently on the measurable fact that working people in this country are taking home the smallest percentage of economic output since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking it in 1947. And they didn’t try to separate that from the fact that, at the same time, corporate profits have, in their word, “exploded.” Simple acknowledgement is welcome, but how different would public conversation be if we always understood that the corporations corporate media lionize are getting to those wonderful profits by abjectly exploiting their employees—and those they won’t acknowledge as employees? Such that those workers still need government assistance to stay alive? And then the corporations attack government assistance? Can we talk about how this isn’t a sustainable model for a humane society? Terri Gerstein is a longtime labor watcher. She’s director of the NYU Wagner Labor Initiative, at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. We hear from her this week on the show. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin261009Gerstein.mp3

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin261002.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Institute for Policy Studies This week on CounterSpin: It may sound awkward, but there’s a reason that some of us refer to the lethal attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as “September 11, 2001.” It’s because those who have reference to a wider world know that “September 11”  is not a trademark the US has on meaningful horror. September 11, 1973, saw a coup d’etat in Chile, when military officers, directed by Augusto Pinochet, seized power from the democratically elected President Salvador Allende—and ushered in an era of devastating suppression of leftist opposition, including exile, torture and murder. The US saw Chile as a Cold War ally at the time—and so, while some will debate how much this country’s leadership actively, in real time, abetted the coup and the ensuing violence, or whether they just actively laid the ground for it and welcomed and supported it—that’s a distinction without a difference. The history is reactivated this time every year, when we acknowledge the political murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt—killed in a car bomb in Washington, DC, on September 21, 1976, while they were engaged in work at the Institute for Policy Studies, illuminating the abuses taking place in Pinochet’s Chile and their relationship to US actions and inactions. Some people will only be hearing about all of this now—50 years out—because at least one of the people identified as participating in the car bombing, a Cuban exile, is up for deportation. It seems worth underscoring that seeking accountability for the political murders directed by Pinochet does not require co-signing the Trump administration’s people-disappearing machinery—particularly as we know that will involve silencing things we need to hear, and that it is in no way in service to the kind of democratic life Chilean people were seeking with Allende’s election. We talk about the killing of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt with Sarah Anderson. She directs the Global Economy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies, and co-edits the site Inequality.org. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin261002Anderson.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at how media looked back at the “Global War on Terror.” https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin261002Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260925.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Verso Books (2022) This week on CounterSpin: Corporate media sell a lot of messages, but perhaps the overarching one is: This is how it is. You can be mad about it; we’ll give you a personal profile, maybe. But, hey, this is just how it is, and how it is: There were 34.5 million people living in poverty ​in 2025, according to the Census Bureau. The United States has the second-highest poverty rate among major developed nations in the OECD. Wait, you aren’t happy with that? Well, welcome to corporate media’s echo chamber—where you are naive at best. When people try to fight for something better, we get a lot of noise about how that can’t work, won’t work, and you know who else wanted social change? Communists! Socialists! The idea is that we will be frightened off from wanting healthcare because, you know what? Russia! The good news is that ever-increasing numbers of people just aren’t buying what elite media are selling—which is the same old, top-down, racist, “why would you even speak up?” blather that we’ve been listening to for decades. And then the narrating of the nightmare that we’re living through. It’s not that DSA—Democratic Socialists of America—are the answer. But ask yourself: Why won’t corporate media engage the questions they pose? We’ll hear from Raina Lipsitz, author of The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics, from Verso Books—and author of a range of pieces, including some on socialism, for FAIR.org. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260925Lipsitz.mp3 Featured image: Photo by Janine Jackson of anti-Mamdani graffiti in Manhattan’s Chelsea.

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260918.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).     Corporate Crime Reporter (8/3/26) This week on CounterSpin: FAIR, the nonprofit collective that produces CounterSpin, had a T-shirt early on that called for the “separation of press and state.” That’s still meaningful, of course, but it feels a little odd now to talk about media bias without using the word “corporation.” Interrogating the role of profit-driven corporations in today’s journalism is crucial, but it’s important to see it as another part of a deep-going questioning of corporations’ power over our lives in general. We talk this week with a veteran of that work. Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.–based Corporate Crime Reporter, and editor and writer at Capitol Hill Citizen. He joins us this week on CounterSpin. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260918Mokhiber.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of “Alligator Alcatraz.” https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260918Banter.mp3

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260911.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   HarperCollins (2006) This week on CounterSpin: Some 3,000 people died when planes hit the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. One hundred twenty-five people died at the Pentagon in Virginia, and at least 265 people were killed—passengers and crew—on the planes used to carry out the attacks. It was a day of horror and grief. But then it became an excuse for more horror and more grief, inflicted “in the names of” people who were no longer here to say whether that was what they would want. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is currently striving for relevance by declaring that current Mayor Zohran Mamdani should not attend commemorative ceremonies. We hear about what Giuliani did when he was mayor with a 2007 interview with Wayne Barrett, then senior editor at the Village Voice and co-author, with Dan Collins, of Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260911Barrett.mp3   Broadleaf Books (2023) Also on the show: Giuliani isn’t alone in saying that New York city’s mayor should stay away from anything to do with September 11, 2001, because, because, well because, you know! The same reason no Germans are allowed in the Holocaust Museum. And no white Americans are allowed in the South. Hatred, fear, accusations against Muslims have been around forever, but some people—and some media—leapt on that day’s crime to use as cover for a bigotry they always harbored, now free to weaponize wherever they chose. CounterSpin talked about Islamophobia many times with writer and organizer Maha Hilal, author of Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11. We hear just one of those conversations this week. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260911Hilal.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Donald Trump’s sanity. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260911Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260904.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   CCR (7/30/26) This week on CounterSpin: No humor intended: Listening to this show might make you a domestic terrorist. Yes, the Trump White House is trying to make anyone a “terrorist” who speaks out publicly, or co-signs silently, against their plans or policies. That for sure means anyone who signs up on lists in support of outlets like this one, that make such dissent a core concern. At a time where we’re being told that speaking out in criticism of those in power is a crime, we need news media that do more than just narrate that nightmare. But that’s not what we have. The net is widening; which side are you on? Samer Araabi is the associate director of political education and research at the Center for Constitutional Rights. He wrote recently about how Trump is employing “counterterrorism” as an effort to target anyone who dissents at all in the face of the stuff they’re doing. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260904Araabi.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent coverage of modern-day lynching, erasure of history and the lethal impact of targeting immigrants. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260904Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260828.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   New Republic (8/24/26) This week on CounterSpin: Corporate news media obscure it, almost like it’s their job, but we still understand that laws and policies land on differently situated people differently. I can believe that there are millionaire congressmembers who genuinely cannot imagine pushing through a sickness, or ignoring a health concern, because they can’t afford the doctor visit…people who haven’t even ever waited for an appointment, or struggled to fit it around a work schedule. But that’s the reality of millions of us, most of us. So current corporate media talking about how universal care, or Medicare for All, is, as Forbes magazine puts it, “a brand, not a plan”? Media who elitesplain that “oh, you don’t want to live in Canada, just trust me on that”? They don’t speak for the most of us, who just want to see a doctor, in a regular way, please. But they can speak OVER us. We’ll talk about Medicare for All—and the things you’re likely to read about it—with Abdullah Shihipar, public health researcher and writer, from the Brown University School of Public Health. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260828Shihipar.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of press pool censorship and “reverse surgery.” https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260828Banter.mp3

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260821.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   New York Times (8/15/26) This week on CounterSpin: The US news media marked the anniversary of August 2021’s nominal withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. A New York Times story explained that Taliban flags were “flying high along the streets of Kabul,” but that the deeper truth is that “the Taliban are holding Afghan society in a chokehold that spares no one.” But, the paper alleges, “The Taliban know the world wants a stable Afghanistan—one that isn’t a source of refugees, drugs or terrorism.” I don’t have enough breath to describe the hypocritical fantasizing in that sort of statement. But CounterSpin has hosted numerous reporters, researchers and activists over the course of the decades of devastating US intervention in Afghanistan—which did not, in fact, suddenly and righteously begin in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks. We’ll hear some of those conversations this week. And I will say, there has been some attention rightfully paid to the abandonment of Afghans who, at great danger to themselves, helped US troops, and who are now treated as yet more brown hordes seeking to sneak into the US. But those historical, human rights–based conversations are being overwhelmed by storylines like that from the Times, that talks about Afghanistan’s “fragile peace” being “already at risk,” every bit as though the United States hasn’t played a monumental role in making that peace impossible. And while we’re reimagining history, please recall Dan Rather, on David Letterman on September 17, 2001, describing his definition of his job as journalist: “George Bush is the president, he makes the decisions, and, you know, as just one American, if he wants me to line up, just tell me where.” We’re going to hear from Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies; from Matthew Hoh, senior fellow with the Center for International Policy; and Sonali Kolhatkar, host/producer of Rising Up With Sonali, and author—most recently—of Breaking ICE: Community Defense Against State Terror and MAGA Fascism. And there is much more about Afghanistan on FAIR.org. Phyllis Bennis: https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260821Bennis.mp3 Matthew Hoh: https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260821Hoh.mp3 Sonali Kolhatkar: https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260821Kolhatkar.mp3

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260814.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Al Jazeera (8/12/26) This week on CounterSpin: It was not a shock when Donald Trump’s Justice Department greenlit the merger of Paramount—owned by the scion of the Trump-adjacent Ellison family—with Warner Bros Discovery. Who cares if a single entity (that loves Donald Trump and all he stands for) controls a vast empire of the movies, cable TV and streaming services we have access to? It turns out a lot of people care, and that’s why the merger, presented as a done deal weeks ago, is actually on the ropes. We’ll get a state of play from Jessica Gonzalez, co-CEO of the public advocacy group Free Press. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260814Gonzalez.mp3 Extra! (12/08) Also on the show: A sitting congressperson stated publicly: “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic. We refuse to be silent.” The fig leaf, if there were one, is off. Folks are just out here saying all Muslims (well, except for Dr. Oz) are devils, criminals, evil—and woe betide anyone who doesn’t sign up for that perverse, hateful view. News media could declare such racist, ignorant, ahistorical, anti-democratic—did i say racist?—they could call all that out, and remove anyone spouting it from respectful public conversation. But: We have the media we have, so people who hate Muslims because they’re Muslim have a seat at the grown-up table, and a microphone. Islamophobia in media is not new. It wasn’t new when FAIR produced a report about it in 2008. We’ll hear today a conversation we had around that report, which we called Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation, with former FAIR staffers Isabel MacDonald and Steve Rendall. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260814MacDonald_Rendall.mp3

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260807.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). CT Mirror (7/30/26) This week on CounterSpin: If you look for media coverage about the Farm Bill that’s currently passing through Congress, you can find it–at sites like agriculture.com or agri-pulse.com, or those outlets that have “ag” sections. If you look for coverage of SNAP, the largest food assistance program in the country, you can find that lots of other places. And while some of those headlines are about “Deadbeat Parents” and “SNAP Fraud,” these days many more say things like “Nearly 19K State Kids Have Lost SNAP Benefits Over Past Year” (that’s Connecticut) or “Illinois Launches New Program to Provide Food Benefits to People Who Lost SNAP,” or “Small Grocery Stores Cutting Inventory, Considering Layoffs as SNAP Dollars Decline.” Overwhelmingly, local reporters are documenting how cuts to SNAP are hurting people and communities. But the lack of major media stories linking the program to the Farm Bill seem somehow emblematic of the opacity around this country’s lawmaking on critical questions around food. We get an update from Gina Plata-Nino, director of SNAP policy and advocacy at the Food Research & Action Center. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260807Plata-Nino.mp3   Also on the show: People who rely on food benefits programs have long been a punching bag for both right-wing ideologues and their corporate media enablers. Claiming people working full time jobs that don’t provide enough to feed their families are really just grifters living high on your dime is a time-honored tactic, no matter how far it falls afield of reality. We talked about that last year with the president of Food Research & Action Center, Crystal FitzSimons; we add a little of that conversation as well. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260807FitzSimons.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260731.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   NPR (7/16/26) This week on CounterSpin: “In Primetime Speech, Trump Doesn’t Provide Evidence for Illegal Voting” was the temperate headline NPR put on a story about Trump’s recent East Room speech that, they allowed, “included many baseless claims” about election integrity. They told us that “many of the documents the White House posted online during the speech did not appear to fully support sweeping claims the president made,” and even got to the point of calling his contention that he won the 2020 election “a lie.” What the story didn’t do was show, with urgency, how voting in the upcoming midterms and beyond will be materially affected by the use of state power to promote ideas that they’re saying are, yeah, for sure, not true. Obstacles to voting don’t have to be valid to have impact. Black people know that better than anyone. And it isn’t just Trump’s lies, that media keep repeating, even as they call them lies; the Supreme Court’s June decision in Louisiana v. Callais makes the terrain different, in ways people need to understand and confront. Vincent Southerland is associate professor at New York University School of Law, where he directs the Criminal Defense and Reentry Clinic. He’s faculty director of NYU Law’s Center on Race, Inequality and the Law, and co-editor of Race, Rights and Redemption: The Derrick Bell Lectures on the Law and Critical Race Theory. We talk with him this week on CounterSpin. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260731Southerland.mp3 Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the Gaza genocide. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260731Banter.mp3 Featured image: San Francisco voting rights activists, 1956 (Frances Albrier Collection)

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260724.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Nine of the Prairieland protesters received sentences ranging from 30 to 100 years; one received a 30-year sentence for moving a box of zines. (Photo: DFW Support Committee) This week on CounterSpin: Are you upset about ICE agents using your tax dollars to detain and deport people because they have a quota to fill – and to kill anyone who doesn’t “comply”? Are you bothered by women losing not just the right but the ability to access abortion for whatever reason they might have? Do you care that fossil fuel-created climate disruption is rearranging the planet?  Well, my friend, you might be a terrorist. Last September, Trump issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7) that added a whole lot of folks to a list of “domestic terrorists”. All of us are now officially, by challenging or questioning the Trump White House and their acolytes, “the enemy within.” When Trump pushed through NSPM 7 last fall, folks like Hina Shamsi at the ACLU told us: it’s a scare tactic – “domestic terrorism organization” as applied to a wide range of groups that are, in the memo’s language “anti-americanism, anti-capitalism, anti christianity” does not create new federal crimes or powers. The president, even if it’s Trump, cannot rewrite the Constitution. Which, Shamsi explained, doesn’t mean it isn’t scary, despite being a “fever dream of conspiracies, outright falsehoods and the president’s distorted equation of criticism of his policies by real or perceived political opponents with ‘criminal and terroristic conspiracies’. We have to stand up where we can, how we can, right now. And right now could have started years ago but it can at the least start with getting prison time for moving zines.  We’ll talk about the Prairieland case and what it means for you, with Dorothee Benz, who wrote recently about it all for FAIR.org https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260724Benz.mp3

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260717.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Maine Monitor (7/15/26) This week on CounterSpin: Protests are ongoing in southern Maine, where Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was killed by an ICE agent on July 13. The Maine Monitor says folks are “expressing rage, fear and questions about what occurred.” Protestors also showed up at Houston City Hall, calling out ICE operations there that killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. Houston Public Media said: Each speech inside the council chambers was echoed by the raucous chants of dozens of protestors outside who stood for hours during the public comment session, making demands for accountability and transparency. Here in Manhattan’s Foley Square, one protester told NY1: “I think it’s gone past the point of we need to abolish ICE. I think we need a thorough investigation and, if appropriate, trials, prosecutions.” Said another: “For me, this past week is a reminder that we should all be out here.” Corporate media are narrating this nightmare, but do their, will their questions ever go deep enough to drive actual change? Right now, the focus seems heavy on the notion that we need to “humanize” the victims of racist state violence, rather than challenge the humanity of those who enact it. (Oh, but you’ll be happy to know Snopes is on top of the question of whether Joan Sebastián Durán’s three-year-old daughter actually saw her father be shot to death by state agents. Don’t want to get it twisted.) We talk about ICE murders, and the bigger system that encourages and absolves them, with Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260717Bonds.mp3 Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Lindsey Graham’s death and the war on Venezuela. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260717Banter.mp3

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260710.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Washington Post (7/8/26) This week on CounterSpin: One outlet says “it’s unclear if war is back on”; another says “Trump mulls restarting war”—as though you can start and stop the harm bombs bring, to people, to power plants, bridges, airports, hospitals. US corporate news report the US war on Iran as if it were a playground altercation. And the Washington Post calls the illegal violation of another sovereign state  a “political problem” Trump “can’t shake.” If war were a football match, we could have a different conversation, and who takes the L would be a different story. But war is not a sport, and dead people are not afterthoughts. As a corollary, people worry that the war on Iran has pushed the genocide in Gaza out of corporate media’s attention. But media outlets make their own choices about what to present to us. And: Media attention isn’t change. Being on the front page guarantees nothing. There will never be a substitute for our learning about what’s being done in our name and with our resources, and if your paper of record isn’t doing that, you should seek other sources. We hear about Iran, Gaza, Lebanon and the costs of war with Phyllis Bennis, fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, international advisor with Jewish Voice for Peace and author of numerous books, most recently one called Understanding Palestine and Israel, out last year from Olive Branch Press. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260710Bennis.mp3

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260703.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Disability Scoop (6/22/26) This week on CounterSpin: A former UK Prime Minister famously sniffed: I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand, “I have a problem, it is the government’s job to cope with it!” Or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the government must house me!” And so they are casting their problems on society, and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women, and there are families, and no government can do anything except through people, and people look to themselves first. That idea, from Margaret Thatcher, seems important to keep in mind as we watch corporate news reporters whistle past a directive from the Trump administration’s Department of Justice that says: That whole thing about policies encouraging disabled people to be able to live in community, with family, with friends—yeahh, you don’t need to do that. You can just lock ’em up. Why are establishment news reporters uninterested in this memo from the Office of Legal Counsel that says that no laws “require states to treat mentally disabled patients in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs”? The memo, as folks like those at Disability Scoop remind us, does not alter current law, but could impact how federal agencies enforce it.  But is that the reason that elite media don’t care? Or are disabled people, their lives, their possibilities, just off the screen? When states start forcing folks into institutions because they’ve been told they don’t need to provide services, will it be a story then? And what kind of story will that be? We talk about it with Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260703Ives-Rublee.mp3 Featured image from Getty/Barbara Alper via the Disibility Justice Initiative.

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260626.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   Freedom of the Press Foundation (6/23/26) This week on CounterSpin: Do you disagree with anything that the Trump administration is doing? Are there other people that share that view? Do you think you should get together and use your voices to say something? Well, you might be a terrorist! Do you think we’re joking? Do you want to test that? We talk about the criminalizing of dissent with Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, this week on CounterSpin. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260626Stern.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260619.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   CEPR (6/15/26) This week on CounterSpin: The way we hear about the stock market is quite different from the vision many people still hold: that businesses strive to serve people’s real needs or desires, and investors are rewarded by that metric—not by convincing people that they might make a lot of money in the future, or by conspiring with powerful entities to ensure that shareholders profit, by whatever means. This longstanding confusion and conflict are being showcased right now in the unasked-for push of artificial intelligence into so many aspects of our lives, and the aggressive build-out of energy-gobbling data centers to serve it—whether communities want them or not. Now, questions are arising around whether the promises of endless growth of the AI industry actually make any sense. Is there an AI bubble? How would we know? And what happens, and to whom, when it bursts? A new project engages questions, not just about price-to-earnings ratios, and historical comparisons, but about the predictable impacts—on, for example, workers’ retirement accounts—when the AI exuberance falls to earth. Dean Baker is co-founder and senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and the force behind their new project, called the AI Bubble Monitor. He joins us this week on CounterSpin. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260619Baker.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a very quick look at some recent press coverage of the 2026 congressional primaries. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260619Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260612.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   AP/PBS (6/6/26) This week on CounterSpin: PBS News told its audience “What to Know About the Protests and Arrests Outside a New Jersey Detention Center.” What to know, evidently, is that protesters “say they are showing up in solidarity with detainees inside over accusations of poor living conditions.” Maybe they aren’t showing up in solidarity; that’s just what they say. And poor “living” conditions?—because it’s their home now?—that’s also just an “accusation.” Why can’t we see what’s true? Oh, because reporters who try to see what’s happening are being kept from doing so with rubber bullets and tear gas. But for PBS News, that means: We just can’t know! “Delaney Hall detainees say they are being given moldy and expired food,” the article (from AP) reads. But you know what? “President Donald Trump and his deputies have defended the center’s operations and denied there is any hunger strike, abuse or poor conditions inside.” We hear from Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin: “The fact is, we’re giving them the calories they want.” And we get a quote from Tom Homan, described as “Trump’s border czar,” saying he got to visit, and “the spaghetti was good.” PBS News tells readers that Attorney General Todd Blanche “shared images of bloody wounds and bruises” sustained by ICE officers. There is not a single quote from a protester, an immigrant rights advocate, or even a journalist who says that people should be able to see what is being carried out in their name. But PBS News assures: That’s “What to Know”! We’ll have a different conversation about what’s happening at Delaney Hall, and the bigger systems and structures in back of it, with Silky Shah, executive director at Detention Watch Network. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260612Shah.mp3   Jersey Vindicator (6/5/26) And: Yes, times like these make you wish for brave reporters who go to where the darkness is and shine a light. And we have them. They just aren’t at the traditional media you may have learned to look to. We’ll talk about the crucial role of frontline reporting with Vanessa Maria Graber, senior director of journalism and media education at the group Free Press. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260612Graber.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260605.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).   CounterPunch (5/25/26) This week on CounterSpin: Luddites didn’t hate machines: Historian (and online educator) Casey Fiesler reminds us that the Luddites, who were 19th century English textile workers, were not anti-technology, they were anti the unaccountable deployment of technology by those who stood to profit from it at the expense of those with less power…. They were anti the use of technology to deskill labor, to take work that took years of craft knowledge and render it performable by anyone, who was then dispensable. They were anti the imposition of technology on communities who had no say in how it was deployed, or who would bear its costs. Words to keep in mind as commencement speakers and politicians and pundits tell you that artificial intelligence is a train leaving the station, and your only choice is to pick your seat. But also yeah, democratic decision-making is still a thing, why do you ask? Also, if you ask, your name goes on a list. We talk about the proliferation of data centers that are very much brick and mortar—against the backdrop of press coverage that suggests that artificial intelligence all happens in the ether somewhere—with Melissa Garriga, communications and media relations manager at the feminist grassroots organization CODEPINK. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260605Garriga.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of food stamp work requirements. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin260605Banter.mp3   Featured image: Christopher Bowns – CC BY-SA 2.0