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Milton Allimadi on US Media’s Africa Reporting

    (Kendall Hunt, 2021) This week on CounterSpin: The primary “sense” of Sub-Saharan Africa in corporate media is absence. When Africa is discussed, it’s often been, to put it simply, as a material resource and as a staging ground for Great Nation politics and proxy war. Not as far removed as it ought to […]

Marjorie Cohn on Texas Abortion Law, Kimberly Inez McGuire on Abortion Realities

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  (cc photo: Beth Wilson) This week on CounterSpin: Many people will know that the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, enshrining women’s right to access abortion—to choose when and whether to have a child. It seemed to signal recognition that abortion is healthcare, that most women who have abortions are mothers […]

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James Loewen on Lies Historians Tell Us

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Image: Charles C.J. Hoffbauer Anyone born before last week can see US news media lying about history as it’s happening. But fast forward to 10, 20 years from now, and those media stories will have hardened into narrative, into the unspoken “given” presented as context for the latest thing. That’s the power of history as […]

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Phyllis Bennis and Matthew Hoh on Afghanistan Withdrawal

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(LA Times, 8/16/21) This week on CounterSpin: US news media are full of armchair generals who talk about weapons of war like they’re Hot Wheels, and have lots of thoughts about how “we coulda got ’em” here and “we shoulda got ’em” there. The price of admission to elite media debate is acceptance that the […]

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James Early on Cuban Embargo, David Cooper on ‘We All Quit’

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    Pro-government rally, Cuba (photo: AP/Eliana Aponte) This week on CounterSpin: Imagine if China used its power to cut off international trade to the US, including for things like medical equipment, because they didn’t like Joe Biden, and hoped that if enough Americans were made miserable, they would rise up against him, and install […]

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Luke Harris on Critical Race Theory, Cindy Cohn on Pegasus Spyware

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  Little Rock, 1957 This week on CounterSpin: You’ve almost certainly seen the documentary photographs; they’re emblematic: African Americans trying to walk to school or sit at a drugstore soda fountain, while white people yell and spit and scream at them. Should no one see those pictures or learn those stories—because some of them have […]

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Bianca Nozaki-Nasser on Anti-Asian Bias

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    New York Times (6/22/21) This week on CounterSpin: A June New York Times article about female Asian-American and Pacific Islander golfers reacting to the recent spike in anti-Asian bias began inauspiciously: “Players of Asian descent have won eight of the past 10 Women’s PGA championships, but there is nothing cookie cutter about the […]

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William Dodge on Nestle Slave Labor, Michael Ratner on Donald Rumsfeld

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    Child chocolate worker in the Ivory Coast (Fortune, 3/1/16) (photo: Benjamin Lowy) This week on CounterSpin: Nestle CEO Mark Schneider told investors in February that “2020 was a year of hardship for so many,” yet he was “inspired by the way it has brought all of us closer together.” And also by an […]

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Andrew Perez on the Filibuster

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James Stewart filibustering in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. This week on CounterSpin: NBC News recently reported that “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said…he is ‘100%’ focused ‘on stopping’ President Joe Biden’s administration.” The statement is remarkable for the painful mockery it makes of Democrats’ and corporate media’s stubborn insistence that the most important value […]

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Jaisal Noor on Worker Co-Ops, Duncan Meisel on Fossil Fuel Greenwashing

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    ChiFresh Kitchen, a worker co-op This week on CounterSpin: In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, employees of Whole Foods—owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos—were asked to give their own accrued paid sick days to co-workers who had either contracted the virus or been forced to take time out of work.  […]

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