CounterSpin

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251226.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). AAPF (10/25) This week on CounterSpin: After every police killing of a Black person, every announced policy singling out Black immigrants as the cause of crime and disorder, every declaration, like that from Arlington National Cemetery, that as of now materials on Black and female service people will be scrubbed from the website—we hear from corporate media about how, boy, this country is for sure “reckoning” with “racism.” But then: If we reckoned with racism every time elite media claimed this country was “reckoning” with racism, seems like we ought to be fully “reckoned” by now. US corporate media have a white supremacy problem (and you see how that term lands differently than “racism”): They decide who they think, and hence you should think, is worth talking to, based on an accepted conflation of power with worthiness. They decide whose ideas are taken for granted and whose deemed marginal, and they tell us how to define progress: Is it moving toward actual equity, or just things quietening down? Who needs to be reassured, and whose lives is it OK to disrupt, whose basic humanity is it OK to question, day after day after day? A new report titled Anti-Blackness Is the Point, from the African American Policy Forum, engages this age-old if ever-morphing narrative. Kimberle Crenshaw is a leading legal scholar and justice advocate, the force behind the transformative ideas of intersectionality and critical race theory. She's co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, as well as a professor of law at both Columbia and UCLA. We talk with Kimberle Crenshaw this week on CounterSpin. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251226Crenshaw.mp3 Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at nonprofits and diversity, equity and inclusion. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251226Banter.mp3

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251219.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Truthout (12/8/25) This week on CounterSpin: Forbes reports the Starbucks workers strike as you might expect: “The company claims it already offers the ‘best job in retail.’ … Yet the union is demanding….” “The company says, ‘We're ready to return to the bargaining table whenever the union is.’ But as of yet, the union is holding out for the company to present a contract that meets demands….” You get the idea: One party is generous, the other is ornery. But even Forbes has to acknowledge that even as the strike “drags” into a second month, “global support grows.” Derek Seidman has been following the strike. He's a writer, researcher and historian who contributes to Little Sis and to Truthout, where he recently reported on the Starbucks strike and…what Walmart has to do with it? https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251219Seidman.mp3 Politico (12/17/25) Also on the show: Sen. Bernie Sanders is the latest to join a broad group of more than 200 environmental and economic justice advocates that just sent a letter to Congress, calling for a moratorium on the construction of new data centers, the energy sources powering the boom (and, as some would say, predictable bust) of artificial intelligence, until, as Sanders says, democracy “has a chance to catch up.” Turns out as people learn more, opposition grows, and so, Politico notes, “The industry is taking out ads and funding campaigns to flip the narrative and put data centers in a positive light—spinning them as job creators and economic drivers rather than resource-hungry land hogs.” The letter to Congress was spearheaded by Food & Water Watch. We'll hear from the group's deputy director, Mitch Jones. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251219Jones.mp3 Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of Bondi Beach. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251219Banter.mp3

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251212.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Popular Information (12/8/25) This week on CounterSpin: If you see no problem in news outlets reporting on desperately horrific conditions in Gaza, and what various political entities are doing or could do to address them, while a ticker at the bottom of the screen offers you an opportunity to gamble—for money—on whether or not “famine” in the region will be officially declared, this episode is not for you. We're learning about the deal just struck by “news” outlets CNN and CNBC with the “prediction market operator” (evidently what we're calling them now) Kalshi Inc. We'll hear from Judd Legum—founder and author at the newsletter Popular Information—and from author and analyst Adam Johnson, of Substack‘s the Column and the podcast Citations Needed. Judd Legum’s interview: https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251212Legum.mp3 Adam Johnson’s interview: https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251212Johnson.mp3

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251205.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). CEPR (12/2/25) This week on CounterSpin: A militarized US Drug Enforcement Administration force declared they'd taken out drug traffickers in the Caribbean, killing some of them in what was sold as a successful operation. Locals on the ground reported differently, saying these people weren't drug traffickers, just human beings who happened to be on the river and got shot up by US forces who were not attacked, as they claimed, but just killed innocent people because they were given orders to kill them. It should sound familiar—but this isn't today in Venezuela; it's 2012 in Honduras. An inspector general review from the State Department and the Justice Department found that, no, this was not a Honduran operation, or a “joint operation” the DEA were helping with; it was a DEA operation, and it killed four innocent people and injured others in a remote, Afro-Indigenous part of Honduras. The story that the DEA pushed on Congress and the press corps was just a lie. But you’d hardly know that history reading current coverage of Honduras, where, as we record on December 4, the presidential election is still in question. Not in question: the US's long history of intervening—violently, dramatically, unaccountably—in Honduras. We'll talk about it with Alex Main, director of international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251205Main.mp3 Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at media coverage of the murder of Amber Czech. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin251205Banter.mp3

Focusing on what people, including those most harmed, are doing, along with what's being done to them, could help move debate off an outdated dime.

What if SNAP weren't a story about major political party back-and-forthing, and were instead a story about people who need food?

Housing and home ownership represent a critical vector in the project of a multi-racial democracy.

The argument is so specious a third grader could call it out. But if it comes from the Supreme Court majority, we are forced to consider it as serious.

News media need to locate the climate fight in the boardrooms of greedy people perversely trying to wring every last dime from our shared future.

Corporate reporters scratch their heads over how this bombing campaign might be legal, rather than discussing what tools can respond to wildly illegal actions.

We're in a fight for our right to speak up, and out—but it's not the first time.

Coverage of the conversion therapy case left out scientific and legal information necessary to understand what's at stake for LGBTQ youth.

Major media suggest we use something other than our own eyes and judgment and humanity to assess the Gaza situation, and how to act in the face of it.

Something so vaguely named as a “data center” is actually a physical thing in real neighborhoods affecting real people.

Witness testimony is how we can resist official testimony about people "resisting arrest." And you can tell how much it matters by the efforts to shut it down.

Can the Trump administration, or any administration, declare people guilty and summarily kill them based on that declaration?

It's only an opinion that it's wrong that our federal health agency is led by a guy who claims he can diagnose children he walks past at the airport.

You buy insurance in case something bad happens—like a fire, or a flood. But if that fire or flood is driven by climate disruption? Well, wait a minute.

The White House's assaults on the press corps are part of, and not ancillary to, their direct assaults on Black and brown people.

Voting: Everyone gets a voice; that's what makes us different, special and better. Is that ideal being subverted? Or have we misunderstood it all along?

Elite news media transmit the weird worldview that it's appropriate to force tipped workers to please and appease patrons in order to survive.

"I think it's a success of Israel's control of the narrative that sometimes it's really not well understood that the occupation is central to all this."

"The pitting against each other of people who lack housing and people who have housing is so insidious and counterproductive."

Corporate media are now gesturing toward engaging questions of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. But what does that amount to at this late date?

To tell this as a tale about two uniquely bad men is a terrible disservice to a story of the systemic criminal victimization of women.

The UN's Albanese has long opposed Israel's genocide of Palestinians—but what broke US warmongers was her naming corporations profiting from that genocide.

Along with many other hate-driven harms, the budget bill puts Stephen Miller's cruel and bizarre mass deportation plan on steroids.

Elite news media are Trojan-horsing their hatred for any ideas that threaten their ill-gotten gains, via very deep “concerns” about Zohran Mamdani as a person.

US corporate media in war mode are a force to reckon with. We do some reckoning with media analyst Adam Johnson.

News media could help explain immigration by grappling with the role of conditions the US has largely created in the places people are driven from.

There's an important legal development in the case of student activist Mahmoud Khalil, held without warrant since March for voicing support for Palestinian lives.

Reports are that Elon Musk is going back to make Tesla great again. We'll talk about how to miss Musk when he won't go away.

Tom Morello's music has always been intertwined with his activism and advocacy for social, racial and economic justice.

The feint Congress is using to cut Medicare—we're just forcing recipients to work, like they should—is obvious, age-old and long-disproven.

The arguments advanced to justify banning coffee imports from Brazil to the US rely on outliers representing a tiny portion of the workforce, not the norm.

Millions around the world ask every day what it will take to awaken the conscience of leaders to stop the genocide of Palestinians.

Our lack of knowledge of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency will only hurt us in our response to the effects that the dealings around that stuff are having on our lives.

The Trump White House seeks to denounce and derail multiracial democracy—in part by erasing the history of Black people in this country.

The Yemeni people are paying the price both for the fighting and for the distortions around it, from political elites and their media amplifiers.

What can thinking, feeling human beings do now to protect fellow humans who are immigrants in this country?

Kennedy's unorthodox ideas may get us all killed while media whistle.

Pretending protest isn't happening is aiding and abetting the work of the silencers; it's telling lies about who we are and what we can do.

All that's in the balance are human lives and health, and the ability of working people to plan for our futures.

Policy impacts on people with disabilities are overwhelmingly an afterthought for corporate media, though it's a community anyone can join at any moment.

Federal workers, presumed to be easy targets, are also on the front lines of the fightback against the Trump/Musk federal smash and grab.

Fossil fuel corporations' lawsuits against those who challenge their destruction take aim at our ability to speak out about anything.

Corporate media can't bring themselves to call Trump's illegal, inhumane plan what it is: ethnic cleansing.

Corporate news media presented a campaign openly defined as uninterested in truth or humanity as a totally valid, “grassroots” perspective.

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens made an overt case for US military intervention to topple Venezuela's government.

The Trump campaign against transgender people lands in an elite media climate in which trans lives have long been deemed "subject to debate."

The increasing influence of the super rich on the politics and policy we all have to live with is an urgent story, if not a new one.