Best of CounterSpin 2015

All year long, CounterSpin brings you a look, as we say, behind the headlines of the mainstream news—that’s both to shine a light on aspects of emerging stories that might be marginalized (or off the page entirely) in corporate media, and to remind us to be generally mindful of the practices and policies of elite news media that make it an unlikely arena for a full, vital debate on issues that matter—in which those outside of social and economic power can have their voices and their ideas heard.

So we bring you these selections from the year just gone, not to say that these were the most important stories or the most ignored perspectives—but just to say that these are some the cases that illustrate the kinds of questions we ought to always be thinking about as we read the paper or watch the news.

Interviews excerpted in this year’s Best of CounterSpin include:

Journalist and activist Keane Bhatt on what CNN‘s characterization of Barack Obama’s State of the Union address as “very progressive” said about elite media’s connection to public opinion.
FAIR’s Jim Naureckas on how op-ed writers at the nation’s big papers distorted history in their complaints about how the film Selma treated President Lyndon Johnson.
Carlos Miller of Photography Is Not A Crime on how filming police can counteract official efforts to control the narrative in cases of violence by law enforcement.
Professor and author Felicia Kornbluh revisiting Bill Clinton’s op-ed victory lap on the 10th anniversary of his bipartisan effort to take federal aid away from poor people.
Professor and author Dean Spade on how media visibility is not the best barometer of progress for marginalized groups like trans people.
Writer, producer and former CounterSpin host Laura Flanders on a project that explores alternative economic visions—alternative, that is, to the workplace models that elite media generally present as the only viable option.

Share This Episode