This week on CounterSpin: They say ignorance is bliss, but I know that, for myself and others, 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. Bartlett Naylor breaks it down for us; he works at Public Citizen, as a financial policy advo…

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250509.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). $Trump marketing website. This week on CounterSpin: They say ignorance is bliss, but I know that, for myself and others, our lack of knowledge of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency will only hurt us in our…

This week on CounterSpin: The website of the Kairos Democracy Project has a quote from John Lewis, reminding us, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.” Our guest Tanya Clay House is board chair at Kairos and a longtime advocate for the multiracial democracy that the Trump White House seeks to denounce and derail — in part by erasing the history …

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250502.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Ruby Bridges challenged US segregation in 1960. This week on CounterSpin: You can say someone ‘supports the rights’ of people of color to vote, or to have our experience and history recognized—as t…

This week on CounterSpin: Elon Musk reportedly told Tesla investors that he’ll be amping down his role with the Department of Government Efficiency to, one guesses, bring his big brain back into their service. Like the “War on Terror,” “DOGE” is a thing that was in part spoken into normalcy by the corporate press. Media seem ready to, if not embrac…

This week on CounterSpin: CBS News on April 14 said: We’re following new violence in the Middle East. Israeli strikes hit a major hospital in northern Gaza. At least 21 people were reportedly killed. The emergency room is badly damaged. Israel accused Hamas of using the hospital to hide its fighters. Meanwhile, Houthi militants in Yemen said they f…

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250418.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). The Nation (3/27/25) This week on CounterSpin: CBS News on April 14 said: We’re following new violence in the Middle East. Israeli strikes hit a major hospital in northern Gaza. At least 21 people …

This week on CounterSpin: We’re learning from Jonah Valdez at the Intercept that the Trump administration is now revoking visas and the immigration status of hundreds of international students under the Student Exchange and Visitor Program — not just those active in pro-Palestinian advocacy or those with criminal records of any sort. It is, says on…

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250411.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Intercept (4/8/25) This week on CounterSpin: We’re learning from Jonah Valdez at the Intercept that the Trump administration is now revoking visas and immigration statuses of hundreds of internatio…

This week on CounterSpin: When Robert Kennedy Jr. was just a famously named man about town, we heard about how he dumped a bear carcass in Central Park for fun, believes that children’s gender is shaped by chemicals in the water, and asserts that Covid-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” while leaving “Ashkenazi Jews and Chines…

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250404.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). New York Times (11/14/24) This week on CounterSpin: If “some people believe it” were the criterion, our daily news would be full of respectful consideration of the Earth’s flatness, the relationshi…

This week on CounterSpin: Israel has abandoned the ceasefire agreement and restarted its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza — a war that has destroyed the region and killed tens of thousands of human beings. The ceasefire, as Gaza-based writer Hassan Abo Qamar, among others, reminds us, still allowed Israel to deprive Palestinians in Gaza o…

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250328.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Mondoweiss (3/18/25) This week on CounterSpin: Israel has abandoned the ceasefire agreement and restarted its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, a war that has destroyed the region and kil…

This week on CounterSpin: News site Popular Information alerted us to new Social Security Administration policy effectively requiring tens of thousands of recipients, by the agency’s own estimation, to travel to a field office to verify their ID. An internal memo predicts the shift will create “service disruption,” “operational strain,” and “budget…

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250321.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Public Information (3/17/25) This week on CounterSpin: News site Popular Information alerted us to new Social Security Administration policy effectively requiring tens of thousands of recipients, b…

This week on CounterSpin: In early February, when Representative Maxwell Frost tweeted that he and Representative Maxine Waters were denied access to the Department of Education, Elon Musk responded on the platform he owns: “What is this ‘Department of Education’ you keep talking about? I just checked and it doesn’t exist.” That, we understand, was…

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250314.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). This week on CounterSpin: In early February, when Rep. Maxwell Frost tweeted that he and Rep. Maxine Waters were denied access to the Department of Education, Elon Musk responded on the platform he…

This week on CounterSpin: A NASA official warned workers to maybe think about not wearing their badges in public, to protect themselves from harassment against people identifiable as federal workers by MAGA randos who feel deputized by Trump and Musk to do whatever it is Trump and Musk suggest. It’s early days of the Trump/Musk federal smash and gr…

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250307.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). Reuters (3/6/25) This week on CounterSpin: A NASA official warned workers to maybe think about not wearing their badges in public, to protect themselves from harassment against people identifiable …

This week on CounterSpin: Just because we might witness the daylight robbery of the social benefits we’ve been paying for and counting on for the entirety of our working lives, and just because Black people are no longer officially allowed to even mentor Black people coming in to fields they’ve been historically excluded from, and just because any …

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin250228.mp3 Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”). EarthRights (2/20/25) This week on CounterSpin: Just because we might witness the daylight robbery of the social benefits we’ve been paying for and counting on for the entirety of our working lives…

This week on CounterSpin: Donald Trump has declared that the U.S. is going to “take over” the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinians who live there will be “permanently” exiled. Asked whether Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza under his scheme, Trump said “no.” But even those corporate media who aren’t actually endorsing this illegal, in…

Corporate media can't bring themselves to call Trump's illegal, inhumane plan what it is: ethnic cleansing.Kirjoittanut Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

This week on CounterSpin: A number of federal agencies rushed to make clear they would be scrubbing activities and events that “celebrate cultural awareness” in an effort to stay on the good side of the weird new White House. Trump and his abettors’ anti-anti-discrimination agenda is as subtle as a sledgehammer. “DEI hire,” for instance, is super-c…

Corporate news media presented a campaign openly defined as uninterested in truth or humanity as a totally valid, “grassroots” perspective.Kirjoittanut Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

This week on CounterSpin: We know that once corporate news label something “controversial,” we’re in for reporting with a static “some say / others differ” frame — even if one “side” of the “controversy” is a relatively small group of people who don’t believe in science or human rights or democracy. As the Trump White House comes out fast and furio…

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

This week on CounterSpin: You may remember the testimony: former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz pouting to a Senate hearing on the company’s union-busting in which he was referred to as a billionaire that using that “moniker constantly is unfair”: “Yes, I have billions of dollars — I earned it. No one gave it to me. And I’ve shared it constantly with…

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.Kirjoittanut Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

This week on CounterSpin: Those with a beating heart can see the horror of Trump’s plans to deputize wannabe vigilantes to denounce community members they suspect “don’t belong here,” to send ICE into schools and churches to round folks up — police records or no — and ship them to detention centers, to ride roughshod over time-honored concepts of s…

Immigration itself is now not a human rights story, or even an economic one, but yet another story about “their” crimes and “our” safety.Kirjoittanut Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

This week on CounterSpin: While the New York Times rolls out claptrap about how both “the left and the right” have ideas about causes behind the devastating Los Angeles wildfires — the right blame DEI hires, while the left blame climate change — many people have moved beyond that sort of stultifying nonsense to work that directly confronts the foss…

Many are calling out insurance companies that take folks’ money, but then hinder their ability to come out from under when these predictable and predicted crises occur.Kirjoittanut Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

This week on CounterSpin: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s December 17 piece, headlined “How Elon Musk and Taylor Swift Can Resolve U.S.-China Relations,” contained some choice Friedmanisms, like: “More Americans might get a better feel for what is going on there if they simply went and ordered room service at their hotel.” We’ll talk abo…