Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch
HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
Archives by Tag 'media'
The three upcoming so-called presidential debates (actually parallel interviews) between Obama and Romney show the pathetic mainstream campaign press for what it is – a mass of dittoheads desperately awaiting gaffes or some visual irregularity by any of the candidates. ...
My conclusion is simple. Nepotism works.
– Arthur Ochs Sulzberger
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger has left us aged 86, though the old gray lady he was a steward to still remains, casting her ling...
Sparked by a deliberate provocation put together by Christian extremists, riots by groups of Islamic extremists ...
The media coverage of the Presidential campaigns is a dreary repetition of past coverage. Stuck in a rut and garnished by press cynicism and boredom, media groupthink becomes more ossified every four years.
This massive mental motion-sickness confines reporters, ed...
“Any Republican vice-presidential candidate is going to be broadly anti-abortion, but Ryan goes much further. He believes ending a pregnancy should be illegal even when it results from rape or incest, or endangers a woman’s health. He was a cosponsor of th...
Bourgeois press? Nobody says “bourgeois” anymore; it’s so pre-1989 (or 1981 or mid-70s). Another problem is that, decades ago, the word suffered from Stalinist and then Maoist overuse. It designated any object of animosity, and therefore became essentially mea...
As a child, David Cromwell got an invaluable insight into the way the corporate media skews the news.
Scattered around his family’s Scottish home were “mainstream” newspapers like the Daily Record and Glasgow Herald. But among...
When word broke of his resignation from the News International board, Rupert Murdoch was faffing about on Twitter.
‘Britain more an entitlement state,’ he explained to his 300, 000 or so followers. ‘Bigger than ever with growing debts. Is it too late to chang...
NBC News, if that’s what it is or can still be called, devotes a substantial amount of resources to stories on opinion polls. Its website boasts five such reports between July 11 and 13, 2012. Their subjects range from American confidence in organized religion and &...
Reading this former Reuters reporter’s analysis of the news industry is like watching an episode of detective series Columbo unfold.
Like the seemingly innocent Inspector Columbo, Patrick Chalmers at first comes across as disconcertingly naive. But, jus...
7/1/12—Citing Iran’s nuclear ambition, America and her hushed puppies impose oil embargo on Islamic republic. Going on four years now, the global economic depression has kept oil price in check, so this embargo is meant to stop it from dropping furthe...
Most mainstream media journalists would kill to get one of their stories on the front page of The New York Times. But when that happened to the newspaper’s Balkans correspondent 2003, he was less than thrilled.
Daniel Simpson had already resigned in...
The first modern Olympic Games, with the IOC (International Olympic Committee) running the show, was held in Athens, Greece, in 1896. There were 14 nations represented, with a total of 241 athletes competing. Jumping ahead 112 years, to the 2008 Olympics, held in Beij...
As Julian Assange evades arrest by taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge to escape extradition to Sweden, and possibly the US, British commentators have targeted him with shrill abuse. They almost froth with rage as they cite petty examples of his suppo...
Alternative weekly newspapers used to be crusading vehicles against corporate power and crime. The remaining ones now have morphed into consumer guides for the young corporate class answering such pressing questions as – W...
The UN just released its annual report on “Children and Armed Conflict.” A number of states, as wel...
Reading, watching and listening to the mainstream media in America, it gets harder and harder to tell the difference between journalism and rank propaganda. Consider the coverage of the French parliamentary election currently underway.
Most Americans who read newsp...
The History Channel mini-series “Hatfields & McCoys” reminded me of Clint Eastwood’s “The Unforgiven.” Both productions showed a lot of violence in all its fascination while making it squalid, absurd, arbitrary and devastating to the victims and everyone aro...
Less than 3 years ago, Cuban authorities arrested Alan Gross, who had an almost $600,000 contract with DIA.Inc., to carry out a USAID program in Cuba.
At his Havana trial, Gross heard Cuban authorities present his trip reports in which he revealed how he supplied a...
Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times has been traveling to “third world” countries to find evidence of male cruelty to women. He’s found plenty. He recently visited a Native-American reservation. His article left out the statistics that show that among Ame...
Until 1982, Philadelphia had three daily newspapers, and the surviving two, the Inquirer and Daily News, are owned by the same company. Both are hurting. Fewer and fewer readers force extreme cost-cutting measures that reduce the quality of each rag, whi...
In the May 3 edition of the International Herald Tribune (but not its domestic sister publication, The New York Times), Raja Shehadeh wrote a personal observation resulting from his experience as a human rights worker in Palestine. Here are two paragraphs from his...
Borges writes, “dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.” As a preeminent mind, Borges rightly considers the mind to be a man’s greatest asset, for without min...
The same full page appeared twice in three years, the first time as news, the second time as an advertisement.
“Not a single person from the two villages has committed suicide.”
Three and a half years ago, at a t...
Picture this: President Barack Obama waving at the crowds in a gay parade. Behind, there are men wearing helmets, fire-hoses in hand. Helming the operation would be Mitt Romney, the enemy of the state until the elections. This could be the digitalised image on Time magazi...