CounterPunch

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This article is about the newsletter. For other uses, see Counterpunch.
CounterPunch
CounterPunch logo.png
Editors
Former editorsKen Silverstein
Alexander Cockburn
Staff writers
CategoriesPolitics
First issue1994; 28 years ago (1994)
CountryUnited States
Based inPetrolia, California, United States
LanguageEnglish
WebsiteOfficial website
ISSN1086-2323

CounterPunch is an online magazine, with both a free section published five days a week, and a subscriber-only area called CounterPunch+, where original articles are published weekly.[1] CounterPunch is based in United States and covers politics in a manner its editors describe as "muckraking with a radical attitude".[2] It has been described as left-wing.[3][4]

History[]

CounterPunch began as a newsletter, established in 1994 by the Washington, D.C.-based investigative reporter Ken Silverstein.[5] He was soon joined by Alexander Cockburn and then Jeffrey St. Clair, who became the publication's editors in 1996 when Silverstein left.[6][7] In 2007, Cockburn and St. Clair wrote that in founding CounterPunch they had "wanted it to be the best muckraking newsletter in the country", and cited as inspiration such pamphleteers as Edward Abbey, Peter Maurin, and Ammon Hennacy, as well as the socialist/populist newspaper Appeal to Reason (1895–1922).[8] When Alexander Cockburn died in 2012 at the age of 71, environmental journalist Joshua Frank became managing editor and Jeffrey St. Clair became editor-in-chief of CounterPunch.[9][10]

During the 2016 presidential election, CounterPunch published a piece by "Alice Donovan",[11] who purported to be a freelance writer but who US intelligence officials alleged is pseudonymous employee of the Russian government.[12] Donovan was tracked by the FBI for nine months, as a suspected fictitious persona created by the GRU.[12][13] In late November 2017, after CounterPunch had published several more pieces by "Donovan", The Washington Post contacted Jeffrey St. Clair about her. The co-editor said that Donovan's pitches did not stand out amongst the pitches that CounterPunch received daily[12] and began making inquiries. He asked Donovan to substantiate her identity by sending a photo of her driving license but she did not.[12] On the same day The Washington Post article was published on Donovan, St. Clair and Frank published a piece stating that CounterPunch only ran one article by Alice Donovan during the 2016 election, which was on cyber-breaches of medical databases. Donovan was also exposed by the newsletter as a serial plagiarizer.[11] CounterPunch removed all the articles from their site.[14] In a January 2018 follow-up article, St. Clair and Frank exposed a network of alleged trolls that operated a site called Inside Syria Media Center, promoting a pro-Bashar al-Assad and pro-Russian view of the Syrian Civil War. St. Clair and Frank speculated that the website was connected to the same network of trolls as Alice Donovan, which was later confirmed by the Atlantic Council and other researchers.[15][13][14]

Reception[]

In 2003, The Observer described the CounterPunch website as "one of the most popular political sources in America, with a keen following in Washington".[16] Other sources have variously described CounterPunch as "left-wing",[3][17] "far-left",[18] "extreme",[19] a "political newsletter",[20] and a "muckraking newsletter".[21]

In 2012, Adam Levick wrote in The Algemeiner that Counterpunch has "advanced dual loyalty canards about Jews" and has published articles by Holocaust deniers.[22]

In 2016, CounterPunch appeared in a PropOrNot list of websites which it described as Russian propaganda outlets. Writing in the New Yorker, Adrian Chen described the list as a mess and CounterPunch as a "respected left-leaning" publication.[23]

In 2018, after the "Alice Donovan" affair, author Diana Johnstone said in a Consortium News article titled "Antifa or Antiwar: Leftist Exclusionism Against the Quest for Peace" that "Russophobia finds a variant in the writing of several prominent CounterPunch contributors".[24]

References[]

  1. ^ "FAQs". CounterPunch.org. Retrieved July 31, 2017.
  2. ^ "We've got all the right enemies". CounterPunch. Archived from the original on April 25, 2011. Retrieved October 1, 2010.
  3. ^ a b Blumenthal, Ralph (May 12, 2006). "Army Acts to Curb Abuses of Injured Recruits". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  4. ^ Foer, Franklin (April 15, 2002). "The Devil You Know". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  5. ^ "Counterpunch is the brainchild of Ken Silverstein, a former AP reporter in Rio de Janeiro." Lies of Our Times, vols 4-5 (1993), p. 26.
  6. ^ Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair, Five Days that Shook the World: Seattle and Beyond (London and New York: Verso, 2000), p. 151; Alexander Cockburn, Ken Silverstein, Washington Babylon (London and New York: Verso, 1996), p. 302.
  7. ^ Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair, End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate (Petrolia, California, and Oakland, California: CounterPunch and AK Press, 2007), pp. 2, 44.
  8. ^ Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair (2007), End times: the death of the fourth estate, CounterPunch and AK Press, p383
  9. ^ Nichols, John, "Alexander Cockburn and the Radical Power of the Word", thenation.com, July 21, 2012, accessed July 22, 2012
  10. ^ An Award-Winning Year, The Investigative Fund retrieved July 24, 2016
  11. ^ a b Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank (December 25, 2017). "Go Ask Alice: the Curious Case of "Alice Donovan"". CounterPunch. Retrieved January 6, 2018. In sum, we published five stories by Donovan. One was apolitical. Four could be considered critiques of US foreign policy during the Trump administration. None mentioned Hillary Clinton, Vladimir Putin, the 2016 elections, Wikileaks or Julian Assange.
  12. ^ a b c d Entous, Adam; Nakashima, Ellen; Jaffe, Greg (December 25, 2017). "Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved December 25, 2017.
  13. ^ a b DiResta, Renée (September 20, 2020). "The Supply of Disinformation Will Soon Be Infinite". The Atlantic. Retrieved September 21, 2021.
  14. ^ a b O'Sullivan, Donie (August 23, 2018). "Facebook removes Syrian war page it believes is linked to Russian intel, Twitter keeps it online". CNNMoney. Retrieved September 21, 2021.
  15. ^ Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank (January 5, 2018). "Ghosts in the Propaganda Machine". CounterPunch. Retrieved January 6, 2018.
  16. ^ Christopher Reed (March 2, 2003). "Battle of the bottle divides columnists". The Observer.
  17. ^ "The Devil You Know". New Republic.
  18. ^ Moynihan, Michael (December 7, 2010). "Olbermann, Assange, and the Holocaust Denier When you want to believe, you'll believe anything". Reason.
  19. ^ Boot, Max (March 11, 2004). "The Fringe Fires at Bush on Iraq". LA Times.
  20. ^ Dan Mitchell (October 29, 2006). "Royalty checks aren't in the mail - Business - International Herald Tribune". The New York Times. Retrieved June 14, 2011.
  21. ^ MELINDA TUHUS (March 22, 1998). "Who Pays For Mistakes In Making Electricity?". The New York Times. Retrieved June 14, 2011.
  22. ^ Algemeiner, The. "Guardian Praises Anti-Semitic Site "CounterPunch" as Progressive". Algemeiner.com. Retrieved June 21, 2021.
  23. ^ Adrian Chen (December 1, 2016). "The Propaganda About Russian Propaganda". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 23, 2017.
  24. ^ Diana Johnstone (May 21, 2018). "Antifa or Antiwar: Leftist Exclusionism Against the Quest for Peace". consortiumnews.com.

External links[]

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