CounterPunch

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This article is about The newsletter. For other uses, see Counterpunch.

CounterPunch is a biweekly newsletter published in the United States that covers politics in a manner its editors describe as "muckraking with a radical attitude". It includes a website, updated daily, which contains much more material not published in the newsletter.

Running six to eight pages in length, the CounterPunch newsletter primarily publishes commentaries by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair with regular contributions by others. It is noted for its critical coverage of both Democratic and Republican politicians and its extensive reporting of environmental and trade union issues, American foreign policy, and the Israeli-Arab conflict. CounterPunch considers itself to carry on the tradition of muckraking journalism of earlier investigative journalists such as I.F. Stone and George Seldes.

1 History
2 Contributors
3 Praise
4 Criticism
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] History

The newsletter was established in 1994 by the Washington, D.C.-based investigative reporter Ken Silverstein. He was soon joined by the journalists Cockburn and St. Clair. In 1996 Silverstein left the publication and Cockburn and St. Clair have since been co-editors.

The website, which is updated on a daily basis, is supported by revenues generated by the newsletter, as well as fundraising activities and commissions received on click-through sales from Amazon.com.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Contributors

Notable contributors to CounterPunch have included Robert Fisk, the late Edward Said, Tim Wise, Ralph Nader, M. Shahid Alam, Ward Churchill, Lila Rajiva, Peter Linebaugh, the late Tanya Reinhart, Noam Chomsky, Frank "Chuck" Spinney and Alexander Cockburn's two brothers, Andrew and Patrick, both of whom write on the Middle East, Iraq in particular.

Some paleoconservative writers like Paul Craig Roberts and William Lind can also be found in CounterPunch. The site regularly publishes veteran radicals, such as Lenni Brenner, Fidel Castro, and the late Stew Albert, as well as younger authors such as Diane Christian, Joshua Frank, Norman Finkelstein, Ron Jacobs, Gary Leupp, Cynthia McKinney,^[1] Kelly Overton and David Price.

[edit] Praise

The Village Voice has said that CounterPunch "outshines all its competitors." Articles that appear in CounterPunch are often republished by or generate related articles in Harper's (of which Ken Silverstein is an editor), The Nation (where Cockburn is a columnist), the National Journal, the New York Daily News, The Washington Post, The Texas Observer, and several other publications.^[2]

[edit] Criticism

Franklin Foer of The New Republic and right-wing commentator Steven Plaut have written articles alleging that CounterPunch is biased against Israel and the USA, charging it with publishing anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views.^[3]^[4]

CounterPunch has also been criticised by socialist activists Tony Greenstein and Roland Rance of Jews Against Zionism, who say it is too favorable to writers who blur the distinction between Zionism and Judaism.^[5] ^[6] CounterPunch has also been criticized for publishing articles by authors such as Alan Cabal and Daniel A. McGowan who elsewhere have defended the free speech of Holocaust deniers such as Ernest Zundel. According to the critics, these authors have also sought to legitimize the views of such Holocaust deniers.^[7]

In May 2006, James Taranto, editor of the Wall Street Journal's online Opinionjournal.com website, referred to CounterPunch as a "moonbat site."^[8]