In this first day of the Winter Membership Drive, we bring you the man behind http://www.counterpunch.org/, one of the most trafficked and respected progressive websites on the 'Net. Started as a newsletter by D.C.-based investigative journalist Ken Silverstein in 1994, it was soon joined by St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, who took over as co-editors in 1996. It became a website in 1998.
From its Wikipedia entry:
CounterPunch-sourced news stories have frequently featured in the Project Censored annual list of top 25 "underreported, mis-reported, or censored" news stories, including three in 1997 ("Dark Alliance: Tuna Free Trade, and Cocaine";[12] "Corporate America Spends Big $$ on Pro-China PR";[13] and "U.S. Alone in Blocking Export Ban of Toxic Waste to Third World"[14]). Other entries include 1998 ("The Scheme to Privatize the Hanford Nuke Plant"[15] and "American Drug Industry Uses the Poor as Human Guinea Pigs"[16]), several in 2000[17][18] and others in 2001[19] 2003[20] and 2004.[21]
Regular CounterPunch contributor Israel Shamir was part of the WikiLeaks organisation and an associate of its director, Julian Assange,[22] and in late 2010 and early 2011 wrote a series of exclusive articles for CounterPunch drawing on materials from the United States diplomatic cables leak.[23] He has also written and co-written articles for CounterPunch on what he alleges to be a campaign of harassment against Assange.[24] One of these articles, "Assange Betrayed",[25] made allegations against a plaintiff in a Swedish rape case against Assange that were widely circulated in the media.[26][27] The allegations in CounterPunch were the topic of controversy in the mainstream media.[28]
In 2003, The Observer described the CounterPunch website as a "popular political sources in America, with a keen following in Washington".[42] Other sources have variously described CounterPunch as a "left-wing",[2][3][4] "extreme" or "radical"[43][44] a "political newsletter",[45] and a "muckraking newsletter".[46]
The Anti-Defamation League in 2007 described CounterPunch as an "anti-Zionist radical left newsletter".[47] The pro-Israel media watchdog group Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) in 2007 described CounterPunch.org as an "extremist anti-Israel web site".[48]
In 2004, Max Boot described CounterPunch as an "extreme" "conspiracy-mongering website", citing a 2003 article by Dave Lindorff comparing George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler.[43][49] The same article was also referred to by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal as similarly permitting the dismissal of CounterPunch ("an outfit whose staple is stuff comparing Bush to Hitler"). Lindorff has defended his article against this characterization.[50]
Counterpunch Books, an imprint of AK Press, has published a wide-range of books by authors who write for the web magazine, including a number edited or written by St. Clair. They include: Born Under a Bad Sky: Notes from the Dark Side of the Earth (2008), Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence (2014) and most recently Bernie & the Sandernistas: Field Notes From a Failed Revolution (2016). We will be offering several copies of the latter as a Membership Drive premium. https://store.counterpunch.org/product/bernie-the-sandernistas/
- KBOO