The Rise and Fall of “Counterspin”

After four years of “Faceoff,” the basic concept was used for a new show, “Counterspin.” For “Counterspin,” which aired in 1999, Jay discovered that News- world was open to the idea of a single host, but that it would still have to be a debate program. The debate format allowed a deeper analysis of questions: rather than trying to have a host keep up with an “expert” on all issues, “experts” with plenty of knowledge could be pitted against each other. 

Avi Lewis, the host chosen for the job, said that while he never hid his point of view, he accepted the idea of a fair debate: “I was cautioned for being sarcastic with members of the (right-wing) Alliance party, especially during election time…but the idea was not to influence public opinion. It was to reframe issues to a point of view kept out of the mainstream. The idea was not to advance a left agenda, but to take all ideas seriously. It is a sad comment on the state of politics that because we were truly balanced, it was seen as skewed to the left.” 

When Avi Lewis—who with Naomi Klein calls himself an “activist-journalist” in their latest film The Take about social movements in Argentina—left the show after two years to make documentary films, he was replaced by Carol Off, a CBC journalist, who does not see herself as an activist, but “just a reporter.” Says Off, “There is a problem with the concept of balance. There are two sides to every story, but they are never equal. If you fairly present both sides, one side always outweighs the other. If you are concerned with the truth and fairness, you will end up unbalanced. But it is important, and it takes discipline, to see all the sides and allow them to present themselves.” 

Paul Jay agrees: “We always tried to get the best debaters on both sides. Actually, we ended up spending much more time trying to ensure that the right-wing debater was very good. We never tried to get a bad right-winger on purpose to make the left look good. If, at the end of some night, the left lost the debate, we could view it as a good thing: a chance to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the left. There are a lot of leftists who can give a rousing talk to a bunch of people who already agree, but wilted when they were faced with a serious debate. And we learned that we need more left debater-types.” 

The formula was a success. Despite virtually no promotion other than on-air (the “Counterspin” teams asked for ads in campus and alternative newspapers), ratings were consistently good, proving that there is a desire to hear a real spectrum of opinion on television. 

Pedro Sanchez is another producer of “Counterspin.” He joined the CBC after spending years in alternative radio projects on Latin America, working as an activist in the Latin America solidarity movement and supporting anti-racist initiatives in Canada. To Sanchez, the media landscape has two poles: “You have your mainstream, corporate media. Then you have your alternative, progressive, community-based media.” “Counterspin” did not fit neatly into either, but had elements of both: “On ‘Counterspin’ we always had the voice of the status quo firmly represented. But we also put progressive, critical, challenging voices out there.” 

“Counterspin’s” intermediate position between mainstream and alternative can be explained in terms of its insulation from corporate ownership, shared ideology, advertiser funding, dependence on official sources—which all contribute to homogenizing the content in mainstream media and prevent challenging viewpoints from being presented. To Avi Lewis, “Coun- terspin’s” independent production and presence on public television helped insulate it: “The core concept of the show was to break through that—the shared ideology, the corporate perspective, the flak—to create television that defied that. I’m not saying we succeeded every night. But we succeeded on a good night. And we defied some of that well-deserved cynicism that exists on the left, that you can’t counter spin in the mainstream media.”  

Despite the insulation, the pressures certainly existed. Avi Lewis describes an “outright lobbying campaign by the right, led by the National Post (a Canadian cross between the Washington Post and the New York Post ), to get the show cancelled as inherently biased.” Exhibiting a total lack of a sense of humor, the National Post didn’t see the irony in attacking “Counter- spin” for being biased. After doing shows on the conflict between the U.S./Israel and the Palestinians (including a debate with an all-Jewish audience between Tikkun ’s Michael Lerner and The Case for Israel writer Alan Dershowitz), pro-Israel” constituencies attacked the show for its bias. 

The Fall? 

T he decision not to renew “Counterspin” was made by the head of CBC News and Current Affairs, Tony Burman, and Heaton Dyer, head of Newsworld. The reasons for the cancellation remain speculative. No speculation is needed, however, to know the direction that Canadian public broadcasting is headed. “During one show’s commercial break,” Carol Off describes, “there were politicians from the Liberal Party and the Conservative Alliance. They agreed that the CBC would have to be privatized. The NDP [Canada’s social democratic party] politician said, ‘I hope this is being recorded.’ The Liberal and Conservative both said, ‘Sure, record it.’”  Off describes a nervousness in the CBC, “They can’t censor us, but they can dismantle the network. The CBC has a lot of lucrative assets that the private broadcasters want. They don’t like competing with the taxpayer. They don’t like having to produce high-quality television to compete.” 

Pedro Sanchez agrees, “You have companies like Disney with major control of the media that is involved with arms and prison industries in the U.S. The media is highly concentrated. We would be deceiving ourselves if we thought things weren’t headed that way here. We know that Prime Minister Paul Martin wants much ‘closer’ U.S.-Canada relations: what does that mean? Al Gore recently bought Newsworld International, and I think that won’t be the only example of ‘cross-border’ media shopping. There are interests much more nefarious than Al Gore involved.” 

Paul Jay believes that the cancellation is the flip side of the autonomy the show has always enjoyed. “We never got any serious trouble from the CBC over content. I never had anyone call me and say, ‘Why did you book that guest?’  But the other side of that is, unfortunately, that they never really understood what we were doing. They don’t understand the public dissatisfaction with current television’s approach to news and current affairs. We went beyond the boundaries, and they don’t understand the need to go outside those limits.” 

Paul Jay continues: “They have actually said that the ‘spirit of ‘Counterspin’ will live on, by which they mean that they will keep the form of ‘Counterspin.’ But there is nothing special about the form of ‘Counterspin’: it is just four people sitting around a table, with a host and an audience.  What we did differently was the substance, the execution, the attempt to find people who could reach under an issue and really get a hold of it, guests who could challenge the assumptions of the status quo in principle and not just in detail. We developed a culture of knowing how to produce these shows over ten years. By cancelling ‘Counterspin,’ the CBC has lost this culture.”