CounterPunch is a magazine published six times per year in the United States that covers politics in a manner its editors describe as "muckraking with a radical attitude". It has been described as left-wing.
History
CounterPunch began as a newsletter, established in 1994 by the Washington, D.C.-based investigative reporterKen Silverstein. He was soon joined by Alexander Cockburn and then Jeffrey St. Clair, who became the publication's editors in 1996 when Silverstein left. In 2007, Cockburn and St. Clair wrote that in founding CounterPunch they had "wanted it to be the bestmuckraking 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. 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.
Russian disinformation
During the 2016 presidential election, CounterPunch published a piece by “Alice Donovan“ who purported to be a freelance writer but was in fact a pseudonymous employee of the Russian government. Donovan was tracked by the FBI for nine months. 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 and began making inquiries. He asked Donovan to substantiate her identity by sending a photo of her driving license but she did not. 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. In another 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.
Reception
Journalist Diana Johnstone expressed concerns about CounterPunch's smearing of activists in an article titled "Antifa or Antiwar: Leftist Exclusionism Against the Quest for Peace. In 2003, The Observer described the CounterPunch website as "one of the most popular political sources in America, with a keen following in Washington". Other sources have variously described CounterPunch as "left-wing", “extreme," a "political newsletter", and a "muckraking newsletter". The lobby groupCommittee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America that counters criticism of the Israeli government in U.S. media in 2007 described CounterPunch as an "extremist anti-Israel web site." CounterPunch was also criticized for an interview with Pink Floyd member Roger Waters in which he made controversial comments on Israel and a "Jewish lobby". Waters in a separate interview with Haaretz stated that he hates apartheid and not Israelis. In 2016, Adrian Chen of The New Yorker called CounterPunch a "respected left-leaning" publication following accusations that CounterPunch promoted a pro-Russian agenda.
