CounterPunch is aleft-wing[1][2] online magazine. Content includes a free section published five days a week as well as a subscriber-only area called CounterPunch+, where original articles are published weekly.[3]CounterPunch is based in theUnited States and covers politics in a manner its editors describe as "muckraking with a radical attitude".[4]
In 2007, Cockburn and St. Clair wrote that in foundingCounterPunch they had "wanted it to be the best muckraking newsletter in the country", and cited as inspiration such pamphleteers asEdward Abbey,Peter Maurin, andAmmon Hennacy, as well as the socialist/populist newspaperAppeal to Reason (1895–1922).[9] When Alexander Cockburn died in 2012 at the age of 71, environmental journalistJoshua Frank became managing editor and Jeffrey St. Clair became editor-in-chief ofCounterPunch.[10][11]
In 2003,The Observer described theCounterPunch website as "one of the most popular political sources in America, with a keen following in Washington".[12] Other sources have variously describedCounterPunch as "left-wing",[1][2] "far-left",[13] "extreme",[14] a "political newsletter",[15] and a "muckraking newsletter".[16]
"Alice Donovan" redirects here. For the American actress, seeAlice Dougan Donovan.
During the 2016 presidential election,CounterPunch published a piece attributed to Alice Donovan,[17] who purported to be a freelance writer but US intelligence officials alleged to be a pseudonymous employee of the Russian government.[18] Donovan was tracked by theFBI for nine months, as a suspected fictitious persona created by theGRU.[18][19] In late November 2017, afterCounterPunch 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 among the pitches thatCounterPunch received daily[18] and began making inquiries. St. Clair asked Donovan to substantiate her identity by sending a photo of her driver’s license but she did not.[18]
On the same dayThe Washington Post article about Donovan was published, St. Clair and Frank published a piece stating thatCounterPunch 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.[17]CounterPunch removed all of the articles from their site.[20]
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 theSyrian 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 theAtlantic Council and other researchers.[19][20][21]
In 2016,CounterPunch appeared in aPropOrNot list of websites in which it was described as a Russian propaganda outlet. Writing in theNew Yorker,Adrian Chen described the list as a mess andCounterPunch as a "respected left-leaning" publication.[25]
^"About".CounterPunch.org. Archived fromthe original on October 10, 2023. RetrievedOctober 11, 2023.
^"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.
^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.
^Cockburn, Alexander, and Jeffrey St. Clair,End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate (Petrolia, California, and Oakland, California: CounterPunch and AK Press, 2007), pp. 2, 44.
^abSt. Clair, Jeffrey; Joshua Frank (December 25, 2017)."Go Ask Alice: the Curious Case of 'Alice Donovan'". CounterPunch. RetrievedJanuary 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.
"GRU and the Minions"(PDF).Graphika. September 23, 2020. RetrievedOctober 11, 2023.The GRU ultimately used the Alice Donovan account to create its DCLeaks Facebook page, according to a U.S. indictment of GRU operators.
