FAIR staff are available for speaking engagements on a variety of key media issues. To contact by email: use first initial (no space) last [email protected]
Staff
Janine Jackson/Program Director & CounterSpin Producer/Host
Janine Jackson is FAIR’s program director and and producer/host of FAIR’s syndicated weekly radio show CounterSpin. She contributes frequently to FAIR’s newsletter Extra! and co-edited The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the ’90s (Westview Press). She has appeared on ABC‘s Nightline and CNN Headline News, among other outlets, and has testified to the Senate Communications Subcommittee on budget reauthorization for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Her articles have appeared in various publications, including In These Times and the UAW’s Solidarity, and in books including Civil Rights Since 1787 (New York University Press) and Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism (New World Library). Jackson is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and has an M.A. in sociology from the New School for Social Research.
Jim Naureckas/Editor and Social Media Director
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org, the website of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. Since 1990, he has edited Extra!, FAIR’s print publication, now a monthly newsletter. He is the co-author of Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error, and co-editor of The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the ’90s. Naureckas was born in Libertyville, Illinois, in 1964, and graduated from Stanford University in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He has worked as an investigative reporter for the newspaper In These Times, where he covered the Iran/Contra scandal, and was managing editor of the Washington Report on the Hemisphere, a newsletter on Latin America. Since 1997 he has been married to Janine Jackson, FAIR’s program director. You can follow him on Twitter at @JNaureckas
Julie Hollar/Senior Analyst
Julie Hollar was senior analyst for FAIR’s Election Focus 2020 project and Extra!’s managing editor from 2008 to 2014. Julie has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. You can follow Julie on Twitter at @HollarJulie.
Olivia Riggio/Administrative and Fundraising Director
Olivia Riggio became FAIR’s administrative and fundraising director in March 2021. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ithaca College and is a former FAIR intern. She is published in outlets including The Indypendent, The Progressive and KCET, along with serving as a guest host for The Indypendent‘s news hour on WBAI 99.5FM in New York. She currently also serves on the board of the Accountability Journalism Institute.
Associates
Deborah Thomas/Publisher Emeritus
Deborah Thomas was publisher of FAIR for 25 years. The publisher and designer of Grand Street literary journal for ten years, she was art director of Dance Magazine, and worked on a variety of progressive magazines, including Seven Days and The Nation. Book design work has included titles for Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Verso, Overlook Press, Nation Books, Franklin Square Press and Roof Books. She has received the Silver and Gold Folio Awards for Direct Mail, and the Computer Press Awards for Best Newsletter.
Jeff Cohen/Founder Emeritus
Jeff Cohen founded FAIR in 1986 and served as the group’s director for 14 years. He then joined FAIR’s board through 2002. He was founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, where he was an associate professor of journalism. He has authored or coauthored five books, including “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.” The book focuses on his years as a TV commentator at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, and as senior producer of MSNBC’s Phil Donahue primetime show (which was terminated for political reasons three weeks before the Iraq invasion). With Norman Solomon, he coauthored three books: “Adventures in Medialand,” ”Through the Media Looking Glass” and “Wizards of Media Oz.” He also coauthored “The Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error” (with Steve Rendall and Jim Naureckas). His columns have been published online at such websites as CommonDreams, HuffPost and Truthout—and in dozens of dailies, including USA Today, Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe, Atlanta Constitution and Miami Herald. He has been a coproducer of such documentary films as “The Corporate Coup d’Etat,” “The Brainwashing of My Dad” and “All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I.F. Stone.” In 2011, he cofounded the online activist group RootsAction.org.
Alex Noyes/CounterSpin Engineer
Tyler Wann/CounterSpin Transcriber
Joel Kupferman/Legal Counsel
Sharon Adams/Legal Counsel for Intellectual Property
Board Of Directors
William Hoynes/President
William Hoynes is professor of sociology at Vassar College and author of several books on media.
Karl Grossman/Secretary
Karl Grossman is professor of journalism at State University of New York, Old Westbury, an author and documentary film producer.
Hollie Ainbinder
Hollie Ainbinder is a consultant and former FAIR Development Director.
Robin Andersen
Robin Anderson teaches Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University and is the Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program.
Robert W. McChesney
Robert McChesney is professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the author or editor of sixteen books. He is the President and co-founder of Free Press, a national media reform organization.
