Counterpunch is a biweekly newsletter published in the United States which covers politics from a radical left-wing point of view. It is also a popular website with more frequently added content.

The newsletter was established in 1994 by the Washington DC-based investigative reporter Ken Silverstein. He was soon joined by the journalists Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. In 1996 Silverstein left the publication and Cockburn and St Clair have since been co-editors.

Running six to eight pages in length, the Counterpunch newsletter publishes primarily commentaries of Cockburn and St Clair with a regular contributions by others. It is noted for its highly critical coverage of both Democratic and Republican politicians and its extensive reporting of environmental and trade union issues. Counterpunch carries on the tradition of muckraking journalism of earlier investigative journalists such as I.F. Stone and George Seldes.

Since coming online in 1998, the Counterpunch website has become one of the most frequently-visited radical sites on the Internet. It offers a large quantity of material not published in the newsletter; however, the newsletter continues to publish commentaries by St Clair and Cockburn which are not published on the web. The website is maintained on the basis of revenues generated by the newsletter.

Some of the more noteworthy articles posted at Counterpunch have included an actual message from Iraqi militant groups defending their ongoing actions, unaccompanied by any commentary or critical analysis, and articles debating the factuality of Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes and the Pol Pot massacres.

Notable contributors to Counterpunch have included Robert Fisk, the late Edward Said, Tim Wise, Ralph Nader, M. Shahid Alam, and Alexander Cockburn's two brothers, Andrew and Patrick, both of whom write on the Middle East, Iraq in particular.

External link

• Counterpunch website