CounterSpin

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240301.mp3   This week on CounterSpin: Years ago when media critics called attention to ways corporate media’s profit-driven nature negatively impacts the news, lots of people would say, “But what about the internet?” Nowadays, folks seem to see more clearly that constraints on a news outlet’s content have little to do with whether it’s on paper or online, but on who owns it, who resources it, to whom is it accountable. You’ll see the phrase “crisis of journalism” newly circulating these days, but one thing hasn’t changed: If we don’t ask different questions about what we need from journalism, we will arrive at the same old unsatisfactory responses. Victor Pickard is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, and author, most recently, of Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society, from Oxford University Press. We talk to him about the crisis of journalism and its future. Transcript: ‘We Need to Separate Capitalism and Journalism’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240301Pickard.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at coverage of criminalizing journalism, gag rules and diversity data. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240301Banter.mp3

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240223.mp3   Reuters (2/20/24) This week on CounterSpin: International human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber told Electronic Intifada recently that the International Court of Justice hearings on the legality of Israel’s 56-year occupation of Palestinian land are the largest case in history—more than 50 countries are taking part in this, and the US is virtually alone…in defending the legality of Israel’s occupation. Most states are affirming its illegality and cataloging Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other gross violations of international law. Every day the US falls more out of step with the world in its support for Israel’s violent assault on Gaza. As Mokhiber said, US vetoes of ceasefires in the UN Security Council, after which thousands more were killed, mean the US is directly responsible for those deaths: “Complicity is a crime.” Many in the US press seem divorced from the idea of US responsibility, and somehow we’re seeing more of the opinions of random TV actors than of groups on the ground in Palestine, and international human rights and legal bodies. We get some update on this unfolding nightmare from author and activist Gregory Shupak, from the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, and from Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Greg Shupak: Transcript: ‘Israeli Violence Is Legitimized and Palestinian Counter-Violence Is Delegitimized’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240223Shupak.mp3 Trita Parsi: Transcript: ‘What in the Slaughter of Palestinians Is So Important to the US?’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240223Parsi.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240216.mp3   CEPR (1/31/24) This week on CounterSpin: There’s an announcement on the New York City subway where a voice chirps: “Attention, everyone! There are 150 accessible subway stations!” One can imagine an alternate world where we’d hear, “Only 150 of New York City’s 472 subway stations are accessible, and that’s a problem!” But people with disabilities are meant to be grateful, excited even, for whatever access or accommodation is made available for them to participate in daily life. There’s often an implied corollary suggestion that any violation of the rights of disabled people is an individual matter, to be fought over in the courts, rather than something to be acknowledged and addressed societally. The overarching law we have, the Americans with Disabilities Act, is meant to be proactive; it is, the government website tells us, a law, “not a benefits program.” In reality, though, the ADA still meets resistance, confusion and various combinations thereof, 33 years after its passage. And news media, as a rule, don’t help. The Supreme Court recently dismissed, but did not do away with, a case that gets at the heart of enforcement of civil rights laws for people with disabilities—though not them alone. Acheson v. Laufer is an under-the-radar case that, our guest says, is “part of a pattern of far-right reactionaries weaponizing the courts to dismantle labor protections, housing rights and health guidelines.” Ariel Adelman is a disability rights advocate and policy analyst. Her piece, with Hayley Brown, appeared recently on CEPR.net, the website of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. She’ll tell us what’s going on and what’s at stake. Transcript: ‘Disenfranchised, Under-Resourced Populations Are Burdened With Enforcing Major Federal Regulation’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240216Adelman.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at coverage of the racist Charles Stuart murder hoax. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240216Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240209.mp3   Other Words (1/31/24) This week on CounterSpin: CNN host Dana Bash asked a question in the Republican presidential debate (1/10/24) in Des Moines, Iowa: The rate of inflation is down. Prices, though, are still high, and Americans are struggling to afford food, cars and housing. What is the single most important policy that you would implement as president to make the essentials in Americans’ lives more [affordable]? Unfortunately, she asked the question of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who answered with word salad involving “wasteful spending on a Covid stimulus bill that expanded welfare, that’s now left us with 80 million Americans on Medicaid, 42 million Americans on food stamps.” Haley concluded with the admonition “quit borrowing. Cut up the credit cards.” “Cut up the credit cards” is interesting advice for people who are having trouble affording diapers, but it’s the sort of advice politicians and pundits dole out, and that corporate news media present as a respectable worldview, worthy of our attention. There is another view, that acknowledges that the same people who earn wages also buy groceries, and pretending that we’re pitted against one another is not just mis- but disinformation. Rakeen Mabud is chief economist and managing director of policy and research at Groundwork Collaborative. They have new work on what’s driving grocery prices, that doesn’t involve getting mad at people using food stamps. We’ll hear from her today on the show. Transcript: ‘It’s Important to Focus on Big Companies Using the Cover of Inflation to Jack Up Prices’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240209Mabud.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at analogies that encourage genocide. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240209Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240202.mp3   Texas Tribune (1/22/24) This week on CounterSpin: The Supreme Court ruled that federal agents can remove the razor wire that Texas state officials have set up along parts of the US/Mexico border. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that “allows Biden to continue his illegal effort to aid the foreign invasion of America.” Elite news media, for their part, suggest we seek a hallowed middle ground between those two worldviews. Corporate media are filled with debate about the best way to handle the “border crisis.” But what if there isn’t a border crisis so much as an absence of historical understanding, of empathy, of community resourcing, and of critical challenge to media and political narratives—including that reflected in President Joe Biden’s call to allow access for “those who deserve to be here”? We hear from Aron Thorn, senior staff attorney at the Beyond Borders program of the Texas Civil Rights Project. Transcript: ‘Texas Is Fighting for Its Right to Lay Concertina Wire’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240202Thorn.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent coverage of Gaza protest and the New Hampshire primary. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240202Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240126.mp3   Guardian (1/8/24) This week on CounterSpin: Elite media can give the impression that problems wax and wane along with their attention to them. And, not to put too fine a point on it, they’re done with police brutality. So if you think news media show you the world, you’ll be surprised to hear that 2023 saw killings by law enforcement up from the previous year, which was up from the year before that. More than 1,200 people were killed, roughly three people every day, including not just those shot dead, but those fatally shocked by a stun gun, beaten or restrained to death. Thirty-six percent of those killed were fleeing, and, yes, they were disproportionately Black. As far as corporate media are concerned, we’ve tried nothin’, and we’re all out of ideas. Communities, on the other hand, are hard at work reimagining public safety without punitive policing. There’s new work on those possibilities, and we hear about it from Monifa Bandele from the Movement for Black Lives. Transcript: ‘We Know What Keeps Us Safe: People Need Care and Not Punishment’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240126Bandele.mp3   Extra! (7–8/14) Also on the show: There is little research that is more important or less acknowledged than that from Princeton’s (now UCLA’s) Martin Gilens and Northwestern’s Benjamin Page in 2014 on the translation of public opinion into public policy. They looked at more than 1700 policies over 20 years and concluded that where economic elite views diverged from those of the public—as they would—the public had “zero estimated impact upon policy change, while economic elites are still estimated to have a very large, positive, independent impact.” Awareness of that fundamental disconnect is always relevant—but maybe especially when it comes to election season, where corporate coverage suggests we have an array of choices, we’re able to vote for people to represent our interests and choose our way forward, and let the most popular candidate win! We know it’s not like this, but the reporting that could show us how and why elections don’t work the way we think they do, is just not there, in a vigorous, sustained way. Add that to amped-up efforts to impede voting, even in this imperfect system, and people get discouraged—they don’t vote at all, and problems are compounded. So how do we acknowledge flaws in the system while still encouraging people to participate, and to fight the roadblocks to voting that we’re seeing right now? We get at that with Svante Myrick, president of People For the American Way, as well as former mayor of Ithaca, New York. Transcript: ‘If You Can’t Choose Your Own Leaders, Nothing Else Matters’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240126Myrick.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240119.mp3   New York Times (10/14/23) This week on CounterSpin: US corporate news media’s initial response to Israel’s terror campaign against Palestinians, unleashed in the wake of the October 7 attack by Hamas, was characterized, broadly speaking, by legitimization, a rhetorical blank check for whatever Israel might do. Israel, the New York Times editorial board said, “is determined to break the power of Hamas, and in that effort it deserves the support of the United States and the rest of the world.” We’re more than three months into that “effort.” The death toll for Palestinians is, conservatively, as we record on January 18, over 24,000 people. The UN secretary general calls Gaza a “graveyard for children.” So how does the Times’ assertion that “what Israel is fighting to defend is a society that values human life and the rule of law” stand up now? We’re talking this week with media critic, activist and teacher Gregory Shupak. He teaches English and media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, and is author of The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, from OR Books. Transcript: ‘When You’re in a Colonial Situation, the Colonial Power Initiates Violence’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240119Shupak.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at some recent press coverage of immigration. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240119Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240112.mp3   Yahoo (1/4/24) This week on CounterSpin: The journalists at Yahoo Finance tell us that a Connecticut McDonald’s charging $18 for a combo meal has “sparked a nationwide debate” on escalating prices in the fast food industry. The outrage, readers are told, is “partly attributed” to a recent raise in the minimum wage—which has not yet gone into effect. Spoiler: We never hear about any other “parts” “attributed.”  Businesses like McDonald’s, the story goes, “have already raised their prices in anticipation of the wage hike.” Were there any other responses available to them? Don’t ask! We’re moving on—to how it isn’t just that poor working Joes will have to pay more for a Big Mac, but also there will be layoffs…of fast-food employees. We meet Jose and Jim, who say they thought higher wages would be good, “considering the decline in tipping and increasing living costs.” Alas no, Yahoo explains: “The reality was harsher. The wage increase, while beneficial for some, has resulted in job losses for others, leading to a complex mix of gratitude and resentment among affected workers.” The takeaway: “The debate over the appropriate balance between fair wages and sustainable business practices remains unresolved.” The piece does go on to lament the mental stress associated with economic uncertainty—not for owners, evidently—and the wise counsel that those troubled might consider “establishing a substantial savings account and making smart investments.” Elite reporters seem so far removed from the daily reality of the bulk of the country that this doesn’t even ring weird to them. A raise in wages for fast food employees means fast food employees have to lose their jobs—that’s just, you know, “economics.” Union, what? Profiteering, who? The only operative question is, which low-wage workers need to suffer more? We get a different view on raising the minimum wage from Sebastian Martinez Hickey, researcher for the EARN (Economic Analysis and Research Network) team at the Economic Policy Institute. Transcript: ‘A Minimum-Wage Increase Can Benefit the Whole Economy’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240112MartinezHickey.mp3   Tipped worker (cc photo: Daveblog) Also on the show: A largely unspoken part of media’s wage conversation is the whole sector of workers whose pay rates are based in…enslavement. Yeah. In 2015, CounterSpin learned about tipped wages from Saru Jayaraman, co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. We hear part of that relevant conversation this week. Transcript: ‘A Woman’s Ability to Pay Her Bills Should Not Be Dependent on the Whims of Customers’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240112Jayaraman.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240105.mp3   (image: Jewish Voice for Peace) This week on CounterSpin: It was a big deal when Jewish Americans who oppose US support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza filled New York’s Grand Central Terminal. But not big enough to make the front page of the local paper, the New York Times. US journalists invoke the First Amendment a lot, but not so much when it extends to regular folks using their individual voices, sometimes at significant personal risk, to say NO to something the US government is doing in their name. Some listeners may remember marching with thousands of others in advance of the US war on Iraq, only to come home and find the paper or TV station ignored them utterly, or distorted their effort and their message—as when NBC’s Tom Brokaw reported a Washington, DC, anti-war march of at least 100,000 people, met with a couple hundred pro-war counter-protesters, as: “Opponents and supporters of the war marched in cities across the nation on Saturday.” “Protest is the voice of the people,” our guest’s organization states. Defending Rights & Dissent aims to invigorate the Bill of Rights and, crucially, to protect our right to political expression. We talk with Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, this week on CounterSpin. Transcript: ‘Protest Is the Tool by Which We Realize Our Democracy’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240105Gibbons.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at the media’s role in the recent Republican primary debates. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240105Banter.mp3  

Transcript: ‘We Have to Do the Hard Work of Looking at Context’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin231229.mp3   Janine Jackson Every week, CounterSpin tries to bring you a look “behind the headlines” of the mainstream news. Not because headlines are false, necessarily, but because the full story is rarely reflected there—the voices, the communities and ideas that are not front and center in the discourse of the powerful, but could help us move toward a more equitable, peaceful, healthy communal life. Many—most—conversations we need to have, have to happen around corporate news media, while deconstructing and re-imagining the discourse that they’re pumping out day after day. Guests featured in this special “best of” episode include: Paul Hudson, president of FlyersRights, on air travel chaos; Kamau Franklin, founder of Community Movement Builders, on Atlanta’s Cop City; Eric Thurm, campaigns coordinator for the National Writers Union, on artificial intelligence; Emily Sanders, editorial lead at the Center for Climate Integrity, on oil company lies; Kehsi Iman Wilson, chief operating officer of New Disabled South, on the Americans With Disabilities Act; Rodrigo Camarena, director of Justicia Lab, on wage theft; Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines group, on Covid-19 price-gouging; Phyllis Bennis, director of IPS’s New Internationalism project, on Gaza context; Sonya Meyerson-Knox, communications director of Jewish Voice for Peace, on Jewish-American voices on Gaza. CounterSpin is thankful to all of the activists, researchers, reporters and advocates who appear on the show. They help us see the world more clearly, as well as the role we can play in changing it. This is just a small selection of some of them.