CounterSpin

    (NBC News, 12/29/22) This week on CounterSpin: Media criticism is, at its heart, consumer advocacy. There’s an unarticulated underpinning to elite media conversation that goes: As a citizen you may have rights, but as a consumer, you don’t have anything called a “right”; the market is an arrangement—the best possible arrangement—but still, you can only hope you’re on the right side of it where it’s profitable to serve you. And if it isn’t, well, too bad. It’s a kind of caveat emptor, devil-take-the-hindmost situation, which would be bad enough if corporate media didn’t present it as though it were unproblematic, and as if we’d all agreed to it! Paul Hudson is president of the consumer group Flyers Rights. He’ll talk about what you did not, in fact, sign up for, in terms of air travel. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin230106Hudson.mp3 Transcript: “‘The [Airline] Industry Pretty Much Has Veto Power Over Any Consumer Regulation'” (Center for Gender and Refugee Studies) Also on the show: Enacted under Trump, Title 42 instructed officials to turn away asylum seekers at US borders in purported protection of the country’s “public health” in the face of Covid-19. Officialspeak currently has it that Covid is over, so far as public regulations go…. Oh except for that exception about denying  hearings to people fleeing violence and persecution in their home country. The Supreme Court has just furthered this injustice with a ruling that, according to one account, “does not overrule the lower court’s decision that Title 42 is illegal; it merely leaves the measure in place while the legal challenges play out in court.” We’ll hear from Melissa Crow, director of litigation at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin230106Crow.mp3 Transcript: “‘With This Delay of Vacating Title 42, the Death Toll Will Only Rise'”

All year long, CounterSpin brings you a look, as we say, behind the headlines of the mainstream news. We hope both to shine some light on aspects of news events—perspectives of those out of power, relevant but omitted history—important things that might be pushed to the side or off the page entirely in elite media reporting. But it’s also to remind us to be mindful of the practices and policies of corporate news media that make it an unlikely arena for an inclusive, vital debate on issues that matter—that we need. 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. Rakeen Mabud “Supply Chain Mayhem Will Likely Muck Up 2022”—that New York Times headline (2/1/22) got us off to a start of a year of actual hardship, and a lot of obfuscation about that hardship’s sources. The pandemic threw into relief many concerns that it did not create—and offered an opportunity to address them in a serious and not a stopgap way. Rakeen Mabud is chief economist and managing director of policy and research at Groundwork Collaborative. We talked with her early in the year. Bryce Greene The ease with which US media step into saber-rattling mode, the confidence as they soberly suggest people other than themselves might just need to be sent off to a violent death in service of something they can only describe with vague platitudes, should be disturbing. Bryce Greene’s piece, “What You Should Really Know About Ukraine,” got more than 3,000 shares on FAIR.org. The Peace Corps issued a press release warning that African Americans looking to support Ukrainians should accept that they might face racism—because, sooprise, sooprise, of how we’re portrayed in US media. Layla A. Jones We talked about the basic story the world and the US hears about Black people, thanks to journalism—with Layla A. Jones, reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer. She’s part of the papers’ “A More Perfect Union” project, online at Inquirer.com. Helen Zia As US media showed there is no playbook too dusty to pull out with their anti-Asian Covid coverage, we talked with Helen Zia, co-founder of American Citizens for Justice, and author of, among other titles,  Asian-American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People,  the 40th remembrance and rededication at VincentChin.org. Sumayyah Waheed In September of this year, CNN hired John Miller as “chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst,”—a clear message to Muslim communities and anyone who cares about them—given that as deputy commissioner of intelligence and counter-terrorism for the New York Police Department, Miller told a New York City Council meeting that “there is no evidence” that the NYPD surveilled Muslim communities in the wake of September 11, 2001—“based,” he said, “on every objective study that’s been done.” We listened, instead, to Sumayyah Waheed, senior policy council at Muslim Advocates. CounterSpin listeners understand that the news media situation in this country works against our democratic aspirations. There are so many problems crying out for open, inclusive conversation, in which those with the most power don’t get the biggest megaphone, leaving the vast majority outside of power to try and shout into the dominant noise, or try to find the space to talk around it. Corporate media work hard, will always work hard, to tell us that it’s their way or the highway….it’s just not true. Mike Rispoli One of many projects we should know about that show us a way forward is one in New Jersey—that didn’t talk about shoring up old media outlets, which are for sure suffering… but about instead about invigorating community information needs—a very different thing! The New Jersey Civic Information Consortium uses public funding to support more informed communities. We talked with an early mover on the project Mike Rispoli, senior director of journalism policy Mike Rispoli at Free Press. 

    Image from January 6 Report (photo: Jon Cherry/Getty Images) This week on CounterSpin: The House committee on the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol heard more than 1,000 witness interviews and held multiple public hearings, resulting in criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Donald Trump, lawyer John Eastman and others involved in violent efforts to override the results of Trump’s electoral loss. The committee released transcripts showing some two dozen witnesses invoking their right against self-incrimination. Eastman, key advisor to Trump on how to overturn the election, cited his Fifth Amendment right 155 times. At one point, Democratic House member Jamie Raskin asked GOP operative Roger Stone if he believed “coups are allowed in our constitutional system.” To which Stone said, “I most definitely decline to respond to your question.” But the headwinds the Committee’s recommendations face are not just from the MAGA hatters, but also the Very Smart People who will tell us that our desire for justice is really just partisan or, worse, blood lust—and what we really ought to do, what the intelligent people would do, is, well, nothing. Let wiser heads prevail. We’re having none of that. We spoke with Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of Public Citizen and co-founder of the forged-for-purpose Not Above the Law Coalition, about what the hearings found and why it can’t end there. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221223Gilbert.mp3 Transcript: “‘There Is More Than One Solution Needed to the Problem of an Insurrection'” Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Elon Musk, inflation and deadly conservatism. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221223Banter.mp3  

    Truthout (11/12/22) This week on CounterSpin: Those listeners who have heard about Haaland v. Brackeen will know that that Supreme Court case is about considering the Indian Child Welfare Act—which is aimed at keeping Native communities together—to be “race-based,” and therefore unfair and unconstitutional. Opposing the actual mission of those who want to eliminate the Indian Child Welfare Act is just…reality: the reality that made the Act necessary in the first place, and the reality that will likely ensue if it is repealed. We’ll learn more from Jen Deerinwater, who writes for Truthout, among other outlets, and is founding executive director of Crushing Colonialism. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221209Deerinwater.mp3 Transcript: “‘A Crucial Part of Colonization Is Taking Our Children'” Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent media conflation of crime and homelessness. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221209Banter.mp3  

    Dissent (11/22/22) This week on CounterSpin: Former CIA director Mike Pompeo recently said with a straight face that Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, was “the most dangerous person in the world.” “It’s not a close call,” he said. “If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teachers unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids.” More evidence, were it needed, that the current struggle for pay and dignity by teaching assistants and adjuncts and researchers at the University of California is really part of a bigger fight about whether educators, at whatever level, are actual workers—and who’s looking out for their rights. We hear from labor historian and UC Santa Barbara professor Nelson Lichtenstein about what’s happening at the University of California. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221202Lichtenstein.mp3 Transcript: “‘We Need to Transform What It Means to Be an Academic Worker; the Status Quo is Untenable'” Truthout (11/29/22) Also on the show: Some elite media are expressing concern that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito may have leaked the Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling ahead of time to evangelicals looking to make hay from it. But as Sarah Posner put it at MSNBC.com: While figuring that out matters, it won’t necessarily address the deeper problem, that the court’s conservative majority itself “was deliberately cultivated to expand religious freedom for conservative Christians at the expense of the rights of those deemed less worthy of protection.” We talk with legal expert and author Marjorie Cohn about that. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221202Cohn.mp3 Transcript: “‘The Supreme Court is Burying Its Head in the Sand'” CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misattributed Mike Pompeo’s quote about Randi Weingarten to Mike Pence.

    New York Times (1/31/60) This week on CounterSpin: According to Techcrunch, before its ignominious flameout, the cryptocurrency firm FTX had acquired more than 100,000 customers in Africa. Evidently, FTX—led by wunderkind-turned-object lesson, with not much actual learning in evidence in-between, Sam Bankman-Fried—built a following in part by capitalizing on unstable banking access on the continent. Media like the New York Times and Bloomberg abetted Bankman-Fried’s scheming, with rose-colored stories describing him as a kind of “Robin Hood,” whose “ethical framework” called for “decisions calculated to secure the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.” Well, the golden boy has now filed for bankruptcy, having disappeared some billion dollars in client funds, ho hum. Don’t look for FTX post-mortems to go deep on why Sub-Saharan Africa was specially targeted, or to plumb the implications of Bankman-Fried’s comments, made to Vox in 2021, that Africa is “where the most underserved globally are, and where there’s a whole lot of lowest-hanging fruit in terms of being able to make people’s lives better.” How’d that work out? The African continent as a playing field for white people to test their theories, extract resources and stage proxy wars is time-tested. As much fable as active framework, it’s a lens that requires constant challenge. We talked about this last fall with Milton Allimadi. He teaches African history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and publishes the Black Star News, a weekly newspaper in New York City. And he’s the author of the book Manufacturing Hate: How Africa Was Demonized in Western Media. We hear some of that conversation with Milton Allimadi, this week on CounterSpin. Transcript: ‘The Demonization Was Meant to Pacify Readers to Accept the Brutality’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221125Allimadi.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of Bill Gates. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221125Banter.mp3

    ABC World News Tonight (10/30/22) This week on CounterSpin: ABC World News Tonight told viewers what it thought they needed to know: “Bolsonaro Loses Brazilian Election, Leftist Former President Wins by Narrow Margin.” The victor of Brazil’s consequential presidential race has an actual name; it’s not “leftist former president”…or “former shoeshine boy,” as the New York Times had it–or even “savior,” as CNN suggests supporters view him. He’s a person, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, a popularly supported former president, whose program had, and has, more to do with helping poor people in Brazil than with securing the kind of extractive, profit-over-all, devil-take-the-hindmost international relationships that elite US media applaud. So just, get ready, is all we’re saying. For a Latin American president taking steps to protect the human life–supporting Amazon to be presented in the press as a flawed, corrupt self-server, which maybe suggests that uplifting the poor and saving humanity might just be too expensive a proposition. It’s hard not to imagine the use that a differently focused press corps might make of Brazil’s change of direction. We’ll talk about it with Brian Mier, of Brasil Wire and TeleSur‘s From the South, as well as co-author/editor, with Daniel Hunt, of Year of Lead: Washington, Wall Street and the New Imperialism in Brazil. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221118Mier.mp3 Transcript: “‘Lula’s Victory Is One of the Most Impressive Political Comebacks of the Last 100 Years'”

    New York Times (6/24/22) This week on CounterSpin: As Eric Horowitz noted at FAIR.org, a lot of elite media coverage of housing problems has focused on the idea that landlords of supposedly modest means are being squeezed; or that people living without homes pose a threat to the lives and property of homeowners, as well as to the careers of politicians who dare to defend them—besides, you know, dragging down the neighborhood aesthetics. New views are needed, not only about the impacts of the affordable housing crisis, but also about its causes. It’s not just capitalism run amok, because that doesn’t happen without government involvement. We’ll talk with longtime affordable housing advocate Gene Slater, founder and chair at CSG Advisors. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221111Slater.mp3 Transcript: “‘Who Do We Want to Own Our Neighborhoods?'” NBC Nightly News (11/12/21) Also on the show: Media continue to toss off the term “inflation” as the reason for higher prices, as if in hope that folks will stop their brains right there and blame an abstract entity. We have a quick listenback to our February conversation with Rakeen Mabud of Groundwork Collaborative, when media were working hard to tell the public that “supply chain disruptions” dropped from the sky like rain, rather than being connected to decades of conscious policy decision-making. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221111Mabud.mp3 Transcript: “‘Mega-Retailers Are Using Inflation as a Cover to Raise Prices and Turn Record Profits'” Combined corporate and government choices—and how they affect the rest of us, this week on CounterSpin.

  New York Times (10/21/19) This week on CounterSpin: In 2019, the New York Times reported on Haiti’s hardships with a story headlined “‘There Is No Hope’: Crisis Pushes Haiti to Brink of Collapse.” The “no hope” phrase was a real, partial quote from a source, a despairing young woman in one of Haiti’s most difficult areas. And the story wasn’t lying about babies dying in underserved hospitals or schools closed or people killed in protests, or people with jobs going unpaid, roadblocks, blackouts, hunger and deep, deep stress in a country in severe crisis. But further into the story was another quote, from that young woman’s mother, who told the Times, “It’s not only that we’re hungry for bread and water. We’re hungry for the development of Haiti.” As we noted at the time, there’s a difference between “there is no hope” and “there is no hope under this system”—and to the extent that US news media purposefully ignore that difference, and portray Haiti as a sort of outside-of-time tragic case, and ignore the role that US “intervention” has played throughout history in order to push for the same sort of intervention again—well, that’s where you see the difference between corporate media and the independent press corps we need. We’ll talk to Jake Johnston from the Center for Economic and Policy Research about what elite media are calling for right now as response to Haiti’s problems, versus what Haitians are calling for. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221104Johnston.mp3 Transcript: “‘Intervention Is Actively Destabilizing the Situation'” Time (10/27/22) Also on the show: Is racial discrimination over in the United States? Do universities and colleges already reflect the range of inclusion and diversity a democracy demands, such that they should stop even thinking about whether they’re admitting the sort of students they expressly excluded just decades ago? These questions are in consideration at the Supreme Court, though you might not know it from media coverage. Instead, you may have heard about a fair-minded white guy who just, in his heart, wants Asian Americans to get a fair shot at the Ivy League—against all those undeserving Black kids unfairly leveraged by affirmative action. We’ll talk about SFFA v. Harvard with Jeannie Park, founding president of the Asian American Journalists Association in New York and co-founder of the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221104Park.mp3 Transcript: “‘This Case Was Never About Defending Asian Americans'”

    This week on CounterSpin: A 1995 Washington Post story led with a macabre account from the widow of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, about how when her husband’s bloody shirt was held up in court, his accused killer Mumia Abu-Jamal turned in his chair and smiled at her. An evocatively sinister report, which the paper printed untroubled by the fact that the court record showed that Abu-Jamal wasn’t in court when the shirt was displayed. Mumia Abu-Jamal (BayView, 7/11/19) ABC‘s investigative news show 20/20 used all the techniques for their big 1998 piece on the conviction of Abu-Jamal for Faulkner’s killing—stating prosecution claims as fact, even when they were disputed by some of the prosecution’s own witnesses or the forensic record; stressing how a defense witness admitted being intoxicated, while omitting that prosecution witnesses said the same. At one point, actor and activist Ed Asner was quoted saying, “No ballistic tests were done, which is pretty stupid”—but then host ABC‘s Sam Donaldson’s voiceover cut him off, saying: “But ballistics test were done”—referring to tests that suggested that the bullet that killed Faulkner might have been the same caliber as Abu-Jamal’s gun, but refraining from noting that tests had not been done to determine whether that gun had fired the bullet, or whether it had been fired at all, or if there were gunpowder residues on Abu-Jamal’s hands. ABC used clips of Abu-Jamal from the independent People’s Video Network, without permission, and, as PVN told FAIR at the time, the network added layers of echo to the tape, making him sound “like a cave-dwelling animal.” No one paying attention was surprised when it was revealed that in a letter asking permission from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to interview Abu-Jamal (a request that was denied), ABC noted that “we are currently working in conjunction with Maureen Faulkner and the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police.” That kind of overt, proud-of-it bias has shaped coverage of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case from the outset; and current mentions suggest little has changed. Elite media will report without question a right-wing Senate candidate’s tossed-off reference to Mumia as the face of unrepentant criminality—while, out of the other side of their mouths, respectfully noting how Brown University is “acquiring the papers” of Mumia Abu-Jamal, as he’s an acknowledged representative of the very serious problem of mass incarceration, whose communications are “historically important.” Meanwhile, Abu-Jamal’s chances for a new trial, based on significant new evidence, were shot down summarily this week—but a glance at national media coverage, as we taped on October 27, would tell you, well, nothing about that. CounterSpin got an update, and a reminder of the real life vs. the media story of Mumia Abu-Jamal, from someone involved from early days: Noelle Hanrahan is legal director at Prison Radio. We spoke with her for this week’s show. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221028Hanrahan.mp3 Transcript: “‘This is America. That’s the Kind of Trial Mumia Abu-Jamal Had.'” Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Amazon‘s campaign contributions and FCC nominee Gigi Sohn. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221028Banter.mp3