CounterSpin

    Guardian (10/20/22) This week on CounterSpin: This midterm is a big-picture election. It’s not just about the laws and policies and priorities governing our lives, not merely about whether we can control our own bodies or the environment has a future, the possibility of racial justice, or whether you can make rent with a full-time job. It’s about all of that, plus how we’re positioned to fight for the system that’s supposed to give each of us a say in those decisions. OK, but here are the elite media headlines: “Did Democrats Peak Too Early Before the Midterm Elections? Signs Suggest They May Have” “Will Inflation Boost Republicans’ Chances in the Midterm Elections?” “With Midterms Looming, Biden Isn’t Attending Big Campaign Rallies” What’s happening here? What’s not happening here? FAIR always says that news media work in election season should be judged not by how reporters “treat” Democrats or Republicans, but about how they inform and engage the public—including vast numbers of people who don’t even vote, because they can’t, or because they don’t see the connection between pulling that lever and their day-to-day life. Is it too much to say it’s journalism’s job to make those connections, and to err on the side of reflecting public needs to politicians, rather than presenting politicians as celebrities for people to muse about from a distance? CounterSpin talks about midterm election coverage with FAIR editor Jim Naureckas and FAIR managing editor Julie Hollar. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221021HollarNaureckas.mp3 Transcript: “‘It’s Extra Problematic When the Implications Are the End of Democracy'” Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Haiti. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221021Banter.mp3  

  This week on CounterSpin: Media watchers may know that Katie Halper was fired from her job at Hill TV because she did a thing you can’t do in elite US news media, which is make a statement critical of the state of Israel. Halper described Israel as an apartheid state—a designation supported by the Israeli human rights group B’tselem, as well as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Classroom memorial for Rayyan Suleiman (Middle East Eye, 10/3/22; photo: Shatha Hammad). Her firing, along with others who’ve crossed the same policed line, is a loss for curious US viewers who want to hear a range of not just views on Israel and Palestine, but news: That would include stories like that of Rayyan Suleiman, a 7-year-old boy who died September 29 from a heart attack after Israeli occupation forces chased him home from school, because, they said, some of the group of kids he was with threw stones at them. Dialogue around Palestine and Israel is among the most formulaic that elite media maintain, but growing numbers of people have concerns, not just about uncritical US support for Israel, but also about the shutdown of critics and the conflation of debate with the real problem of antisemitism. CounterSpin talked about these questions in August with Ahmad Abuznaid,  executive director at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. We hear that conversation again this week. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221014Abuznaid.mp3 Transcript: “‘These Organizations Are Doing Critical Work to Advocate for Palestinian Rights'” Also on the show: Apparently cryptocurrency is going through a rough patch. Who would’ve guessed the thing that presented itself as a way for the little guy to go big in wheelin’ and dealin’ was not exactly as presented? CounterSpin spoke back in February with Chicago-based writer Sohale Mortazavi whose article, “Cryptocurrency Is a Giant Ponzi Scheme,” appeared at JacobinMag.com. We revisit that this week as well. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221014Mortazavi.mp3 Transcript: “‘The Entire Cryptocurrency Market is Basically a Ponzi Scheme'” Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of the Nord Stream sabotage. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221014Banter.mp3  

  This week on CounterSpin: Amazon, the seemingly insatiable megacorporation, still refuses to acknowledge the union at its Staten Island facility known as JFK8, even as the National Labor Relations Board has rebuffed its attempt to overturn that union victory. Now Amazon has suspended dozens of JFK8 workers who refused to go to work after a fire that left the air smelling of chemicals and many feeling unsafe; 10 of those suspended were union workers. Jacobin (9/28/22) The reality that workers around the country are, first of all, simply suffering too much to not feel a need to fight, however scary that is, and then many of them taking to hand the existing tool of worker organizing—through unions and outside of them—is something that corporate media can’t plausibly deny. They can, however, underplay this movement, or patronize it, or try and confuse it by presenting it as “emotional” and irrational. But with tens of thousands of nurses, teachers, timber workers and nursing home attendants walking out around the country, the notion that this is somehow not meaningful, not about fundamental questions of human rights, and not worthy of the most serious, sustained, thoughtful attention journalists can provide, should be hard to maintain. We’ll talk with John Logan; he’s been reporting on organizing in media-friendly corporate behemoths like Amazon and Starbucks for Jacobin. He’s professor and director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221007Logan.mp3 Transcript: “‘People Are Taking Inspiration From Union Victories at Amazon and Starbucks'” Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the Azov Battalion. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin221007Banter.mp3  

  (New York, 9/22/22) This week on CounterSpin: As Puerto Rico struggles under another “natural” disaster, we’re seeing some recognition of what’s unnatural about the conditions the island faces, that determine its ability to protect its people. We’re even getting some critical mumblings about “finance bros”—people from the States who go to the island to exploit tax laws designed to reward them wildly. New York magazine described “a wave of mostly white mainlanders” that “has moved to Puerto Rico, buying real estate and being accused of pushing out locals who pay their full tax burden.” Gotta get that passive voice in there. But of course, it isn’t just that these tax giveaways favoring non–Puerto Ricans are gross and unfair; you have to acknowledge in the same breath that money going to them is money not going to Puerto Rico’s energy systems, schools, hospitals, housing. We talk about the harms inflicted on Puerto Rico that have nothing to do with hurricanes, with Julio López Varona, co-chief of campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220930Varona.mp3 Transcript: “‘Puerto Rico Has Become a Microcosm for the Worst Kind of Capitalist Ideas'” (AP via PBS, 9/24/21) Also on the show: Customs and Border Protection released findings from an internal investigation a few months back, declaring that no horse-riding Border Patrol agents actually hit any Haitian asylum seekers with their reins, as they chased them down on the Southern border last fall. That finding is disputed, but consider the premise: that people would need to create tales of horror about the treatment of Haitians at Del Rio, where people were shackled, left in cold cells, denied medicine, and separated from children as young as a few days old. Media subtly underscore that skepticism: AP ran a piece at the time telling readers that the appalling images shocked everyone: But to many Haitians and Black Americans, they’re merely confirmation of a deeply held belief: US immigration policies, they say, are and have long been anti-Black. The Border Patrol’s treatment of Haitian migrants, they say, is just the latest in a long history of discriminatory US policies and of indignities faced by Black people, sparking new anger among Haitian Americans, Black immigrant advocates and civil rights leaders. Understand, then: The racism in US immigration policy is a mere “belief,” held by Black people, and only they are upset about it. And this dismissive, divisive view is “good,” sympathetic reporting! We get another, grounded perspective from Guerline Jozef, founder and executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220930Jozef.mp3 Transcript: “‘The Moment Black People Showed Up, We Responded With Violence'”

    Newspaper ad from the Freedom on the Move database. This week on CounterSpin: If US news media never used the terms “wake-up call” or “racial reckoning” again, with regard to the latest instance of institutional white supremacy brought to light, that would be fine. Far better would be for them to do the work of not just acknowledging that US news media have supported and inflicted racist harms throughout this country’s history, but shedding critical light on the hows and whys of those harms—and taking seriously the idea of repairing them and replacing them with a media ecosystem that better serves us all. The Media 2070: Media Reparations Project encourages conversation and action around that vision. We’ll hear about the work from Alicia Bell, a co-creator and founding director of Media 2070 and current director of the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund, housed within Borealis Philanthropy. And from Collette Watson, director of Media 2070 and vice president of cultural strategy at the group Free Press. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220923Bell_Watson.mp3 Transcript: “‘There’s a Lot of Jubilance and Healing in Reparations'” Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of student debt relief, China’s zero-Covid policy and Afghan sanctions. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220923Banter.mp3  

    CNN‘s John Miller This week on CounterSpin: Journalist-turned-cop-turned-journalist-turned-cop-turned-journalist John Miller makes a blur of the revolving door. For years, he’s been back and forth between the New York Police Department (and the FBI) and news media like ABC. And now he’s the new hire at CNN. Don’t miss the message: For corporate media, being a paid flack for the police in no way disqualifies you to offer what viewers will be assured is a dry-eyed analysis of law enforcement patterns and practices. The hire is part of CNN‘s rebranding under new leadership; the major stockholder cites Fox News as an exemplar. But while it’s tempting to say CNN is acting like the kid who imagines his bully will let up if he offers both his and his little brother’s lunch money, the harder truth is that CNN knows it won’t attract or appease Fox or Fox viewers. So we should focus less on how one network “counters” the other than on whom they’re both ready to throw under the bus—in this case, Muslims. We’ll talk about the Miller hire with Sumayyah Waheed, senior policy counsel at Muslim Advocates. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220916Waheed.mp3 Transcript: “John Miller ‘Chose to Lie About Something That’s Well Documented'” Atlantic (9/5/22) Also on the show: Listeners may have seen the “just asking questions, don’t get mad” Atlantic article about how it might make sense to keep pricing insulin out of the reach of diabetics because, wait, wait…hear me out. (The idea was that if insulin winds up cheaper than newer, better drugs, more people might die.)  Other outlets are musing about how higher unemployment might be the best response to higher prices. Why are we doing thought experiments about hurting people? Implied scarcity—”obviously we can’t do all the things a society needs, so let’s discuss what to jettison”—is a whole vibe that major media could upend, but instead enable. We’ll talk about how that’s playing out in coverage of inflation with Chris Becker, associate director of policy and research and senior economist at the Groundwork Collaborative. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220916Becker.mp3 Transcript: “‘We’ve Incentivized Corporations to Go After This Price-Gouging Strategy'”

    Fox News (7/19/22) This week on CounterSpin: In May of this year, a white supremacist killed ten people in Buffalo, New York. He made clear that he wanted to kill Black people, because he believes there is a plot, run by Jews, to “replace” white people with Black and brown people. News media had an opportunity then to deeply interrogate the obvious spurs for the horrific act, including of course the media outlets and pundits and politicians who repeatedly invoke this white replacement idea, but it didn’t really happen. The Washington Post offered an inane tweet about how Biden “ran for president pledging to ‘restore the soul of America.’ But a racist massacre raises questions about that promise.” CounterSpin spoke at the time about the issues we hoped more media would be exploring, with Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, who has been following Fox News and Tucker Carlson, and their impact on US politics, for years. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220909Gertz.mp3 Transcript: ‘The “Great Replacement” Builds on Those Long Hatreds’ And we spoke also with Eric K. Ward, senior fellow at Southern Poverty Law Center and executive director at Western States Center, about ways forward. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220909Ward.mp3 Transcript: ‘The “Great Replacement” Builds on Those Long Hatreds’ We hear these conversations again this week. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the assassination of Darya Durgina. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220909Banter.mp3

  From the film Powerlands. This week on CounterSpin: It is meaningful that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has formally apologized to Sacheen Littlefeather, the Apache and Yaqui actress and activist who in 1973 refused the best actor award on behalf of her friend Marlon Brando, because of Hollywood’s history of derogatory depiction of Native Americans. Some cheered, but a lot of the audience booed, some complete with “tomahawk chops,” and John Wayne evidently had to be physically restrained. Arriving at Brando’s house after the ceremony, Littlefeather was shot at. It’s good that the Academy is apologizing, but the proof of course is in the material acknowledgement of the message: that Native Americans have been treated poorly in US entertainment and, we could add, news media, and that that has impact. Things are changing, and we need to check what that change amounts to: not just visibility, but justice and redress and the improvement of lives. The film Powerlands explores the treatment of Indigenous people around the world—not in terms of media imagery, but in terms of the resource extraction that is stealing water, minerals and homelands. It talks not just about harm but about resistance, and so it also contributes to the seeing of Native communities in their full humanity. We’ll talk with Powerlands filmmaker Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220902ManybeadsTso.mp3 Transcript: ‘We Could Be Living in the Future We All Dream About’ Time (8/24/22) Also on the show: You might consider you’re making a misstep when even Time magazine calls you out. Hardly a progressive bastion, the outlet recently ran a piece critical of Joe Biden’s call for the hiring of 100,000 more police officers and some $13 billion to police budgets—calling it a part of a “manipulative message that if we feel unsafe, it is because we have not yet invested adequately in police, jails and prisons.” Contributor Eric Reinhart noted that using a more comprehensive understanding of safety including “factors like homelessness and eviction, overdose risk, financial insecurity, preventable disease, police violence and unsafe workplaces (which, statistically, present far greater preventable threats to everyday life than crime)—it is readily apparent America’s police-centric safety policies do not effectively promote shared safety.” This is not new knowledge, though it obviously needs resaying. We’ll revisit just a bit from CounterSpin‘s 2017 conversation with Alex Vitale, professor of sociology and coordinator of the Policing & Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, and author of the book The End of Policing. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220902Vitale.mp3 Transcript: ‘We’ve Got to Break This Mindset That Policing Is the Only Tool’

Israeli soldiers raiding the offices of Defense for Children International/Palestine. This week on CounterSpin:  Corporate news media have a particularly frozen narrative on Palestine and Israel. You could recite it: Palestinians act violently; Israel responds in self defense. There are “clashes” of implicitly equally empowered forces. Palestinians have squandered their opportunities for autonomy because they overreach. And, finally: if you have any problem with the actions of the state of Israel, you must hate Jewish people. That whole narrative not only summarily erases the millions of Jewish people who support the human rights of Palestinians, it also makes it hard for anyone to make sense of, for example, the recent assault by Israeli forces on the Gaza Strip, reported as by AP as a “flare up” that—passive voice—”left 49 Palestinians dead.” The account notes that “no one on the Israeli side was killed or seriously wounded,” but instructs us to see it as a “battle” between Israel and “militant” Palestinians, who remain “defiant.” Ahmad Abuznaid is executive director at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. He joins us to talk about the reality that formulaic rhetoric obscures. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220826Abuznaid.mp3 Transcript: ‘These Organizations Are Doing Critical Work to Advocate for Palestinian Rights’ Billionaire Barre Seid Also on the show:  Andrew Perez covers money and influence as senior editor and reporter at the Lever. He talks about what we should know about the unprecedentedly enormous donation—some $1.6 billion—that just went from a Chicago mogul to a deeply conservative group that is, among other things, reshaping the Supreme Court. It’s the sort of news that changes your life, whether you know it’s happening or not. Which, yeah, you would think would be where a free press would come in. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220826Perez.mp3 Transcript: ‘The Real Issue With Dark Money: We Don’t Know Who’s Influencing Policy’

  In These Times (8/2/22) This week on CounterSpin: The Biden administration says it’s making progress toward its goal to slow migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador by addressing the causes of that migration. The White House “Call to Action” foregrounds private sector “investments” as key to creating economic opportunity and to rooting out corruption in the region. And companies like Microsoft and PepsiCo have stepped up to do…well, what exactly? And how does this differ from the support for transnational corporations and their extractive, profit-driven policies that has misled US involvement for decades? Azadeh Shahshahani is legal and advocacy director at Project South. She joins us to raise some questions about the US government’s claim that this time, they’re really bringing stability and security to northern Central America. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220819Shashahani.mp3 Transcript: ‘The US Must Break Free of the Banana Republic Mentality’ Global Witness (8/15/22) Also on the show: Facebook would appear to be 0 for 4 in tests of its ability to detect and reject ads containing blatant election-related misinformation—in this case, ahead of important elections in Brazil. The group Global Witness found what they’re calling a “pattern” of the social media platform allowing ads on the site that violate the most basic of standards—including, for example, telling folks the wrong date to vote. At what point does “Oops! But please believe we take all of this very seriously!” stop being a plausible excuse? We talk with Jon Lloyd, senior advisor at Global Witness. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220819Lloyd.mp3 Transcript: ‘Bizarre Decisions From Facebook Call Into Question Moderation Systems’ Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at how NPR misremembers the Afghan invasion. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220819Banter.mp3