The Kicker

At the start of the pandemic, the UK government’s suppression of data prompted Carole Cadwalladr and her colleagues at All the Citizens to found Independent SAGE, a group of scientists who shadow official government scientists. Now, as the UK hurtles towards a June 21 reopening that now looks unlikely to happen, the group’s findings are more concerning than ever. On this week’s Kicker, Cadwalladr, a feature writer for The Observer, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss what US journalists can learn from the UK’s Covid fight, and how misleading euphoric Covid-19 coverage in the US has become.

With over ten thousand athletes from more than two hundred countries, the Olympics are typically a sports writer’s dream. But with Covid protocols in Tokyo this summer, and heightened awareness that players no longer need the press to connect with their fans, is spontaneous sports access also obsolete?On this week’s Kicker, Andrew Keh, a sports reporter for the New York Times, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, the shift of power from press to athletes.

About half of daily local newspaper circulation in the US is now controlled by hedge funds. On this week’s Kicker, Rebecca Lurye, a reporter for the Hartford Courant and unit chair for the Hartford Courant Guild, and Danielle Ohl, a reporter for the Capital Gazette and chair of the Chesapeake News Guild, join Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR. They discuss what comes next after Alden Global Capital bought Tribune Publishing, and how reporters and their communities can advocate for journalism.

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a Mississippi case that outlaws abortion after 15 weeks gestation, the media’s coverage of abortion, and the language used to describe it, will be back in the spotlight.On this week’s Kicker, Maria Clark, a Louisiana-based healthcare reporter with USA Today’s American South team, and Jessica Mason Pieklo, senior vice president and executive editor at Rewire News Group, join Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR. They discuss how to cover legislation around abortion as a medical procedure rather than simply a political issue, and the importance of centering patients and providers in abortion reporting.

Ruth Margalit is an Israeli journalist living in Tel Aviv. By day, she covers the crisis there for the New Yorker. By night, her young family shelters in their building’s stairwell.On this week’s Kicker, how American framing of this week’s violence conflicts with the rest of the world’s; how Israeli military censors lost control of the narrative; and why Netanyahu’s downfall could be related to his obsession with the media. Margalit in conversation with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR.

Recently, Maria Bustillos had the opportunity to discuss “post truth,” press manipulation, and right-wing media lies with Joan Donovan, the research director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, and Claire Wardle, the cofounder and director of First Draft, a nonprofit focused on addressing mis- and disinformation. Both scholars spend a lot of time in the muck with Fox News and its feeder conspiracies. “There’s a lot to be angry about,” Wardle said. Donovan: “This job is hell.”

“Nomadland,” a film inspired by and featuring non-actor sources from journalist Jessica Bruder’s 2017 nonfiction book of the same name, just swept the Academy Awards. Both book and film explore the life of America’s “new nomads,” who live without traditional housing since losing their savings in the Great Recession. On this week’s Kicker, Bruder joins Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss the process of shepherding a story from magazine to book to film, and the future of American “houselessness” in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

A discussion on algorithmic design, data discrimination, social media manipulation, and how racism is baked in. The conversation is led by Nehal El-Hadi, a science and environmental journalist whose work explores the connections between body, place, and technology, with guests Chris Gilliard, a writer and professor whose scholarship centers on digital privacy, surveillance, and the nexus of race, class, and technology, and Marcus Gilroy-Ware, a writer and researcher at the intersection of media and politics.

Special Report: In 2018, David Goren, a radio producer and audio archivist, created the Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map to collect the sounds of dozens of pirated broadcasts from across the borough. Pirate stations earn their name by hitching a ride on already licensed radio frequencies that typically cost commercial stations millions of dollars to acquire and set up. Nowhere in the country are there more pirate radio stations than in New York, where they provide a vital service to immigrant populations. Goren estimates that New York has about a hundred pirate stations, transmitting from rooftops and attics to listeners seeking news from around the city and back home, as well as entertainment and religious programming. The broadcasts bypass socioeconomic barriers and provide a means to seize control of the flow of information. But they are now at risk of extinction: Before Donald Trump left the White House, he signed the Pirate Act, which increased the authority of the Federal Communications Commission to fight pirate operations through mandatory sweeps in cities with high concentrations of pirate radio use. Pirate stations today face fines of up to two million dollars. “The people running these stations, they don’t have two million dollars,” Goren said. Broadcasters that don’t make it onto his sound map could be lost forever.

In 2019, in an effort to combat climate silence, CJR and The Nation, in partnership with The Guardian, founded Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaborative aimed at strengthening coverage of the climate emergency. Two years later, Covering Climate Now partners publish coverage of the climate crisis to 2 billion readers. On this week’s Kicker, Mark Hertsgaard, the executive director of Covering Climate Now and the environment correspondent for The Nation, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher of The Nation, join Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR. They discuss what they’ve learned about how to tell climate crisis stories that land with impact, how the scientific weight of COVID-19 coverage can further climate coverage, and why covering the climate crisis is journalism, not advocacy.