CounterSpin

  American Prospect (1/31/22) This week on CounterSpin: You will have heard many things recently about the supply chain—as the reason you can’t find what you’re looking for on store shelves, or the reason it costs so much. But what’s behind it all? Why has the system broken down in this way? Here’s where thoughtful journalism could fill us in, could educate on a set of issues that affects us all, including discussing alternatives. But corporate news media aren’t good at covering economic issues from the ground up, or asking big questions about who is served by current structures. You could say media’s reluctance to critically break down systems is itself a system problem. Rakeen Mabud is chief economist and managing director of policy and research at Groundwork Collaborative. She’ll join us to talk about the ideas in the article she recently co-authored for American Prospect, “How We Broke the Supply Chain.” Transcript: ‘Mega-Retailers Are Using Inflation as a Cover to Raise Prices and Turn Record Profits’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220211Mabud.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent coverage of polling and Israeli apartheid. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220211Banter.mp3

    CNN (1/28/22) This week on CounterSpin: A New York Times opinion piece by editorial board member Jesse Wegman says that debunking Republicans’ baseless, self-serving claims of voter fraud “was always a fool’s game,” because “the professional vote-fraud crusaders are not in the fact business.” The suggestion seems to be that even addressing such claims is “giving them oxygen.” But there’s a difference between airing such claims and training a scrutinizing, disinfectant light on them—and it’s really journalists’ choice which of those they do. The  spate of new election-meddling laws proposed in Arizona suggests that looking away is not the answer. But Trumpers’ loss in Arizona could also map a way forward, if you’re interested. Our guest is interested. Steven Rosenfeld is editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Transcript: ‘Big Lies Are Built From Lots of Little Lies’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220204Rosenfeld.mp3   (image: Jacobin, 1/21/22) Also on the show: If you think the “little guy” is left out of Wall Street deals, you’re not wrong. But is Bitcoin the answer? Is “cryptocurrency” a leveling force—or just a different flavor of grift that plays on that not-unfounded little guy frustration? Our guest gets at what’s new and what’s old in his description of cryptocurrency as “the people’s Ponzi.” Sohale Mortazavi is a writer based in Chicago; his recent piece on cryptocurrency appears in Jacobin. Transcript: ‘The Entire Cryptocurrency Market Is Basically a Ponzi Scheme’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220204Mortazavi.mp3

    New York Times depiction (1/18/22) of a Puerto Rican debt protest. This week on CounterSpin: A judge has approved a debt restructuring deal for Puerto Rico, and the deal’s architects are saying it means a “new day” for the territory. Natalia Renta is senior policy strategist at the Center for Popular Democracy. We’ll hear from her about what those outside of the deal-making, but nevertheless impacted by it, have to say. Transcript: ‘Puerto Rico Hasn’t Had the Opportunity to Develop Its Own Economic Future’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220128Renta.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent coverage of Ukraine. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220128Banter.mp3

  Flint, Michigan This week on CounterSpin: Search corporate news media for recent stories on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan—in which some of the city’s overwhelmingly Black residents were paying upwards of $300 a month for water they couldn’t drink, based on an infrastructure decision on the water’s source that their elected officials had no say in—and you’ll find a few stories on how yes, lead-leaching pipes endangered people’s health…but there’s been a multi-million dollar settlement, and a presidential commitment to address lead in water, so maybe it’s all over but the shouting. CNN hosted a Republican Michigan congressmember who explained that Flint was under an unelected austerity-minded emergency manager because their “city had essentially collapsed. They had no strong functioning government and the state had to step in and there was an error in shifting water sources.” That sounds lamentable, but not really blameworthy. So how do you square that “sorry but let’s move forward” line with the information that investigators looking into the crisis found that the cell phones of key health officials and other players, like then-Gov. Rick Snyder’s press secretary, had been wiped of messages for the key period? While corporate media have largely let Flint go, the story isn’t over, nor has justice been served. We’ll hear from a reporter still on the case: Jordan Chariton, from independent news network Status Coup News. Transcript: ‘The People of Flint Are Still Suffering’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220121Chariton.mp3   Patrice Lumumba Also on the show: You don’t need to put your ear to the ground to hear US news media drumbeats for war of some sort with official enemies China and/or Russia. With China, part of what we’re being told to two-minute hate is their involvement on the African continent, where we’re to understand they are nefariously trapping countries in debt—unlike the US involvement in the region, which has been about bringing joy and love and hope. Just because a playbook is old doesn’t mean it won’t be used again and again. The vision relies on amnesia and ignorance of what the US has done and is doing in Sub-Saharan Africa—a topic that, if news media wanted to explore it, they had a great chance this past week, with the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Why was Lumumba killed? And what’s the living legacy of that undercovered murder? We’ll hear from Maurice Carney,  co-founder and executive director of the group Friends of the Congo. Transcript: ‘The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba Is One of the Most Important Assassinations of the 20th Century’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220121Carney.mp3

  Prisoners of Guantánamo (photo: Shane T. McCoy/US Navy) This week on CounterSpin: As we pass the grim milestone of 20 years of the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, even Michael Lehnert, the Marine general who set the camp up, calls for it to close, says it shouldn’t have opened, that it’s an affront to US values. And yet here we are. The number of Muslim men and boys in Guantánamo has shrunk from some 800 to 39—that’s meaningful. But when you read an offhand reference to those men as “awaiting justice,” one wonders: What do reporters imagine “justice” might mean to people charged with no crime, deprived of liberty unlawfully for decades, in a place designed to keep them from accessing justice, and to keep anyone else from hearing about them, much less questioning the processes that put them there? We are a long way from understanding the full meaning of Guantánamo. But we can get the remaining detainees out. Our guest says that’s something that can happen and should happen, now. Pardiss Kebriaei is senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She’ll join us to talk abut how closing Guantánamo is not everything we can do, but it is something we can do, and should. Transcript: ‘It’s 20 Years of Detention and It Needs to End’   https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220114Kebriaei.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Lani Guinier, Desmond Tutu, and Covid and disability.   https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220114Banter.mp3  

(Image: Free Press) This week on CounterSpin: At FAIR, we say you can change the channel all you want, but you can’t turn on what isn’t there. The loss of an information source—a particular place for debate, for conversation, on issues relevant to you—is incalculable, but very real. We talked about the loss of local journalism, and why we can still be hopeful, with Craig Aaron of the group Free Press. Transcript: ‘The Commercial System Isn’t Providing the Local News We Need’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220107Aaron.mp3   Rana Plaza collapse Also on the show: Fashion is always a huge media story, but what goes into it is not. The “fashion” industry is a prime driver of structured exploitation, whether we’re talking about blocked fire exits or a piece-rate system that steals workers’ wages systematically. The Garment Worker Protection Act, passed in California late last year, aims to address some of those harms. In light of that undercovered victory, we’re going to remind ourselves of one of the spurs for it. Barbara Briggs, then associate director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, spoke with CounterSpin in 2015 about the 2013 collapse at Rana Plaza, which brought murder charges against Bangladeshi factory owners and government officials—but, we can say now, somehow didn’t convince corporate media to keep a critical eye trained on the human costs of “fast fashion.” Transcript: ‘Workers Are the Best Guarantors of Their Own Safety When They’re Organized’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220107Briggs.mp3

  This week on CounterSpin: the best of CounterSpin for 2021. We call it the “best of,” but this annual round-up is just a reflection of the kinds of conversations we hope have offered a voice or context or information that might help you interpret the news you read. We’re thankful to all of the activists, researchers, reporters and advocates who appear on the show. They help us see the world more clearly and see the role we can play in changing it.   Mara Verheyden-Hilliard  While it came in the midst of a calamitous time, the year’s beginning was still historically marked by an event we’re still accounting for. There are more than 700 arrests now, for crimes from misdemeanor trespassing to felony assault, connected to the January 6 Capitol insurrection, but that doesn’t mean we’ve reckoned with what went down. We talked with Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, activist, attorney and executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, on January 7.   Kimberly Inez McGuire There is rightful concern about whether the Supreme Court will overturn 1973’s Roe v. Wade, affirming abortion rights. But reproductive justice has always been about much more than Roe or abortion; that’s a “floor, not a ceiling,” as Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of the group URGE: Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity, explained.   Igor Volsky Igor Volsky, executive director of Guns Down America, and author of the book Guns Down: How to Defeat the NRA and Build a Safer Future With Fewer Guns, talked about how, when it comes to gun violence, the US has tried nothing, and is all out of ideas. Dorothy A. Brown Oftentimes people think corporate media are liberal, or even left, because they acknowledge discrimination. The thing is, that blanket acknowledgment is meaningless if you don’t break it down—explain how, for instance, racial bias plays out. That’s just what Dorothy A. Brown, professor at Emory University School of Law, and author of the new book The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans—and How We Can Fix It, did for CounterSpin. Bianca Nozaki-Nasser The Covid pandemic highlighted many, many fault lines in US society, many aided and abetted by deficient media coverage. Anti-Asian reporting had predictable results, but as Bianca Nozaki-Nasser, media-maker and educator with the group 18 Million Rising, told CounterSpin, the actions and the response fed into existing, noxious narratives. Luke Harris It might seem like 2021 was a head-spinner, but don’t get distracted. You don’t have to have heard of, for example, critical race theory to see that the panic around it is brought to you by the same folks who want to keep people from voting, or deciding whether to give birth, or loving who they love. We asked for some context from Luke Harris, deputy director at the African American Policy Forum.   David Cooper “No one wants to work!” Are we over that yet? Things are shifting, but there’s still a media mountain to move about the very idea that workers choosing their conditions is something more than a “month” or a “moment”—and might just be a fundamental question of human rights. We spoke with David Cooper, senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, and deputy director of EARN, the Economic Analysis and Research Network.   Alec Karakatsanis Fear-mongering crime coverage is a hardy perennial for for-profit media. But they don’t just scare you, they offer a response to that fear: police. The New York Times covered a murder spike with reporting from Jeff Asher, without tipping readers to his work with the CIA and Palantir, and a consulting business with the New Orleans police department. If only that were the only problem, as Alec Karakatsanis is founder and executive director of Civil Rights Corps, and author of the book Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System explained.   Paul Paz y Mino Climate change was clearly a top story for 2021. But we’re past the point where reporters should be detailing what’s going wrong. We need to know who is standing in the way of response. And that’s where the “corporate” in corporate media kicks in. Look no further than coverage, or lack thereof, of Steven Donziger, the attorney who made the mistake of trying to Chevron responsible for its anti-human, anti-climate crimes. Paul Paz y Miño, associate director at Amazon Watch, discussed.   Michael K. Dorsey: Yes, but isn’t the US a world leader on climate? No. Michael K. Dorsey works on issues of global energy, environment, finance and sustainability. While calling for continued people power, which he named as the thing that’s going to carry the day, he suggested much, much, much more needs to be demanded of political leadership.   Transcript: ‘Part of the Road to a Solution Is Really Understanding the Problem’

  AP (11/30/21) This week on CounterSpin: When Xiomara Castro won a historic victory in Honduras last month—the country’s first woman president, winning with the most votes in history, in a decisive rebuke to the many-years dominant National Party—Associated Press suggested that while that might “present opportunities” for the US, “there will be some painful history to overcome, primarily the US government’s initial sluggishness in calling the ouster of Castro’s husband Manuel Zelaya in 2009 what it was”—a coup. Well, huh. In September 2009, AP told its readers that Honduras’ legislature ousted Zelaya after he formed an alliance with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and tried to alter the nation’s constitution. Zelaya was arrested on orders of the Supreme Court on charges of treason for ignoring court orders against holding a referendum to extend his term. The Honduran constitution forbids a president from trying to obtain another term in office. Beyond the implication that “forming an alliance” with a leftist leader is somehow illegal, a later AP report underscored that “Zelaya was put on a plane by the military”—so OK, not the “legislature” anymore—”in June for trying to force a referendum to change the constitution’s limit of one term for presidents.” What’s not funny ha ha but funny peculiar is that before the coup, AP had told readers, accurately, that the referendum in question “has no legal effect: It merely asks people if they want to have a later vote on whether to convoke an assembly to rewrite the constitution.” A dry-eyed observer would see AP‘s “editorial” position shifting along with, not facts on the ground, but US state rhetoric. Which brings us back to the present, and the idea that the US government, and their media megaphones, earnestly welcome a new leftist government in Honduras, and share their interest in lifting up the country’s people. Let’s just say: We’ll see. Suyapa Portillo Villeda is an advocate, organizer and associate professor of Chicana/o–Latina/o transnational studies at Pitzer College, and author of Roots of Resistance: A Story of Gender, Race and Labor on the North Coast of Honduras.  She joins us this week to talk about the election, and signs of hard-won hope in Honduras. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211224Portillo.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of famine in Afghanistan. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211224Banter.mp3

    Truthout (11/10/21) This week on CounterSpin: Even if we don’t see a written-out master plan, the banning of books, the attacks on teaching real US history, the efforts to push out professors with views that transgress official US policy…. In their myriad forms, these tell us that it’s important to powerful people to restrict what ideas people can access. It’s the land of the free and home of the brave, except if you want to know what’s happened and happens here, or to tell people about it. It all shows us the power of ideas. As infuriating and sad and enervating as it all is, it also reminds us that knowledge is power. So if you are someone who wants to know about the world—and if you aren’t in a position to buy books online to read—you might, as many of us did and do, go to the library. That’s the place where you don’t have to pay to sit down, you don’t have to buy a book or a coffee in order to read…. Libraries aren’t just a meaningful reality, but a meaningful symbol of the fact that there is a thing called the public interest, and it is a thing that the state, the thing we all are part of, that we support with taxes (yes, even those of us who aren’t documented citizens, but human beings who work and contribute to others and pay taxes) have a say in. So it matters a lot that this critical, loved public institution is under threat of usurpation by the same folks who think that there should be nothing, nothing, that private-sector, profit-oriented rich people don’t own and control. Do you care about libraries, that let anyone in and support anyone’s interest in learning? Well, then get ready to fight, because that space, that idea, is on the ropes. Caleb Nichols is a librarian, writer, poet and musician, currently course reserves coordinator at Cal Poly/San Luis Obispo. His article, “Public/Private Partnerships Are Quietly Hollowing Out Our Public Libraries,” was published recently on Truthout.org. Transcript: ‘A For-Profit Company Is Trying to Privatize as Many Public Libraries as They Can’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211217Nichols.mp3    

    Harvard Institute of Politics (12/1/21) This week on CounterSpin: Research from Harvard’s Institute of Politics finds young people worried about the state of US democracy and even the possibility of civil war. Yet US corporate journalists seem to feel nothing truly new is needed beyond the same old counsel: The “system” basically works, the US leads the world in rights and liberties, and “centrism” between the two dominant political parties is the wisest course, regardless of the content of their policies. The Harvard project leader says young people still “seem as determined as ever to fight for the change they seek.” And in that, they have examples of folks who didn’t necessarily have odds in their favor, but who showed that even a small group of people, willing to confront entrenched ideas and power, really can make change in the public interest. One example is today’s guest: Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, author and radio host. We catch up with him this week on CounterSpin. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211210Nader.mp3 Transcript: ‘Our Democracy Is in Perilous Decay, and We Can Turn It Around’ Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at media coverage of Kyrsten Sinema and pharmacies’ opioid guilt. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211210Banter.mp3