CounterSpin

  Washington Post (10/31/21) This week on CounterSpin, two archival interviews: As the year nears its end, it’s hard not to think back to how it started—with the violent assault on the Capitol by a crowd intent on preventing the declaration of Joe Biden as president. We spoke with organizer and strategist Dorothee Benz the next day about the import of the events of January 6. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211203Benz.mp3 Transcript: ‘This Violent Piece of Insurrection Was Planned Openly on Unencrypted Channels’ ABC News (8/13/17) Also on the show: While response to the insurrection came slowly, states have been cracking down on peaceful protests. We talked about that worrying trend with the ACLU’s Vera Eidelman around the Fourth of July. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211203Eidelman.mp3 Transcript: ‘They Are Taking Aim at Our Fundamental American Right to Protest’

Guardian (11/10/21) This week on CounterSpin: What do we want? Multiracial democracy. When do we want it? Now. What stands in the way? White supremacy that has disregarded, derailed and violently defied that democracy at multiple turns. Those anguished over the Rittenhouse acquittal, depressed by racist police brutality, unnerved by the failure to take seriously the January 6 insurrection, and worried about systemic predations on voting rights are sometimes led to say: “This isn’t America!” If you attend to actual US history (importantly different from what you might’ve read in your history textbook, or what you might someday be allowed to read in your history textbook), you will understand that this is America. But that still doesn’t mean it has to be. This can be a turning point, if more of us understand that history isn’t something that happens to us, but something we DO. Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler professor of African-American studies at Emory University, and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy. We talk with her about her recent Guardian column on the historical and ongoing struggle between white supremacy and this country’s hopes for democracy. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211126Anderson.mp3 Transcript: ‘White Supremacists Were Willing to Hold the United States Hostage’ Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at coverage of protest in India. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211126Banter.mp3

The Wall Street Journal (2/3/21) explains inflation. This week on CounterSpin: If you read a paper, you know that inflation is a dire, important thing right now, a problem for the Biden administration, for economic policymakers, and for…regular folks who want to buy milk? You don’t need to understand it, elite media seem to say, but you do need to be mad about it, and direct blame for it toward…yourself? Jon Schwarz writes about elite media’s confusing and conflicting instructions around inflation, among other things, at the Intercept; we’ll talk with him about the current economic reality—and storyline. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211119Schwarz.mp3 Transcript: ‘They Do Not Tell Both Sides of the Inflation Story’ Alex Jones Also on the show: Ethically deficient radio host Alex Jones‘ defamation case is a political story about the impact of energetic, intentional disinformation. It’s a media story about how the profitability of hateful BS seems to change the terms around whether things that call themselves news outlets should be held accountable for demonstrably harmful lies. And it’s a speech rights story about whether you can yell fire in a crowded theater and then say, Ha! any dummy would know I was just kidding (but I’m not kidding about these vitamin supplements, please buy them). We’ll ask, “How does the legal system solve a problem like Alex Jones?” with Enrique Armijo, professor of law at Elon University. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211119Armijo.mp3 Transcript: ‘Now I Can Say Anything About You and Not Be Sued for It’

  New York Times (11/9/21) This week on CounterSpin: We’ve talked on this show about how drugs and medicines are researched and developed by the government (on the public dime, if you will), and then pharmaceutical companies get patents on them and sell them back to the public at literally life-altering, or life-ending, prices. If you think, “But surely everything is different in a pandemic that’s killed 800,000 people in this country, one of every 400 people, and more than 5 million worldwide”—sadly, that means you don’t understand the nature of the game.  Willie Sutton reportedly robbed banks because “that’s where the money is.” Moderna is seeking a sole patent for the Covid-19 vaccine they created in partnership with the National Institutes of Health because, as a source told the New York Times, “that could help the company justify its prices and rebuff pressure to make its vaccine available to poorer countries.” We’ll hear about that, and better ways forward, from Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211112Maybarduk.mp3 Transcript: ‘Moderna Is Trying to Turn This People’s Vaccine Into a Rich People’s Vaccine’ Aaron Swartz (cc photo: Nick Gray) Also on the show: Aaron Swartz helped create the RSS protocol when he was 14; he was a founding figure behind SecureDrop, the Creative Commons licensing system, Open Library, Reddit and the civil liberties group Demand Progress, and he helped lead the fight against the censorious Stop Online Piracy Act. In the wake of his death in 2013, many groups vowed to push forward on his vision of citizens, regular people, unleashing data—with entailed access and communicability—in service of the public interest and the right to know. Tracy Rosenberg uses data to build bridges between those affected by policy and those that make it, particularly on questions of privacy, surveillance and private or state encroachment on civil liberties—in other words, things you might not even know you need to know about. She’s executive director at Media Alliance and co-coordinator at Oakland Privacy. We’ll catch up with her today on CounterSpin. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211112Rosenberg.mp3 Transcript: ‘It’s About Giving People Tools So We Can Reach Transparency Critical Mass’ Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent coverage of the latest elections. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211112Banter.mp3  

  (cc photo: Doug Peters/British government) This week on CounterSpin: The impacts of climate disruption are not theoretical; they are happening. Those already worst off are facing the worst of it, and those who profit from it continue to profit. There are finer points, but that’s reality. And it’s fair to measure journalism not by its cleverness, or by demonstrated balance between the voices of various power players—because when it comes to climate change, power players are the problem—but by the justice it does to that reality. As national leaders meet at COP26 in Glasgow to discuss ways to confront this already unfolding disaster, the Washington Post is suggesting US readers celebrate —what’s this?—the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s decision to finalize a “rule extending federal pipeline safety standards to more than 400,000 miles of currently unregulated onshore gathering lines.” You can acknowledge that certain steps are good, without thereby suggesting that they are within shouting distance of “enough” when it comes to climate change. We talk about comparing what’s happening to what needs to happen with environmental scientist and advocate, and longtime climate conference participant and observer, Michael K. Dorsey. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211105Dorsey.mp3 Transcript: ‘We’re Several Days Late and Many Dollars Short in Getting Ahead of Climate Catastrophe’ New York Times (9/21/21) Also on the show: In the wake of the horrifying front-page photos from September, the Biden administration says that the US Border Patrol will no longer use horses to round up Haitian asylum seekers they are flushing out of a makeshift shelters to send back over the border into Mexico, without the opportunity to present their case about the dangers they have spent, in many cases, years trying to escape. That may cut down on horrifying front-page photos, which is why it’s all the more important to ask what’s actually changing with regard to US policy toward Haitian refugees. We talk about that with Nekessa Opoti, communications director at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211105Opoti.mp3 Transcript: ‘The Anti-Blackness of the US Is Extending to Black Asylum Seekers’ Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at media coverage of the new climate denialism. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211105Banter.mp3  

  (cc photo: Adam Schultz / Biden for President) This week on CounterSpin: An early October survey showed that while 60% of those polled knew that the Build Back Better legislative package was “$3.5 trillion,” only 10% had any sense of what was in it. That is many things, but preeminently a failure of news media—the demonstrably harmful effect of months of reporting that never failed to note the presumed “costs” of a plan to address devastating national crises of healthcare, climate and infrastructure, but that only rarely troubled itself to explain in any detail what those plans would mean. Despite that, polls still show majorities of Americans supporting the plan. We talk about seeing and pushing through anti-democratic disinformation with Karen Dolan, director of the Criminalization of Race and Poverty project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Transcript: ‘There’s Still an Awful Lot of Good in This Package, but You Wouldn’t Know It From Headlines’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211029Dolan.mp3   New York Times (10/26/21) Also on the show: A New York Times column (by an editorial board member) begins: “Facebook has endured one of the most punishing stretches of corporate coverage in recent memory, exposing its immense power and blithe disregard for its deleterious impacts. But none of it really matters.” Headlined, “Face It, Facebook Won’t Change Unless Advertisers Demand It,” the piece is ostensibly meant as a sober assessment of the difficulty of exacting change from a company while it’s making money. But given the role of journalism in telling folks what is possible, the Times espousing the notion that Congress, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and the press are all “but bumps in the road” reads less as a dry-eyed evaluation than a call to throw up our hands in the face of an unwinnable contest. Our guest understands media structure, yet still advocates for policy change. We hear from Tim Karr, senior director of strategy and communications at the group Free Press. Transcript: Facebook ‘Puts Engagement and Growth Before the Health and Welfare of Democracy’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211029Karr.mp3  

    Steven Donziger (right) in Ecuador. This week on CounterSpin: When Steven Donziger and other attorneys sued Chevron for polluting the soil and water in Lago Agrio in Ecuador, Chevron moved to have the case held in Ecuador, where they don’t have jury trials. When that court ruled against them, they sued against the lawyers that won the verdict, and accused one, Steven Donziger, of corruption, including bribing the judge. When the judge later recanted his testimony, that was somehow not important, and Chevron moved the case back to the US, where they have not only managed to keep themselves from ever facing scrutiny for the original crime, which they don’t deny, but have ruined the personal and professional life of the lawyer who internal documents show they had an explicit plan to “demonize.” It sure sounds like a story reporters interested in David vs. Goliath or climate change or corporate power or the future of humanity would care about. But no, it looks more like a story of a case a major fossil fuel company wanted to see silenced that has in fact had that effect. We’ll talk about what media would really rather you not now about Steven Donziger and Chevron in Ecuador with Paul Paz y Miño, associate director of Amazon Watch. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211022PazyMino.mp3 Transcript: ‘Every Turn in This Case Has Been Another Brick Wall, and Behind It Is Chevron’

OAN logo This week on CounterSpin: “If you have 12 Americans being fed a diet of untruth, that’s 12 too many.” So says John Watson, an American University journalism professor specializing in ethics and media law. He’s talking about OAN, or One America News Network, and its audience, which has been told, among other things, that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election and that chemical cocktails are a better response to Covid-19 than government-authorized vaccines. We’ll talk about how we got here with Bobby Lewis, researcher and editorial writer from Media Matters. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211015Lewis.mp3 Transcript: ‘OAN Would Not and Could Not Exist Without AT&T’s Blessing’ (photo: Greenpeace USA) Also on the show: Thousands of people are out in the street this week, calling on lawmakers to not just acknowledge that climate change is happening, but to do something about it. Media have a role to play here. It has to go beyond noting that protesters spraypainted a statue of Andrew Jackson. What about the work of saving the planet, and facing up to the forces that call themselves harmed? We’ll talk about people vs. fossil fuels with Jean Su from the Center for Biological Diversity. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211015Su.mp3 Transcript: ‘People Right Now Are Absolutely Feeling the Climate Emergency’

    (image via BillMoyers.com) This week on CounterSpin: The thing about the US Postal Service: Low-income people get the same service as the rich; rural people get their prescriptions and paychecks and ballots in the same timeframe as those in big cities. The idea has always been that postal service is a public good, not to be mined for profit, and not tiered to give the wealthy yet another leg up. USPS is the second-largest employer in the country, traditionally offering opportunities for people of color—and unlike the number one employer, Walmart, it doesn’t subsidize itself by paying wages so low that employees have to also rely on public assistance. That’s why it’s so worrying that the current leaders of the Postal Service seem intent on driving it into the ground. We’ll talk about the fight for the post office with Lisa Graves, executive director and editor-in-chief at True North Research</a https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211008Graves.mp3 Transcript: ‘There’s a Lot the Postal Service Can Do to Be Present in the 21st Century’ (image: AAPF) Also on the show: Attorney General Merrick Garland has ordered the FBI to work with local leaders to help address the “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence” against educators and school board members over mask mandates, and also interpretations of critical race theory, which has been distorted by conservatives to mean any teaching about racism or systemic inequity in US society. If you didn’t know that K–12 teachers and college professors are under visceral attack simply for teaching the unvarnished truth of US history, it might be because somehow many free speech advocates, including in the press corps, haven’t taken on this disturbing encroachment on the rights of educators and students. Teachers, however, are fighting back, and a number of groups are planning a Day of Action on October 14 to shed light on that fight and what’s at stake. We’ll hear about that from Stevana Sims, public school counselor in Montclair, New Jersey, and a member of the steering committee of the group Black Lives Matter at School. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211008Sims.mp3 Transcript: ‘Threats Are Being Made Against Teachers Who Are Teaching the Truth’

    New York Times (9/22/21) This week on CounterSpin: “Crime wave” politics are a time-honored response to political movements that take on racist policing in this country, dating back at least to Barry Goldwater, as organizer Josmar Trujillo was reminding us back in 2015. But here we are again, as outlets like the New York Times announce a reported rise in the murder rate with coverage steeped in false presumptions about what that means and how to respond. Our guest says prepare to hear a lot about how cops need more resources because “crime is surging,” and offers antidote to that copaganda. We hear from Alec Karakatsanis, executive director of Civil Rights Corps, and author of the book Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211001Karakatsanis.mp3 Transcript: ‘Crime Is Defined and Constructed by Police and Other Elite Interests’   Larry Nassar Also on the show: While we’re to understand that police could prevent crime, if only they’re permitted, we’re also asked to accept that the most powerful law enforcement in the country just somehow couldn’t manage to prevent Olympic gymnast team doctor Larry Nassar from sexually assaulting dozens of young women, even after they’d been alerted. FBI actions around Nassar went well beyond mere negligence—falsifying testimony, pressuring witnesses—but to actually address that, we’ll need to acknowledge a systemic indifference to gender-based crime. Jane Manning, director of the Women’s Equal Justice Project, joins us to talk about that. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin211001Manning.mp3 Transcript: ‘It’s the Demeaning Treatment, but Also the Failure to Take Action’