CounterSpin

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240531.mp3   The Lever (5/23/24) This week on CounterSpin: In 2023, the California legislature passed legislation that said that big corporations doing business in the state have to tell the public, investors, how much pollution they’re emitting throughout their supply chain. It’s knowable information, and people have a right to know it, right? The same way restaurants here in New York City have to tell potential customers how they did on their last health inspection; you can eat there or not, but at least you’re making an informed decision. But no! This past January, the US Chamber of Commerce and a bunch of other industry groups challenged those laws, because, they said, making companies disclose the impact of their actions—in this case, their emissions—would force them to publicly express a “speculative, noncommercial, controversial and politically charged message.” That, they said, makes the laws a “pressure campaign” aimed at shaping company behavior. Unfortunately, some courts are indulging this bizarre notion that regulation should be illegal, essentially, because it forces companies to say stuff they’d rather not say. Fortunately, other courts are calling this self-serving nonsense self-serving nonsense. But it’s not just a legal matter; public information, our right to know, is also on the line here, so we should know what’s going on. Katherine Li addresses this issue in a recent piece for the Lever, where she is an editorial fellow. We hear from her this week on CounterSpin. Transcript: ‘Their Effort to Avoid Accountability Is Very Thinly Veiled’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240531Li.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240524.mp3   Law enforcement at UCLA looks on as student peace protesters are attacked by a right-wing mob (CNN, 5/16/24). This week on CounterSpin: As an historic catastrophe, the deep and myriad impacts of Israel’s assault on Palestinians will not be fully understood until years from now, if then. That only adds urgency to present-day resistance to the collateral assault—on the ability to witness, to record and to remember. And of course to protest. The violent, state-sponsored attacks on college students and faculty across the country, who are standing in solidarity with Palestinians and opposed to colleges’ investment in the war and occupation, are showcasing many things—among them the abandonment by many educational institutions of their responsibility to protect not only students, but the space in which they can speak and learn freely. When we spoke with historian Ellen Schrecker in 2017, she noted that the power of the movement associated with Joseph McCarthy was not the man himself, but the “collaboration of the employers, of the mainstream media, of the legal system, you name it, to go along with this anti-Communist purge.” And while many people feel comforted that McCarthy the man was eventually censured by the Senate, the truth is “the American political spectrum narrowed [and] a whole bunch of ideas and causes kind of disappeared from American political discourse and American political life.” We hear again today from historian and author Ellen Schrecker, co-editor of the new book The Right to Learn: Resisting the Ring-Wing Attack on Academic Freedom, from Beacon Press. Transcript: ‘We’re Seeing Universities Following a Corporate Agenda to Get Favor With Donors’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240524Schrecker_.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Amazon. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240524Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240517.mp3   (image: Voting Booth) This week on CounterSpin: You and I may know that the 2020 election was not stolen from Donald Trump through various mysterious sorts of skullduggery. That does not mean that we can whistle past the fact that many people who vote do believe that. Many of those people are activated in a way that goes beyond easily ignorable segments on OAN, and has meaning for November. Steven Rosenfeld reports on transparency, among other electoral issues, for Voting Booth.  We’ll hear from him about kinds of election interference we ignore at our peril. Transcript: ‘The Best We Can Hope for Is To Nip Disinformation Rumors in the Bud’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240517Rosenfeld.mp3   (image: Brennan Center) Also on the show: You and I may believe that democracy means, at its core, something like “one person, one vote.” That doesn’t mean we can whistle past the fact that many voting people do not believe that. Indeed, some elite media–designated smart people have determined: “Citizens United, what? It’s folks who give ten bucks to a candidate that are really messing up the system.” We’ll explore that notion with Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel for the Elections & Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Transcript: ‘There’s a Uniquely American Way of Running Politics With Private Donors’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240517Vandewalker.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240510.mp3   This week on CounterSpin: CNN’s Jake Tapper is mad about college students protesting their institutions’ and their government’s support for Israel’s horrific attacks on Palestinians in Gaza—because they’re preventing him, by his account, from covering Israel’s horrific attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. Tapper whined recently: “We’re covering these protests and covering free speech versus security on campus. This is taking room from my show that I would normally be spending covering what is going on in Gaza, or what is going on with the International Criminal Court.” Tapper and CNN, we’re to understand, are powerless to decide what they cover, and incapable of understanding that the clear, core demand of students protesting is that government (and media) not just chat about, but act to change, US enabling of Israel’s genocidal assault. (photo: Jim Naureckas) “I don’t know that the protesters are, from a media perspective, accomplishing what they want to accomplish,” Tapper said. If you listen closely, you can hear him say, “We, as media, don’t want them to accomplish anything, except to be presented, as protestors have throughout US history, as a nuisance and an interference with grownup conversation. And we, as media, will use our actual power to sell that idea.” People, in media and elsewhere, who are used to unequivocal US support for Israel’s actions, used to summarily reducing any criticism of Israel to antisemitism, even when it comes from Jewish people, are seeing the ground shift, and they’re shook. What happens now is critical—first for Palestinians and Israelis, of course, but also for the US press and their handlers, who are so used to driving the narrative they don’t know what to do except yell “shut up shut up shut up” and send in the cops. In the name of, you know, principled debate. We talk about latest developments in Gaza with Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Transcript: ‘Are You Going to End the Genocide, President Biden? That’s the Central Question’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240510Abuznaid.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at protester/press relations, “outside agitators” and TikTok censorship. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240510Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240503.mp3   Media 2070 We’re now seeing the impacts of the reality that corporate media, as well as corporate-funded universities, will always side with official power—as they present students sitting quietly in tents in protest of genocide as violent terrorists. But the fact is, we’ve been seeing it for decades, as corporate media spin narratives about people of color as both violent and lazy, and the socio-economic status quo as the best possible option, even as millions of people increasingly recognize that it means a terrible life for them. Many people, at the same time, are deeply interested in how different media, telling different stories, can change our understanding of our past, our present and our future. Joseph Torres is currently senior advisor for reparative policy and programs at the group Free Press, and co-author with Juan Gonzalez of News for All the People. Writer, musician and communications strategist Collette Watson is with Black River Life. They both are part of the project Media 2070, which aims to highlight how media can serve as a lever for racial justice, and how that includes changing entrenched media narratives about Black people. Their co-authored article, “Repairing Journalism’s History of Anti-Black Harm,” appears in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (5/23). Transcript: ‘When Hasn’t Journalism Been in Crisis for Black People?’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240503TorresWatson.mp3  

https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240426.mp3   Columbia encampment (CC photo: Pamela Drew) This week on CounterSpin: Lots of college students, it would appear, think that learning about the world means not just gaining knowledge, but acting on it. Yale students went on a hunger strike, students at Washington University in St. Louis disrupted admitted students day, students and faculty are expressing outrage at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism (emphasis added) canceling their valedictorian’s commencement speech out of professed concerns for “safety.” A Vanderbilt student is on TikTok noting that their chancellor has run away from offers to engage them, despite his claim to the New York Times that it’s protestors who are “not interested in dialogue”—and Columbia University students have set up an encampment seen around the world, holding steady as we record April 25, despite the college siccing the NYPD on them. Campuses across the country—Rutgers, MIT, Ohio State, Boston University, Emerson, Tufts, and on and on—are erupting in protest over their institutions’ material support for Israel’s war on Palestinians, and for the companies making the weapons. And the colleges’ official responses are gutting the notion that elite higher education entails respect for the free expression of ideas. Students for Justice in Palestine is working with many of these students. We’ll hear from Sam from National SJP about unfolding events. Transcript: ‘This Weaponization Is Meant to Shift Focus Away From Gaza’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240426Sam.mp3   (CC photo: Edenpictures) Also on the show: App-based companies, including Uber and DoorDash, are adding new service fees, and telling customers they have to, because of new rules calling on them to improve wages and conditions for workers. The rather transparent hope is that, with a lift from lazy media, happy to typey-type about the worry of more expensive coffee, folks will get mad and blame those greedy…bicycle deliverers. We asked Sally Dworak-Fisher, senior staff attorney at National Employment Law Project, to break that story down. Transcript: ‘This Is a Choice Companies Are Making to Raise Fees’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240426Dworak-Fisher.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at the TikTok ban. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240426Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240419.mp3   Time (4/14/24) This week on CounterSpin: The long-fought effort to get legal acknowledgement of the abuse of Iraqi detainees during the Iraq War is coming to a federal court in Virginia, with Al-Shimari v. CACI. Since the case was first filed in 2008, military contractor CACI has pushed some 20 times to have it dismissed. Time magazine unwittingly told the tale with the recent headline: “Abu Ghraib Military Contractor Trial Set to Start 20 Years after Shocking Images of Abuse.” That’s the thing, people had been reporting the horrific treatment of Iraqi detainees at the Baghdad-area prison and elsewhere, but it was only when those photos were released—photos the Defense Department tried hard to suppress—that it was so undeniable it had to be acknowledged. But still: When Australian TV later broadcast new unseen images, the Washington Post officially sighed that they weren’t worth running because they did not depict “previously unknown” abuse. Post executive editor Len Downie had a different answer, saying in an online chat that the images were “so shocking and in such bad taste, especially the extensive nudity, that they are not publishable in our newspaper.” Because that what officially sanctioned torture is, above all, right? Distasteful. We got a reading on the case last year from Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Transcript: ‘CACI Aided and Abetted the Torture of Our Clients’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240419Azmy.mp3   Prometheus Books (2024) Also on the show: Historians tell us that the Cold War is over, but the framing persists in news media that love a simple good guy vs. bad guy story, even as who the good and the bad guys are shifts over time. Telling history through actual human beings makes it harder to come up with slam-dunk answers, but can raise questions that are ultimately more useful for those seeking a peaceful planet. A new book provides a sort of case study; it’s about Ted Hall, who, as a young man, shared nuclear secrets from Los Alamos with the then–Soviet Union. Veteran investigative journalist Dave Lindorff has reported for numerous outlets and is author of Marketplace Medicine and This Can’t Be Happening, among other titles. We talked with him about his latest, Spy for No Country: The Story of Ted Hall, the Teenage Atomic Spy Who May Have Saved the World, which is out now from Prometheus Books. Transcript: ‘A Monopoly on the Bomb Would Be a Catastrophe for the World’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240419Lindorff.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240412.mp3   Washington Post (3/25/24) This week on CounterSpin: US corporate media’s story about Haiti is familiar. Haiti, according to various recent reports, has “whipped from one calamity to another.” The country is a “cataclysm of hunger and terror,” “teetering on the brink of collapse,” “spiraling deeper into chaos” or else “descending into gang-fueled anarchistic chaos.” It’s “become a dangerously rudderless country.” According to one Florida paper’s editorial: “Haiti’s unrest” is now “becoming our problem,” as Floridians and the US “struggle to help people in Haiti, although history suggests there are no answers.” Or, well, there is one answer: The Washington Post made space for a former ambassador to explain that 20 years ago in Haiti, “the worst outcomes were avoided through decisive American intervention. Today’s crisis might require it as well.” At this point, the Austin American-Statesman’s “Haiti Cannibalism Claims Unfounded” might pass for refreshing. AP had a piece that actually talked to Haitians amid what is indeed a deep and deepening crisis. A grandmother told the wire service, “We’re living day-by-day and hoping that something will change.” We talk about what has to change—including, importantly, Western media presentations that ignore or erase even recent history—with Chris Bernadel, from the Black Alliance for Peace‘s Haiti/Americas Team and Haitian grassroots group Moleghaf. Transcript: ‘Interventions Laid the Groundwork for the Crisis in Haiti Today’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240412Bernadel.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Elon Musk vs. Brazil. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240412Banter.mp3

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240405.mp3   Popular Information (4/4/24) This week on CounterSpin:  In the final quarter of 2023, after-tax corporate profits reached an all-time high of $2.8 trillion. As reported by Popular Information, corporate profit margins were at a level not seen since the 1950s, as increases in prices have outpaced increases in costs—which Capitalism 101 says shouldn’t happen, because competing companies are supposed to step in with lower prices and grab some market share, right? What’s different now? Well, abject greed, abetted by policy and whistled past by the press corps. As one economist put it, “If people are paying $3 for a dozen eggs last week, they’ll pay $3 this week. And firms take advantage of that.” One reason we have details on “greedflation” is the work of the Groundwork Collaborative. We spoke with their economist and managing director of policy and research, Rakeen Mabud, a few months back. We hear some of that conversation again this week. Transcript: ‘It’s Important to Focus on Big Companies Using the Cover of Inflation to Jack Up Prices’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240405Mabud.mp3   Photo: Elvert Barnes Also on the show: While much else is happening, we can’t lose sight of the ongoing assault on reproductive freedom, in other words basic human rights, being given tailwind by the Supreme Court. Advocates warned that overturning Roe v. Wade would not be the end, and it wasn’t. The court is now entertaining challenge to the legality of the abortion medication mifepristone, used safely and effectively for decades, including invoking the 1873 Comstock Act, about sending “obscene materials” through the mail. The Washington Post has described it as a “confusing legal battle,” but CounterSpin got clarity from the Guttmacher Institute’s Rachel K. Jones last year. We hear that this week as well. Transcript: ‘People Who Don’t Support Abortion Ignore the Science and the Safety’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240405Jones.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at NBC’s unhiring of Ronna McDaniel. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240405Banter.mp3  

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240329.mp3   BBC (3/28/24) This week on CounterSpin: A senior UN human rights official told the BBC that there is a “plausible” case that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, a war crime. Meanwhile, US citizens struggle to make sense of White House policy that seems to call for getting aid to Palestinians while pursuing a course of action that makes that aid necessary, if insufficient. Phyllis Bennis is senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, an international advisor with Jewish Voice for Peace and a longtime UN-watcher. She joins us with thoughts on the evolving situation. Transcript: ‘This Is About What Has to Happen to Stop This Genocide’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240329Bennis.mp3   American Prospect (10/31/19) Also on the show: As reporter Alex Sammon outlined five years ago in the American Prospect, the Boeing scandal is an exemplar of the corporate crisis of our age. Putting resources that should’ve been put into safety into shareholder dividends and stock buybacks, selling warning indicators that alert pilots to problems with flight-control software as optional extras, and outsourcing engineering to coders in India making $9 an hour—these weren’t accidents; they were choices, made consciously, over time. So why are media so excited about Boeing’s CEO stepping down, as though his “taking one for the team” means changing the playbook? We hear from Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. Transcript: ‘Punishments for Corporations and CEOs Are Just Paltry’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin240329Weissman.mp3