USA Today (3/9/21)

This week on CounterSpin: A March 3 New York Times story, while informative, suggests a problem: “How Georgia’s GOP Voting Laws Could Impact Black Voters” carried a subheadline that explained, “Two bills moving through the Republican-controlled Legislature would place new restrictions on voting access, in ways Democrats say would have an outsize impact on Black voters.” Except that that impact is not a partisan claim, but a demonstrable fact.

The Washington Post had a piece by Greg Sargent using the word “alarming” to describe the GOP’s voter suppression campaign, and USA Today had one saying the country risks regression to the Jim Crow era—both were labeled “opinion.”

Do elite media think that whether or not the US, in 2021, under pressure from racists, goes back on the whole “one person one vote” thing is a legitimate topic for debate? We need more and better—and fast—in order to push back on Republicans’ current anti-democratic campaign.

Ari Berman has covered voting rights for many years, now as a senior reporter at Mother Jones. He’s the author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. We’ll talk with him about the overt, multi-level, deeply dangerous attack on the right and the ability to vote.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at coverage of climate justice, Venezuelan sanctions and healthcare debt.

This post was originally published on CounterSpin.