radiofree.asia

Category: CounterSpin

  • Arlene Martínez on Corporate Subsidies, Florín Nájera-Uresti on Journalism Preservation

          CounterSpin230714.mp3

     

    Good Jobs First: Power Outrage: Will Heavily Subsidized Battery Factories Generate Substandard Jobs?

    Good Jobs First (7/6/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: Media talk about “the economy” as though it were an abstraction, somehow clinically removed from daily life, instead of being ingrained & entwined in every minute of it. So white supremacy and economic policy are completely different stories for the press, but not for the people. Our guest’s recent work names a simple, obvious way development incentives exacerbate racialized inequality: by transferring wealth from the public to companies led by white male executives. Arlene Martínez is deputy executive director and communications director at Good Jobs First, which has issued a trenchant new report.

          CounterSpin230714Martinez.mp3

     

    Also on the show: CounterSpin listeners are well aware of the gutting of state and local journalism, connected to the corporate takeover of newspapers and their sell-off to venture—or, as some would say it, vulture—capitalists. Florín Nájera-Uresti is California campaign organizer for the advocacy group Free Press Action. We talk to her about better and worse ways to meet local news media needs.

          CounterSpin230714Najera-Uresti.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Israel/Palestine and cluster bombs.

    The post Arlene Martínez on Corporate Subsidies, Florín Nájera-Uresti on Journalism Preservation appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Emily Sanders on How Not to Interview an Oil CEO, Kaufman & Bozuwa on Fighting Climate Disrupters

          CounterSpin230707.mp3

     

    Common Dreams: Campaigners Demand End to Fossil Fuel Subsidies as Global Heat Records Shatter

    Common Dreams (7/5/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: The Earth recorded its hottest day ever July 3, with an average global temperature of 17.01°C. The record was broken the next day, with 17.18°C. Common Dreams‘ Jake Johnson (7/5/23) collected international responses, including a British scientist calling it a “death sentence for people and ecosystems”; and reported (7/5/23) IMF estimates that world governments dished out nearly $6 trillion in fossil fuel subsidies in 2020, and those giveaways are expected to grow. At Truthout (7/3/23), Victoria Law wrote about extreme heat’s impact on the incarcerated, including people in their 30s dropping dead in prisons with inadequate cooling systems. One source described his cell: “No air gets in and no air escapes.”

    Public Citizen (6/16/23) points to House Appropriations Republicans, larding spending bills with “poison pill” riders that fuel the crisis and block alternatives. And a database from the new climate group F Minus reveals how many state lobbyists hired by environmental groups also lobby for fossil fuel companies, entrenching those influence peddlers in state capitols with a veneer of respectability, even as public opinion of fossil fuels plummets.

    Orange skies burning over many parts of the US may not be the rockets’ red glare, but they’re signs of war nonetheless. The battle is less well understood as a fight between humans and climate change, as one between those who want to forcefully mitigate disastrous impacts and those who want them to continue, for the simple reason that it’s making them rich. There is no way to fight climate disruption without fighting climate disrupters—this week on the show.

    Emily Sanders watched appalled as CNN‘s Andrew Ross Sorkin (6/26/23) “interviewed” Chevron’s Mike Wirth recently, leading her to write “How (Not) to Interview an Oil CEO” for ExxonKnews (6/29/23). She’s editorial lead at the Center for Climate Integrity; we’ll ask her about that.

          CounterSpin230707Sanders.mp3

     

    And: When media illustrate pushback against the fossil fuel industry, it generally looks like activists with signs; but there are myriad points of resistance, at different levels of community, offering multiple ways forward—but all of them in the same direction. In 2021, HuffPost reporter Alexander Kaufman discussed attempts of local representatives to have a say in building codes, and industry’s reaction. Democracy Collaborative‘s Johanna Bozuwa joined us during 2019’s California wildfires and power outages, to explain the potential role of public utilities in the climate crisis.

          CounterSpin230707Kaufman&Bozuwa.mp3

     

    The post Emily Sanders on How Not to Interview an Oil CEO, Kaufman & Bozuwa on Fighting Climate Disrupters appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Taryn Abbassian and Others on Dobbs One Year Later

          CounterSpin230630.mp3

     

    Activists outside the Supreme Court protesting the Dobbs ruling (CC photo: Ted Eytan )

    (CC photo: Ted Eytan )

    This week on CounterSpin: The US public’s belief in and support for the Supreme Court has plummeted with the appointment of hyper-partisan justices whose unwillingness to answer basic questions, or answer them respectfully, would make them unqualified to work at many a Wendy’s, and the obviously outcome-determinative nature of their jurisprudence. Key to that drop in public support was last year’s Dobbs ruling, overturning something Americans overwhelmingly support and had come to see as a fundamental right—that of people to make their own decisions about when or whether to carry a pregnancy or to have a child. The impacts of that ruling are still reverberating, as is the organized pushback that we can learn about and support. We hear from Taryn Abbassian, associate research director at NARAL.

          CounterSpin230630Abbassian.mp3

     

    Also on the show: Meaningful, lasting response to Dobbs requires more than “vote blue no matter who,” but actually understanding and addressing the differences and disparities of abortion rights and access before Dobbs, which requires an expansive understanding of reproductive justice. CounterSpin has listened many times over the years to advocates and authors working on this issue. We hear a little this week from FAIR’s Julie Hollar; from Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of the group URGE: Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity; and from URGE’s policy director, Preston Mitchum.

    The post Taryn Abbassian and Others on Dobbs One Year Later appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • ‘The One Part of Our Retirement Income System That Works Is Social Security’ – CounterSpin interview with Nancy Altman on GOP’s Social Security assault

     

    Janine Jackson interviewed Social Security Works’ Nancy Altman about the latest Republican attack on Social Security, for the June 23, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

          CounterSpin230623Altman.mp3

     

    NYT: The Geopolitics Of the Budget

    New York Times (1/27/88)

    Janine Jackson: A piece for FAIR cited a New York Times article describing the federal budget deficit as

    overwhelmingly a consequence of  American military outlay and entitlement programs such as Social Security, together with the nation’s unwillingness to pay the taxes needed to finance the expenditures.

    Here’s the thing: That scaremongering about the runaway cost and unmanageability of Social Security, the like of which you may have heard very recently, is how I introduced our next guest in 2018.

    And here’s the other thing: The New York Times article cited in that piece, which was written for FAIR by veteran Times reporter John Hess, came out in 1988.

    It isn’t just that corporate news media get things wrong about Social Security, it’s that they stubbornly get the same things wrong–maybe most importantly, presenting it as a contentious issue in this year’s budget battles, when in fact the fight over Social Security is an ideological one, with many on one side and few on the other, that’s been going on since the program began.

    The budget blueprint released by the House Republican Study Committee last week provides a new opportunity to trot out misinformation, and a new chance to combat it.

    The Truth About Social Security

    Strong Arm Press (2018)

    We’re joined now by Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works and author of, among other titles, The Truth About Social Security: The Founder’s Words Refute Revisionist History, Zombie Lies, and Common Misunderstandings. She joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Nancy Altman.

    Nancy Altman: Thank you so much, and what you just said, in your intro, is a zombie lie, is that Social Security is adding even a penny to the deficit. So I’m so glad we’re going to have this conversation.

    JJ: Let’s start right there. I keep reading, “set to be insolvent in 2033,” right? As though Social Security is a building on fire.

    So let’s leap right into those myths, because I know that some folks are going to say: “Oh, so you’re saying there’s no problem. You’re saying that Social Security doesn’t require any support.”

    There’s so much misunderstanding about what the questions actually are, and then how we might respond to them. So have at it.

    NA: I think you’re exactly right to talk about it: Is this a building on fire, or is it, down the road, you have to put your children through college, so you got to think about putting aside some money for their college education?

    I think it’s much closer to the latter than the former. It’s not that nothing should be done. In fact, I think the program should be expanded. I think we’re facing a retirement income crisis, and the solution is expanding Social Security.

    But just to put a few of the myths to rest–and you’re exactly right, the problem is that the media keeps misreporting this over and over again.

    I smiled when you talked about the 1980s, because I started working on this program in the mid-1970s. I was involved with the so-called Greenspan Commission in 1982. At that time, I was told, oh, there’s a crisis, we can’t afford this program, and all these greedy old people. And you– I was young at the time–you’re not going to get your benefits.

    Well, all that happened was I aged, and now my children and grandchildren are being told they’re not going to get their benefits because I’m greedy. And all that is is the passage of time.

    So here are the facts. Social Security is a defined-benefit pension plan that provides life insurance, disability insurance and retirement annuities. And it does so extremely efficiently. It spends less than a penny of every dollar it spends on administration. More than 99 cents is returned in benefits. It’s extremely efficient.

    It also is extremely responsibly managed. Every year, there are about 40 actuaries of the Social Security Administration. And just like any private insurance company, they are looking at longevity and birth rates and wage growth and all kinds of factors to make sure that Social Security can always pay its benefits.

    Nancy Altman of Social Security Works

    Nancy Altman: “The opponents of Social Security have latched onto this unsurprising, manageable shortfall, and talked about the building’s on fire.”

    It doesn’t just project out 10 years or 20 years, but for three quarters of a century, 75 years. And whenever you project out so far, sometimes you’re going to show unintended surpluses. Sometimes you’re going to have unintended shortfalls.

    And what the actuaries have been telling us is that there is a shortfall, quite manageable. It’s now about a decade away. So we’ve got plenty of time to bring in additional revenue.

    If Congress were to do nothing, Social Security could still pay 75% of promised benefits, 75 cents on the dollar.

    But of course, we want it to pay 100%, because these are earned benefits. And there are many proposals, including many in Congress, that restore Social Security to long-range balance.

    But the opponents of Social Security have latched onto this unsurprising, manageable shortfall, and talked about the building’s on fire. And they’ve been talking this way since the program began, really.

    JJ: And that’s what I want to get at, because it’s so funny the way that the proffered solution always turns out to be cuts, and yet that’s being presented as saving the program. There’s a perversity there that says, we need to burn the village to save it.

    NA: Exactly. If Congress doesn’t act, there may be some cuts in the future. So let’s make the cuts now. It’s really like, wait, what? I thought we were trying to prevent the cuts.

    I call it a solution in search of a problem. The solution is, we’ve got to cut benefits. But, people will say, everybody’s living longer. We’ve got to cut benefits by raising the retirement age.

    And I’ll point out, well, certain people are in physically demanding jobs, certain minorities, they’re not living longer. In fact, their life expectancies are going down.

    Oh well, then, we’ve got to cut benefits cause it’s unfair to them. It’s like, wait, what?

    And really, what is behind this is that, from the beginning, there’s been people who have opposed Social Security. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, in a private letter to his brother, which you can find online, said that they are a tiny splinter group, their numbers are negligible, but they are stupid, he says.

    They tend to be the very wealthy, who think they can just self-insure and don’t want to pay any money towards the common good. Now, they used to be quite honest, and they’d call Social Security “socialism.” The problem is that the American people appreciate what Social Security provides. And so they always lost.

    Then, starting somewhere in the ’70s, their tactics changed, unless they all disappeared, and it’s hard to believe that happened; they say, “No, we love Social Security, but we can’t afford it.” And they make it a point about affordability.

    Let me put the affordability question in context. Social Security currently costs about 5% of gross domestic product. At the end of this century, year 2100, it’s going to cost about 6% of gross domestic product. That’s what we’re fighting about, this 1% increase in gross domestic product.

    Now, when the Covid epidemic hit, we spent more than 1% on all the ways to combat that. After the 9/11 attacks, we spent more than 1% on increasing military spending.

    And, in fact, if you even just look at the Baby Boom, and these costs are because the Baby Boom is moving into its retirement years, and there was a baby bust following up and so forth, that when the Baby Boomers hit kindergarten, we spent more than 1% of GDP on increased classrooms and hiring teachers and so forth.

    And those three, the Covid, the 9/11 and even Baby Boomers entering kindergarten, were surprises to policy makers. This was not a surprise.

    JJ: We’re hearing how we can’t afford this and we can’t afford that. And you have to ask, cui bono, because certainly even in this Republican Study Committee plan, not everyone is tightening their belt. Not everyone is rallying around and suffering together. There are some folks who are spared from what we’re being told is meant to be a shared social cost.

    Common Dreams: House GOP Panel Releases Budget That Would 'Destroy Social Security as We Know It'

    Common Dreams (6/15/23)

    NA: And in fact, not even are they spared, they’re benefiting. The same Republican Study Committee budget, which calls for increasing the retirement age, slashing middle-class benefits, privatizing Medicare, transforming it into a premium support, which is just giving people a coupon and telling them to go out on the market–at the same time that they’re really hitting the middle class and working class, they’re giving tax cuts to billionaires. That makes no sense.

    If you look at how people did during the worst part of the Covid pandemic, so many people lost income, lost jobs, lost their lives, but the billionaires increased their wealth substantially.

    So there’s no question that there are ways and there are proposals out there that are not undue burdens to anyone. They require the very wealthiest, those earning millions and billions of dollars, to pay what I would consider their fair share, and at the same time expand benefits.

    But what the Republican Study Committee, which makes up about 70% of the House Republicans, and what Republicans in the Senate also are calling for, is exactly what you’re saying: belt tightening for those who are middle class and working class, and big gifts to those who are the wealthiest.

    And that makes absolutely no sense, and is not what the American people want. So there’s a real debate going on, but one side, 80% of the American people favor, which is no cuts and let’s expand and make the wealthy pay more.

    And the other side, which is, let’s go behind closed doors and cut benefits, but not have our fingerprints on them. That’s what makes the debate so hard, because it’s got to be transparent for everyone to see.

    JJ: I want to point out one thing, that you have also indicated, because media and many people often shorthand Social Security with “benefits for seniors” or “programs for the elderly.” And I just want us to tip the fact that Social Security deeply impacts the lives of many disabled people as well, and they’re often erased in media debates. But certainly if this budget were to go forward, disabled people would really feel the brunt.

    NA: First of all, I’m so glad you raised that, because Social Security is also the nation’s largest children’s program; because of the survivor benefits and the family benefits, more children benefit from Social Security. The benefits are by no means generous, but they are extremely important when a breadwinner dies or becomes so disabled that they can no longer work.

    And you’re exactly right that disability insurance is an extremely important part of the program. And the Republican Study Committee really goes after the disability insurance part, makes it harder to get benefits, makes it harder to keep getting those benefits. It is really hostile to that group. So I’m so glad you raised that.

    And the point is that Social Security, one of the many reasons I think it’s so popular, it really embodies basic American values. And it is this idea of, we’re united, we all contribute. The idea is that it’s insurance against the loss of wages. You don’t get benefits unless there’s a work record. But if you’re 30 years old and you walk out in the street and get hit by a truck, God forbid, and can no longer work again, you get benefits for the remainder of your life.

    If you have young children and instead of just becoming disabled, you are killed, your children will get benefits until age 18. Now they used to get them until 22, and many of us think that should be restored, or even higher. Normally parents will help their children finance their college educations, but if the parent is gone, though, then the rest of us step in.

    So you’re exactly right that this is a program that benefits all of us, and even indirectly–many children receive benefits directly, but they also often live in families where they’re living with their grandparent, their grandparents, getting Social Security. It really is a family program, and I think that’s part of the reason it’s so well-supported.

    Social Security Works for Everyone

    New Press (2021)

    JJ: Just finally, and briefly, “Social Security Works” is the name of the group. It’s the title of the book you co-authored with Eric Kingson. And I really like that verb there: It works. It works to do, as you’re just saying, real things for real people.

    And it’s countering this idea that you get every time you pick up the paper, which is that it’s broken, that Social Security is broken or failing or struggling.

    And I know it’s just words, but it seems so crucial, because in news media, Social Security is a problem, but actually Social Security is a program that works that we just need to keep working.

    NA: Exactly. And in fact, I consider it even more than that. I consider it a solution. Private pensions have largely, in the private sector, disappeared. 401Ks have proven inadequate for most people, other than the very wealthy.

    The one part of our retirement income system that does work is Social Security. It’s the most universal. It’s portable from job to job. It’s very fair in its distribution. It’s extremely efficient. Its one shortcoming is that its benefits are too low, which is why we need to expand it.

    But you’re exactly right. There’s an elite media view that is very hard to shake. As you say, you could go back decades, and you’ll see the same articles. Somehow, it’s a problem, it’s a drain, it’s unaffordable, it’s this, it’s that. When, actually, it’s extremely efficient. It works extremely well. Indeed, it’s a solution. We should build on it, because it works so well.

    JJ: We’ve been speaking with Nancy Altman from Social Security Works. They’re online at SocialSecurityWorks.org. Nancy Altman, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    NA: Thank you so much for having me.

     

    The post ‘The One Part of Our Retirement Income System That Works Is Social Security’ appeared first on FAIR.

    This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

  • Nancy Altman on GOP Social Security Attack, Daniel Ellsberg Revisited

          CounterSpin230623.mp3

     

    Republicans

    New Republic (6/14/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: 70% of House Republicans belong to the Republican Study Committee, which just released a budget that calls for curtailing programs supporting racial equity and LGBTQ rights, natch—and also for increased cuts and access hurdles for Social Security and Medicare. It’s a tale as old as time, how some people want to take resources explicitly designated for seniors and disabled people and funnel them to rich people, in supposed service of “saving” those popular social programs. We’ve been asking for debunking of that storyline for years now from Nancy Altman, president of the group Social Security Works, and author of books, including The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble. We’ll get some more debunking this week, because when it comes to Social Security, it seems everything old will always be new again.

          CounterSpin230623Altman.mp3

     

    Daniel Ellsberg

    Daniel Ellsberg (CC photo: Christopher Michel)

    Also on the show: Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg died last week at the age of 92, and elite media did that thing they do, where they sort of honor someone they discredited in life, burnishing their own reputation as truth-tellers while still somehow dishonoring the practice of truth-telling—of the sort that afflicts the comfortable. CounterSpin spoke with Ellsberg many times over the years. We hear just some of those conversations this week on the show.

          CounterSpin230623Ellsberg.mp3

     

    The post Nancy Altman on GOP Social Security Attack, Daniel Ellsberg Revisited appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Sonali Kolhatkar on the Power of Narrative

          CounterSpin230616.mp3

     

    Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice

    (City Lights, 2023)

    This week on CounterSpin: The stories news media tell are something different than the facts they report. The facts may say what happened where; the stories tell us who’s the hero and who’s the villain, how important the fight is, and whether we should care about the ending. It’s not always easy to discern, but it’s critical—which is why narrative has been taken up as an important tool by folks looking to change the world for the better, in part by changing the stories we tell ourselves and one another.

    Sonali Kolhatkar is the host and executive producer of the daily radio and TV program Rising Up With Sonali, and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. Her new book, Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice, will be published this month by City Lights. She joins us this week on the show.

          CounterSpin230616Kolhatkar.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of work requirements.

          CounterSpin230616Banter.mp3

     

    The post Sonali Kolhatkar on the Power of Narrative appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • ‘These Bills Will Make Children Less Safe, Not More Safe’ – CounterSpin interview with Evan Greer on Kids Online Safety Act

     

    Janine Jackson interviewed Fight for the Future’s Evan Greer about the Kids Online Safety Act for the June 9, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

          CounterSpin230609Greer.mp3

     

    Janine Jackson: Louisiana just banned abortion at six weeks, before many people even know they’re pregnant, while also saying 16-year-old girls are mature enough to marry.

    PBS: Some lawmakers propose loosening child labor laws to fill worker shortage

    PBS NewsHour (5/25/23)

    Arkansas says there’s no need for employers to check the age of workers they hire. As one state legislator put it, “There’s no reason why anyone should get the government’s permission to get a job.”

    And Wisconsin says 14-year-olds, sure, can serve alcohol. Iowa says they can shift loads in freezers and meat coolers.

    Simultaneously and in the same country, we have a raft of legislation saying that young people should not be in charge of what they look at online. Bone saws: cool. TikTok: bad.

    The way this country thinks about young people is odd, you could say. “Incoherent” would be another word.

    When it comes to the online stuff, there seem to be some good intentions at work. Anyone who’s been on the internet can see how it can be manipulative and creepy. But are laws like the Kids Online Safety Act the appropriate way to address those concerns?

    We’ll talk about that now with Evan Greer, director of the group Fight for the Future. She joins us now by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Evan Greer.

    Evan Greer: Thanks so much for having me. Always happy to chat.

    Cyberscoop: Fight over Kids Online Safety Act heats up as bill gains support in Congress

    Cyberscoop (5/2/23)

    JJ: Let’s start specifically with KOSA, with the Kids Online Safety Act, because it’s a real piece of legislation, and there are things that you and other folks are not disputing, that big tech companies do have practices that are bad for kids, and especially bad for some vulnerable kids.

    But the method of addressing those concerns is the question. What would KOSA do that people may not understand, in terms of the impact on, ostensibly, those young people we’re told that they care about?

    EG: Yeah, and I think it’s so important that we do start from the acknowledgement that big tech companies are doing harm to our kids, because it’s just not acceptable to pretend otherwise.

    There is significant evidence to suggest that these very large corporations are engaging in business practices that are fundamentally incompatible with human rights, with democracy, but also with what we know young people, and really everyone, needs, which is access to online information and community, rather than having their data harvested and information shoved down their throat in a way that enriches companies rather than empowering young people and adults.

    And so when we look at this problem, I think it is important that we start there, because there is a real problem, and the folks pushing this legislation often like to characterize those of us that oppose it as big tech shills or whatever.

    It’s hard for me not to laugh at that, given that I’ve dedicated the better part of my adult life to confronting these big tech companies and their surveillance-capitalist business model, and working to dismantle it.

    But I think it’s important that we say very clearly that we oppose these bills, not because we think that they are an inappropriate trade off between human rights and children’s safety. We oppose these bills because they will make children less safe, not more safe.

    And it’s so important that we make that clear, because we know from history that politicians love to put in the wrapping paper of protecting children any type of legislation or regulation that they would like to advance and avoid political opposition to.

    It is, of course, very difficult for any elected official to speak out against or vote against a bill called the Kids Online Safety Act, regardless of whether that bill actually makes kids safer online or not. And so what I’m here to explain a bit is why this legislation will actually make kids less safe.

    It’s important to understand a few things. So one is that KOSA is not just a bill that focuses on privacy or ending the collection of children’s data. It’s a bill that gives the government control over what content platforms can recommend to which users.

    Conversation: What is surveillance capitalism and how does it shape our economy?

    Conversation (6/24/19)

    And this is, again, kind of well-intentioned, trying to address a real problem, which is that because platforms like Instagram and YouTube employ this surveillance-advertising and surveillance-capitalist business model, they have a huge incentive to algorithmically recommend content in a way that’s maximized for engagement, rather than in a way that is curated or attempting to promote helpful content.

    Their algorithms are designed to make them money. And so because of that, we know that platforms often algorithmically recommend all kinds of content, including content that can be incredibly harmful.

    That’s the legitimate problem that this bill is trying to solve, but, unfortunately, it would actually make that problem worse.

    And the way it would do that is it creates what’s called a broad duty of care that requires platforms to design their algorithmic recommendation systems in a way that has the best interest of children in mind.

    And it specifies what they mean by that, in terms of tying it to specific mental health outcomes, like eating disorders or substance abuse or anxiety or depression, and basically says that platforms should not be recommending content that causes those types of disorders.

    Vanity Fair: 22 Republican States Sue Biden Admin for the Right to Discriminate Against LGBTQ+ School Kids

    Vanity Fair (7/28/22)

    Now, if you’re sticking with me, all of that sounds perfectly reasonable. Why wouldn’t we want to do that? The problem is that the bill gives the authority to determine and enforce that to state attorneys general.

    And if you’ve been paying attention at all to what’s happening in the states right now, you would know that state attorneys general across the country, in red states particularly, are actively arguing, right now today, that simply encountering LGBTQ people makes kids depressed, causes them to be suicidal, gives them mental health disorders.

    They are arguing that providing young people with gender-affirming care that’s medically recommended, and where there is medical consensus, is a form of child abuse.

    And so while this bill sounds perfectly reasonable on its face, it utterly fails to recognize the political moment that we’re in, and rather than making kids safer, what it would do is empower the most bigoted attorneys general law enforcement officers in the country to dictate what content young people can see in their feed.

    And that would lead to widespread suppression, not just of LGBTQ content, or content related to perhaps abortion and reproductive health, but really suppression of important but controversial topics across the board.

    So, for example, the bill’s backers envision a world where this bill leads to less promotion of content that promotes eating disorders.

    In reality, the way that this bill would work, it would just suppress all discussion of eating disorders among young people, because at scale, a platform like YouTube or Instagram is not going to be able to make a meaningful determination between, for example, a video that’s harmful in promoting eating disorders, or a video where a young person is just speaking about their experience with an eating disorder, and how they sought out help and support, and how other young people can do it too.

    In practice, these platforms are simply going to use AI, as they’ve already been doing, more aggressively to filter content. That’s the only way that they could meaningfully comply with a bill like KOSA.

    And what we’ll see is exactly what we saw with SESTA/FOSTA, which was the last major change to Section 230, a very similar bill that was intended to address a real problem, online sex trafficking, that actually made it harder for law enforcement to prosecute actual cases of sex trafficking while having a detrimental effect for consensual sex workers, who effectively had online spaces that they used to keep themselves safe, to screen clients, to find work in ways that were safer for them, shut down almost overnight, because of this misguided legislation that was supposed to make them safer.

    Evan Greer

    Evan Greer: “This is cutting young people off from life-saving information and online community, rather than giving them what they need, which is resources, support, housing, healthcare.”

    And so we’re now in a moment where we could actually see the same happen, not just for content related to sex and sexuality, but for an enormous range of incredibly important content that our young people actually need access to.

    This is cutting young people off from life-saving information and online community, rather than giving them what they need, which is resources, support, housing, healthcare. Those are the types of things that we know prevent things like child exploitation.

    But unfortunately, lawmakers seem more interested in trampling the First Amendment, and putting the government in charge of what content can be recommended, than in addressing those material conditions that we actually have evidence to suggest, if we could address them, would reduce the types of harms that lawmakers say they’re trying to reduce.

    JJ: Thank you. And I just wanted to say, I’m getting Reefer Madness vibes, and a conflation of correlation and causality; and I see in a lot of the talk around this, people pointing to research: social media use drives mental illness. 

    So I just wanted ask you, briefly, there is research, but what does the research actually say or not say on these questions?

    EG: It’s a great question, and there’s been some news on this fairly recently. There was a report out from the surgeon general of the United States a couple weeks ago, and it is interesting because, as you said, there is research, and what the research says is basically: It’s complicated. But unfortunately, our mainstream news outlets and politicians giving speeches don’t do very well with complicated.

    CNN: Social media presents ‘profound risk of harm’ for kids, surgeon general says, calling attention to lack of research

    CNN (5/24/23)

    And so what you saw is a lot of headlines that basically said, social media is bad for kids, and the research certainly backs that up to a certain extent. There is significant and growing evidence to suggest that, again, these types of predatory design practices that companies put into place, things like autoplay, where you just play a video and then the next one plays, or infinite scroll, where you can just keep scrolling through TikToks forever and ever, and suddenly an hour has passed, and you’re like, “What am I doing with my life?”

    There is significant evidence that those types of design choices do have negative mental health effects, for young people and adults, in that they can lead to addictive behaviors, to anxiety, etc.

    There’s also evidence in that report, that was largely ignored by a lot of the coverage of it, that showed that for some groups of young people, including LGBTQ young people, there’s actually significant evidence to suggest that access to social media improves their mental health.

    And it’s not that hard to understand why. Anyone who knows a queer or trans young person knows online spaces can provide a safe haven, can provide a place to access community or resources or information, especially for young people who perhaps have unsupportive family members, or live in an area where they don’t have access to in-person community in a safe way. This can be a lifeline.

    And so, again, there is research out there, and it is important that we build our regulatory and legislative responses on top of actual evidence, rather than conjecture and hyperbole.

    But, again, I think what’s important here is that we embrace the both/and, and recognize that this is not about saying social media is totally fine as it is, and leave these companies alone, and we can all live in a cyber-libertarian paradise.

    That’s not the world we’re living in. These companies are big, they are greedy, they are engaging in business practices that are doing harm, and they should be regulated.

    But what we need to focus on is regulating the surveillance-capitalist business model that’s at the root of their harm, rather than attempting to regulate the speech of young people, suppress their ability to express themselves, and take away life-saving resources that they need in order to thrive and succeed in this deeply unjust and messed-up world that we are handing to them.

    JJ: All right then. We’ve been speaking with Evan Greer. She’s director of Fight for the Future. They’re online at FightForTheFuture.org. Evan Greer, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

    EG: Anytime. Thanks for having me.

    The post ‘These Bills Will Make Children Less Safe, Not More Safe’ appeared first on FAIR.


    This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Tauhid Chappell on Cannabis Justice, Evan Greer on Kids Online Safety Act

          CounterSpin230609.mp3

     

    Cannabis farmer

    (image: PCBA)

    This week on CounterSpin: This country has a long history of weaponizing drug laws against Black and brown communities. Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, ran an anti-marijuana crusade in the 1930s, saying, “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.” Concerns are justified about what the legalization, and profitizing, of marijuana means for the people and communities most harmed by its criminalization. We hear about that from Tauhid Chappell, founder of the Philadelphia CannaBusiness Association and project manager for Free Press’s News Voices project.

          CounterSpin230609Chappell.mp3

     

    Children using a computer

    (CC photo: Janine Jackson)

    Also on the show: Lots of people are concerned about what’s called the “digital well-being” of children—their safety and privacy online. So why did more than 90 human rights and LGBTQ groups sign a letter opposing the “Kids Online Safety Act”? Evan Greer is director of the group Fight for the Future. She tells us what’s going on there.

          CounterSpin230609Greer.mp3

     

    The post Tauhid Chappell on Cannabis Justice, Evan Greer on Kids Online Safety Act appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Jeff Chang & Jeannie Park on Asian Americans and Affirmative Action

          CounterSpin230602.mp3

     

    NBC: How Asian-led student groups are continuing affirmative action fight at Harvard and UNC

    NBC (11/2/22)

    This week on CounterSpin: Corporate media have never been the right place to look for thoughtful, inclusive consideration of affirmative action. For them it’s an “issue,” a political football, rather than a long effort to address the real historical and ongoing discrimination against non-white, non-male people in multiple aspects of US life.

    But when it comes to the role that anti-discrimination, pro-equity efforts have had on Asian-American communities, there are particular layers of mis- and disinformation that benefit from exploring. Listeners will know that Asian-American students are being used as the face of attempts to eliminate affirmative action or race-consciousness in college admissions. It looks like the Supreme Court will rule on a watershed case this month. We talk about it with writer and cultural critic Jeff Chang, author of We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation, among other titles.

          CounterSpin230602Chang.mp3

     

    We also hear some of an earlier discussion of the case Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. vs. Harvard that CounterSpin had with Jeannie Park, founding president of the Asian American Journalists Association in New York, and co-founder of the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard.

          CounterSpin230602Park.mp3

    Transcript: “This Case Was Never About Defending Asian Americans”

    The post Jeff Chang & Jeannie Park on Asian Americans and Affirmative Action appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Eric Thurm on the Hollywood Writers’ Strike

     

     

    GQ: All About the Writers Strike: What Does the WGA Want and Why Are They Fighting So Hard for it?

    GQ (5/5/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: Going on strike is something that people with no personal experience are comfortable depicting as frivolous and selfish. That extends to many corporate news reporters, who appear unable to present a labor action as other than, first and foremost, an unwonted interruption of a natural order. However else they explain the issues at stake, or humanistically portray individual strikers, the overarching narrative is that workers are pressing their luck, and that owners who make their money off the efforts of those workers are not to be questioned.

    It’s a weird presentation, whether it’s baristas or dockworkers or TV and movie writers. As we record on May 25, the Writers Guild strike is on its 23rd day, and having the intended effect of shutting down production on sets around the country.

    Eric Thurm wrote a useful explainer on the WGA strike for GQ. Thurm is campaigns coordinator for the National Writers Union, and a steering committee member of the Freelance Solidarity Project. We hear from him about some behind-the-scenes aspects of the strike affecting what you may see on screen.

          CounterSpin230526Thurm.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent media coverage of San Francisco.

          CounterSpin230526Banter.mp3

     

    The post Eric Thurm on the Hollywood Writers’ Strike appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Cody Bloomfield on Anti-Activist Terrorism Charges

     

    Time: Georgia Is Using a Domestic Terrorism Law Expanded After Dylann Roof Against ‘Cop City’ Protesters

    Time (5/4/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: Do you care about environmental degradation? Then you care about Cop City. Do you care about violent overpolicing of Black and brown communities? Then you care about Cop City. Do you care about purportedly democratic governance that overrides the actual voice of the people? Then you care about Cop City.

    But be aware: Your concern about Cop City, and its myriad impacts and implications, may get you labeled a domestic terrorist. The official response to popular resistance to the militarized policing facility being created on top of the forest in Atlanta, Georgia, is an exemplar of how some officials fully intend to bring all powers to which they have access, and to create new powers, to treat anyone who stands in opposition to whatever they decide they want to do as enemies of the state, deserving life-destroying prison sentences. So if your thoughts about Cop City don’t motivate you, think about your right to protest anything at all.

    We’ll talk about anti-activist terrorism charges with Cody Bloomfield, communications director at Defending Rights & Dissent.

          CounterSpin230519Bloomfield.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent media coverage of Israel’s “crisis of democracy.”

          CounterSpin230519Banter.mp3

     

    The post Cody Bloomfield on Anti-Activist Terrorism Charges appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Ian Millhiser on Supreme Court Corruption

     

     

    USA Today: Do past Supreme Court cases offer clues about how the justices view ethics, transparency?

    USA Today (5/6/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: USA Today reported that, “as it heads into the final stretch of its current term, the Supreme Court is on defense following a series of revelations about gifts, property sales and disclosure.” That, you might say, is putting it mildly. The recent revelations are not about trinkets, but millions of dollars’ worth of benefits, vacations, jobs—and not from nowhere in particular, but from powerful parties with express interest in shaping the Court’s decision-making. “Disclosure,” in this instance, is another word for democracy—people’s right to know (and act upon the knowledge of) what, besides their votes, is influencing the laws that shape their lives.

    As details of Clarence Thomas’ secret-but-not-so-secret relationship with Republican billionaire Harlan Crow—and also with Federalist Society head Leonard Leo—roll out, the John Roberts–led Supreme Court has told congressional leaders they don’t believe any ethics rules really apply to them, and that’s not a problem. Whether that cravenly elitist, anti-democratic notion gets to carry the day will depend on many things, one of them being journalists’ willingness to stick with the stories, explore their structural and historical roots, demand transparency, and keep reporting faithfully to the public about what is learned and what is not—and why not. Even or especially if the Court is “on defense.”

    Because the information out of the Supreme Court has, as Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick has said, gone beyond an “ethics problem” to a “five-alarm fire” democracy-reform problem. And news media will be central to the response.

    We talk this week about the Supreme Court, where it’s going and where’s it taking all of us, with Ian Millhiser, who covers the Court for Vox, and is author of, most recently, The Agenda: How a Republican Supreme Court Is Reshaping America.

          CounterSpin230512Millhiser.mp3

     

    The post Ian Millhiser on Supreme Court Corruption appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Chris Lehmann on Debt Ceiling Myths, Kyle Wiens on Right to Repair’s Moment

     

     

    Nation: Kevin McCarthy Doubles Down on the Debt Ceiling

    (The Nation, 4/28/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: Economist James Galbraith wrote a few months ago: “It is in the nature of articles about the debt ceiling that no matter how often one tries to set the record straight, nothing ever gets through.” Elite media’s fundamental misrepresentation of the debt ceiling would be troubling enough if it were just a bad history lesson. But current Republican brinkmanship could have devastating impacts for millions of people—along with the harm to public understanding of what’s actually going on. We hear concerns about the process and the coverage from Chris Lehmann, DC bureau chief at The Nation, and contributing editor at the Baffler and the New Republic.

          CounterSpin230505Lehmann.mp3

     

    Also on the show: The right to fix the things you buy is the sort of thing you wouldn’t think would be controversial here in “the land of the free.”  Corporations’ attempts to prevent people from fixing their cellphone or tractor or wheelchair ought to be seen as the overreach it is. But for years, news media have presented the right to repair as a voice in the wilderness, up against benevolent companies’ efforts to do best by us all. That’s changing, with legislative moves around the country. Right to repair is having a “watershed moment,” one advocate says, adding that there are still “a lot of opportunities for mischief.” We get an update from Kyle Wiens, co-founder and CEO of the online repair community iFixit.

          CounterSpin230505Wiens.mp3

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at the New York Times‘ Iran error.

    The post Chris Lehmann on Debt Ceiling Myths, Kyle Wiens on Right to Repair’s Moment appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Jen Senko on the Cost of Hate Talk

     

    Kansas City Star: ‘Fear and paranoia.’ Grandson says Andrew Lester bought into conspiracies, disinformation

    Kansas City Star (4/20/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: The grandson of the elderly white man who shot a Black teenager in the head for ringing his doorbell told the Kansas City Star that their relationship had unraveled as his grandfather began watching “Fox News all day, every day,” and sank into a “24-hour news cycle of fear, of paranoia.” Those words had a poignant resonance for many people who feel they’ve lost family members and friends to a kind of cult, that’s not secret, but pumped into the airwaves every day. Hate-fueled and hate-fueling media have political and historical impacts—and interpersonal, familial ones as well.

    The Brainwashing of My Dad—the 2016 film and the book based on it—reflect filmmaker, activist and author Jen Senko’s effort to engage the  multi-level effects of that yelling, punching down, reactionary media, as well as how we can respond. We hear from Jen Senko this week on CounterSpin.

          CounterSpin230428Senko.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of a potential UPS strike.

          CounterSpin230428Banter.mp3

     

    The post Jen Senko on the Cost of Hate Talk appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Rachel K. Jones on Mifepristone, Donna Murch on Rutgers Labor Action

     

     

    WaPo: Supreme Court extends nationwide abortion pill access through Friday

    Washington Post (4/19/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: The Supreme Court has briefly punted their decision on restricting access to medication abortion drug mifepristone. The American Medical Association said that the recent ruling by a Texas federal judge revoking the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, which has been in widespread use for more than two decades, “flies in the face of science and evidence and threatens to upend access to a safe and effective drug.” For the Washington Post, that’s part of a “confusing legal battle“—but for the majority of people, including doctors, it’s not confusing, just frightening. We’ll hear from Rachel K. Jones, research scientist at Guttmacher Institute.

          CounterSpin230421Jones.mp3

     

    NYT: Rutgers University Faculty Members Strike, Halting Classes and Research

    New York Times (4/10/23)

    Also on the show: “Rutgers University Faculty Members Strike, Halting Classes and Research.” That April 10 New York Times headline reflects standard operating procedure for corporate media: reporting labor actions in terms of their ostensible harms, rather than the harms that led to them. The strike by a range of differently situated Rutgers faculty, the Times said, “will affect roughly 67,000 students across the state”—presumably the same students affected by teachers, researchers and counselors working in circumstances so precarious and untenable they took the difficult, potentially life-altering step of withholding their labor. That go-to elite media frame—”those pesky workers, what are they up to this time?”—is just one more element making efforts to increase workers’ power in the workplace that much harder. Thing is: It doesn’t always work—lots of people see through and around it! The gains made by Rutgers faculty, and the example they set, are evidence. We’ll get an update from Donna Murch, associate professor of history at Rutgers, and New Brunswick chapter president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT.

          CounterSpin230421Murch.mp3

     

    The post Rachel K. Jones on Mifepristone, Donna Murch on Rutgers Labor Action appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Taxes: Who Pays and What For?

    Fat cat pays pittance to Uncle Sam.

    Fat cat pays a pittance in taxes to Uncle Sam in vintage cartoon.

    This week on CounterSpin: It is tax season in the US,  when some of us wonder why the government, which knows how much we earn, requires us to guess, with the threat of prison if we guess wrong. And leads some of us to ponder what we get in return for our resources—streets and stop signs, to be sure, but also wars and wheelbarrows of money doled out those who already have plenty.

    We’ve talked about taxes and tax policy a lot on CounterSpin, enough to put together a walk-through of some of the issues, and the way news media explain them. You’ll hear from Steve Wamhoff, Dean Baker, Jeremie Greer and Michael Mechanic.

    Taxes, and how they’re not just an April 15 thing, this week on CounterSpin!

    The post Taxes: Who Pays and What For? appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Saurav Sarkar on Starbucks Organizing

          CounterSpin230407.mp3

     

    Starbucks labor rally, April 2022

    (CC photo: Elliot Stoller)

    This week on CounterSpin: Former President Donald Trump was arrested this week, but we’re going to talk about another kind of crime: the slow, steady drip drip of crime that doesn’t leap out to reporters—the day-to-day crushing of workers’ attempts to organize themselves to have a voice in the workplace, not just about their pay, but their well-being and their dignity. Crushing those attempts to work together is against the law—but it’s not the sort of crime that elite media seem able to identify. And it’s much harder to fight  when the law-breaking megacorporation is as media-savvy and faux progressive as Starbucks.

    Saurav Sarkar has been reporting Starbucks workers’ efforts—not to quit their workplaces, but to transform them into places where they can make a living and have some say in their lives, while, yes, also giving you your cappuccino.

    Sarkar writes for Labor Notes, Jacobin and FAIR.org, among other outlets. We hear from them this week on CounterSpin.

          CounterSpin230407Sarkar.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent media coverage of the Chicago mayoral election and the projected Antarctic current collapse.

          CounterSpin230407Banter.mp3

     

    The post Saurav Sarkar on Starbucks Organizing appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Silky Shah on Detention Center Fire, Eagan Kemp on Medicare Advantage

          CounterSpin230331.mp3

     

    Internal footage, Ciudad Juárez detention center fire

    Ciudad Juárez detention center fire

    This week on CounterSpin: There are a number of issues or realities where good-hearted people are overwhelmed and frankly misled about how isolated they are in their view, and what levers of power they may have to pull on. We can live in a better world! And we should interrogate those who say, “Oh no, you don’t get it; we’re smarter and we say you just can’t.”

    One such story is migration, or immigration—or, to be real, do Black and brown people have a right to move freely in the world? If not, why not? We’ll get some ideas of where to start this week with Silky Shah, executive director at Detention Watch Network, about the Ciudad Juárez fire and what it tells us about immigration policy.

          CounterSpin230331Shah.mp3

     

    From "Understanding Medicare Advantage Plans"

    Image: Health & Human Services

    And on healthcare: Do we really need to be making choices between seniors getting needed healthcare and other folks getting needed healthcare? Do we have to run our healthcare system on for-profit incentivizing? Is there truly no other way? We talk with Eagan Kemp, healthcare policy advocate at Public Citizen, about the fight around Medicare and Medicare Advantage, and what it says about concerns about seniors and about health, in the US.

          CounterSpin230331Kemp.mp3

     

    The post Silky Shah on Detention Center Fire, Eagan Kemp on Medicare Advantage appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Kamau Franklin on Cop City Protests

     

     

    Stop Cop City: March in solidarity with Atlanta protests, Minneapolis, 1/21/23

    (CC photo: Chad Davis)

    This week on CounterSpin: If there are ideas, tools or tactics that are part of both this country’s horror-filled past, and some people’s vision for its dystopic future, they are at work in Cop City. Over-policing, racist policing, paramilitarization, the usurping of public resources, environmental racism, community voicelessness, and efforts to criminalize protest (that’s some kinds of protest)—it’s all here. Add to that a corporate press corps that, for one thing, disaggregates issues that are intertwined—Black people, for instance, are impacted not only by police brutality, but also by the environment, breathing air and drinking water as they do—and seems intent on pressing a vital, important situation into old, tired and harmful frames.

    Kamau Franklin is founder of Community Movement Builders, the national grassroots organization, and co-host of the podcast Renegade Culture. We’ll hear from him about Cop City and the fight against it.

          CounterSpin230317Franklin.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of DC’s crime bill.

          CounterSpin230317Banter.mp3

     

    The post Kamau Franklin on Cop City Protests appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Kim Knackstedt on Disability Policy, Algernon Austin on Unemployment & Race

          CounterSpin230310.mp3

     

    Disability rights activist Judy Heumann

    Judy Heumann

    This week on CounterSpin:  “I wanna see feisty disabled people change the world.” So declared disability rights activist Judy Heumann, who died last weekend at age 75. As a child with polio, Heumann was denied entry to kindergarten on grounds that her wheelchair was a fire hazard. Later, she was denied a teachers license for reasons no more elevated. She sued, won and became the first teacher in New York to use a wheelchair. Media love those kinds of breakthroughs, and they matter. Here’s hoping they’ll extend their interest into the barriers disabled people face in 2023, and how policy changes could address them. We’ll talk with Kim Knackstedt, senior fellow at the Century Foundation and director of the Disability Economic Justice Collaborative.

          CounterSpin230310Knackstedt.mp3

     

    Signs from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963

    March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963

    And speaking of problems that aren’t actually behind us: You will have heard that the US is experiencing “blowout job growth,” and unemployment is at a “historic low,” with gains extending even to historically marginalized Black people. Algernon Austin from the Center for Economic Policy and Research will help us understand how employment data can obscure even as it reveals, and how—if our problem is joblessness—there are, in fact, time-tested responses.

          CounterSpin230310Austin.mp3

     

    The post Kim Knackstedt on Disability Policy, Algernon Austin on Unemployment & Race appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Ellen Schrecker on the New McCarthyism

     

          CounterSpin230224.mp3

     

    Tucker Carlson on Fox News: The Lunatics Are Running the Asylum

    Tucker Carlson on Fox News (7/6/21)

    This week on CounterSpin: If you care about free expression, and freedom generally, there is much to talk about right now. It is good to anchor ourselves in that conversation when we talk about books being banned and efforts to erase entire concepts, and then folks trying to inoculate themselves by saying they weren’t even talking about those concepts, until they learn that actually running away from those ideas doesn’t make you safe. These are not entirely new conversations or struggles. But our past has not been fully grappled with or understood, and that has everything to do with what’s happening now and how we can address it. History is alive and active, and you are a part of it.

    So this week we’re going to re-air a conversation that we had in January of 2017 with historian Ellen Shrecker, an expert on McCarthyism and its impacts. We don’t doubt that you will understand the relevance and the meaning in 2023.

          CounterSpin230224Schrecker.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the price of eggs.

          CounterSpin230224Banter.mp3

     

    The post Ellen Schrecker on the New McCarthyism appeared first on FAIR.

  • Evan Greer on the Fight for the FCC

     

          CounterSpin230210.mp3

     

    Save Net Neutrality protest

    (image: Fight for the Future)

    This week on CounterSpin: Why does it matter to me, a media consumer, internet user, a person concerned with social justice—why does a 2–2 deadlock at the FCC matter to me? What could be happening if Biden’s long-languishing nomination of public interest advocate Gigi Sohn were put through? Net neutrality, an anti-discrimination law around broadband access that isn’t written by corporations? Maybe US citizens could stop paying more for slower broadband than just about every other industrialized country? We won’t know unless Democrats stand up to the series of increasingly absurd and offensive smears on Sohn. And that remains to be seen.

    Evan Greer tracks technology and its meaning for justice activism as director of Fight for the Future. She’ll help us place the fight around Gigi Sohn’s FCC nomination in that keystone public conversation.

          CounterSpin230210Greer.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent coverage of the Covid death toll.

          CounterSpin230210Banter.mp3

     

    The post Evan Greer on the Fight for the FCC appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Shelby Green and Selah Goodson Bell on Utility Shutoffs & Profiteering

     

     

    Powerless in the United States: How Utilities Drive Shutoffs and Energy Injustice

    Bailout Watch et al. (1/30/23)

    This week on CounterSpin: Powerless in the United States: How Utilities Drive Shutoffs and Energy Injustice is an ongoing project from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Energy and Policy Institute and Bailout Watch. It tracks utility service disconnections and corporate profiteering—because, it turns out, they’re flip sides of a coin.

    You and I may think that in disastrous weather conditions (with no signs of stopping), and a pandemic and low wages and a hike in prices, it’s a time to acknowledge workers’ sacrifices and support them. Silly us. Actually, it’s a moment for powerful companies to raise prices on consumers—not to recoup losses, but just to raise profits, as their shareholder speeches will proudly reveal—and why would that gouging stop at life-saving vaccines or medicines? Why not also shut off the power to the homes of struggling families? Seriously, why not? If Wall Street will reward you for it, and corporate media won’t call you out or even seriously, humanistically report on what you’re doing? Or even easier, one might think, argue for the basic transparency that would allow that reporting?

    Electric utilities have disconnected US households more than 4 million times since the beginning of Covid, preceding the Russian war on Ukraine. At the same time, shareholder payouts went up by $1.9 billion, increases that could have paid those households’ bills five times over.  Our guests’ work illustrates how energy bills take up more and more of families’ earnings, and how the actions of corporations take a tough, in some cases life-threatening situation, make it worse, and then hand it off to their allies in the press corps, who they know will present it as “business as usual if regrettable,” but, above all, nothing worth looking in to or talking about seriously.

    Our guests aren’t just complaining; they have ideas about what’s needed to address the situation. Shelby Green is research fellow at the Energy and Policy Institute. Selah Goodson Bell is energy justice campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. We’ll hear from both of them this week on the show.

          CounterSpin230203Green_Bell.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of the police killing of Tyre Nichols.

          CounterSpin230203Banter.mp3

     

    The post Shelby Green and Selah Goodson Bell on Utility Shutoffs & Profiteering appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Michael Mechanic on Underfunding the IRS

     

          CounterSpin230127Mechanic.mp3

     

    Fat cat pays pittance to Uncle Sam.This week on CounterSpin: If repeated messaging about how we “can’t afford” public goods but we should always be “cutting taxes” isn’t discordant enough, corporate media’s guiding yet unspoken theory has some corollaries—one of which is that because wealthy people pay large (if not proportionate) amounts of money in taxes, they should get policies that reward them, including those allowing them to keep, and grow, their extreme wealth and its concomitant power. That’s how we wind up with congressional Republicans’ efforts to claw back the attempts the administration made to actually help the IRS start to audit the notoriously tax-avoiding wealthy. The message from many politicians and their media amplifiers: Cheating on taxes is a luxury only the rich can, or should be able to, afford.

    We know come April there will be a swell of “news you can use” stories about how to save a dime or two on your taxes. We get a bigger picture story this week from Mother Jones senior editor Michael Mechanic, author of Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All.

          CounterSpin230127Mechanic.mp3

    The post Michael Mechanic on Underfunding the IRS appeared first on FAIR.

  • Ian Powell: Sociopaths, psychopaths, the far-right and Jacinda Ardern

    COMMENTARY: By Ian Powell

    On 14 December 2022 German police arrested 25 people over what was called the “Reichsburger plot”. Two days later The Observer published an article by Philip Oltermann posing the question of whether this was a far-right “…sinister plan to overthrow the German state or just a rag-tag revolution?”

    Although a long way away from our shores, this bizarre event has implications for New Zealand which should not be ignored. It got me to thinking about the attempted coups by electorally defeated presidents in the United States and Brazil.

    This then led on to considering the occupation of Parliament grounds in early 2022 and a recent sighting in a tiny community about seven km away from my home on the Kāpiti Coast.

    In the midst of writing this all up, came the unexpected resignation of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last week. Then union leader Robert Reid popped up with a pertinent observation. But first, Germany.

    German coup-plotters
    Along with 25 other German co-conspirators, one Maximilian Eder was arrested. They were accused of planning to overthrow the state by violent means and install a shadow government headed by a minor German aristocrat.

    Few of these coup plotters were well-known public figures. But they included some with a military background, doctors, judges, gourmet chefs and opera singers, a Lower Saxony civil servant at the criminal police office, and “…several of the ragtag bunch of wannabe revolutionaries seemed to have been radicalised in the comfortably well-off, respectable centre of society.”

    Maximilian Eder
    Maximilian Eder, a leading German far-right coup plotter. . . . genuine commander of one of Germany’s armoured infantry battalions between 1998 and 2000. Image: Political Bytes

    Eder was a genuine commander of one of Germany’s armoured infantry battalions between 1998 and 2000. He had served in Kosovo and Afghanistan and was a founding member of Germany’s special forces command.

    What further rattled Germany’s cage was the inclusion of a former member of the federal parliament from the far-right AfD party. She had knowledge of security arrangements and special access privileges to the complex of parliamentary buildings in the heart of Berlin.

    Eccentrics or serious threat?
    The plotters’ potential targets included seven members of Germany’s Parliament, including the Foreign Minister, conservative opposition, and two leaders of the governing Social Democrat party.

    German police found weapons in 50 of the 150 properties linked to the co-conspirators (there may have been other weapons stashed away elsewhere). This was an insufficient arsenal to overthrow the government of a country with a population of 83 million. However, it was enough to carry out a targeted terror attack killing and maiming many.

    The question remains unanswered as to whether these conspirators really did seriously threaten German democracy as it presently exists or were they “…just a  bunch of eccentrics with a hyperactive imagination…”

    The Reichstag
    Coup conspirators plotted to take over Germany’s Parliament, the Reichstag. Image: Political Bytes

    One of  the difficulties in making this call is that previously the growth of the German far-right had been under-estimated. The relatively recent electoral success of the AfD party was unexpected. Oltermann concluded his interesting article by citing a German terrorism expert who noted that while he didn’t believe the coup-plotters would have overthrown the government, the question that remained was how much damage they would have caused in trying to.

    Washington DC and Brasilia
    While we await a fuller analysis of the extent to which these coup-plotters were a threat to German democracy, we know enough to make some conclusions, especially in an international context.

    The German coup-plotters may have included eccentrics. But their defining characteristic was that they were from that part of the extreme far-right of politics which was prepared to use violence to achieve their objectives.

    There are similarities with two actual attempted coups seeking to overturn election results and putting back into power two far-right presidents who were defeated at the polls. These occurred in the respective capitals of the United States (Washington) in January 2001 and Brazil (Brasilia) two years later.

    These attempts to put Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro back in power were both far-right led and involved short violent destructive occupations of their parliaments. The major difference was significant high-level military involvement in the attempted Brazilian coup.

    Far-right levering off anti-vaccination protests
    In February-March 2022 there was an anti-vaccination occupation of New Zealand’s Parliament Grounds. Last February I published a Political Bytes blog on the far-right agenda  in this occupation.

    My essential point was that the susceptibility, to say the least, of many of these protesters was fertile territory for far-right leaders to exploit, influence and shape its more violent direction. This was well-highlighted in the excellent Fire & Fury podcast documentary published by Stuff.


    Fire & Fury: Who’s driving a violent, misinformed New Zealand – and why?      Video: Stuff

    The documentary has come under some peculiar criticism from those who believe it should have given similar or greater blame for the actions of Parliament’s Speaker in trying to dissuade the occupiers from continuing the protest.

    However, aside from overstating his impact, this criticism misses the whole point of the documentary. Its focus was on what was behind the occupation and related protests, including the significant far-right influence and support.

    One of the biggest beneficiaries of these protests was the far-right Counterspin Media online outlet. It reported the occupation virtually non-stop, quickly becoming the main source of news for the occupiers and their supporters.

    Run by local far-right leaders, Counterspin Media relies on a far-right media outlet in the United States for support (Trump confidant Steve Bannon is in its central leadership). From a very small base its viewing numbers have rocketed upwards.

    The occupation also accelerated the use of two new terms to designate some people within the far-right – “sovereign citizens” and “sheriffs”. The former believe they are not bound by laws unless they personally consent to them. They carry out violence although this is largely verbal.

    The latter, sheriffs, believe they can take the law into their own hands, including apprehending, violence and even execution. In other words, those holding either designation are vigilantes.

    Now to Peka Peka
    This leads on to the peacefully seaside locality Peka Peka on the Kāpiti Coast of the lower North Island with a population of around 700. As it happens, it is seven km from where I live. I frequently cycle through it and walk dogs on its beautiful beach.

    Its name is derived from a native New Zealand bat, the Pekapeka, which represents the interwoven nature of the spirit world and the world of the living — the seen and the unseen.

    But following the end of the occupation of Parliament Grounds a small group of occupiers moved on to the land of a supportive local farmer. While numbers have diminished there are still there.

    While driving past earlier this month I noticed a conspicuous vehicle parked outside on the road as photographs I took show. The vehicle belongs to Counterspin Media.

    The issue at hand was the far-right’s support for the parents of a critically ill baby who tried to deny him access to a life-saving blood transfusion because overwhelmingly donors are vaccinated. They and Counterspin Media have also denied the right of their baby to privacy by breaching a court order for name suppression. [The matter was resolved by the court overruling the parents which enabled a successful transfusion that saved the baby’s life.]

    The "sheriff" is in Peka Peka
    The “sheriff” is in Peka Peka. Image: Political Bytes

    What was particularly relevant to this blog, however, was the fact that the far-right Counterspin Media was present visiting the small group who among them are believed to include sovereign citizens and a sheriff or two.

    It is a very long bow to suggest that the occupation of Parliament Grounds was responsible for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s dramatic resignation last week. Nevertheless its ferocity (including intimidation and threats of execution) and duration rattled her government’s cage and confidence.

    Outgoing NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
    Outgoing NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern . . . many commentators are attributing her resignation to the volume and viciousness of the personal attacks on her, much of which was misogynous. Image: Getty Images/The Conversation

    Many are attributing Arden’s resignation to the volume and viciousness of the personal attacks on her, much of which was misogynous. They are right to make this conclusion but it is much deeper than this. To begin with, had her government been more successful in policy development and implementation or been doing better in the polls, she was less likely to have resigned.

    Former Prime Minister Helen Clark (1999-2008) also came under vicious misogynous attacks but, as she has acknowledged, the attacks on Ardern far exceed those on her. What is the difference? First, social media’s influence in Clark’s time was much less than Ardern’s.

    Second, the far-right was politically much less influential than now. We now have far-right governments in countries such as Italy, Poland, Hungary and India. There are strong far-right movements threatening countries like France and Spain. Both the United States and Brazil have had single term far-right presidents.

    Germany had a follow-up from the December coup-plotters this week with five more far-right activists arrested for a second alleged coup plot, including kidnapping the health minister, to overthrow the government which The Guardian reported on January 23.

    In New Zealand, the far-right’s levering off the anti-vaccination protests has led to an environment of threats through a sense of deluded entitlement, as Stuff reported on January 20, of a magnitude far greater than Clark and her government ever experienced.

    Union leader Robert Reid was as close to getting it right as one can get in a Facebook post on January 20. He observed that, on the one hand, unlike the United States and Brazil, New Zealand was able to keep right-wing and fascist mobs from storming their parliaments.

    However, on the other hand, in New Zealand they “…scored their first victory of bringing down the political leader of the country. Not a good feeling.”

    I agree with Reid but would make the qualification that these far-right influenced and led “mobs” significantly contributed to bringing down a political leader.

    Sociopaths and psychopaths
    Soon after commencing working for the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists over three decades ago, I asked a leading psychiatrist, Dr Allen Fraser, what was the difference between sociopaths and psychopaths (Dr Fraser was the union’s first elected vice-president and second president).

    His response, which I have never forgotten, was to repeat what he advised medical students and doctors-in-training: Sociopaths believe in castles in the sky; psychopaths live in castles in the sky

    In other words, while Helen Clark was threatened by sociopaths, Jacinda Ardern was threatened by psychopaths. The transition from the former to the latter was the increasing influence of the far-right.

    Robert Reid is right; it is not a good feeling. He is a master of the understatement.

    Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Maurice Carney on Patrice Lumumba

     

          CounterSpin230120.mp3

     

    Patrice Lumumba

    Patrice Lumumba, 1960 (photo: Harry Pot)

    This week on CounterSpin: US media elites have gotten comfy with what writer Adam Johnson calls their “wall calendar version” of Martin Luther King, in which he represents the “good” left, unmoved by racial nationalism and Marxist ideology.

    With Patrice Lumumba, assassinated by the CIA on January 17, 1961, as newly elected leader of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the story is different. Look up Lumumba on the anniversary of his murder and you’ll find—nothing, really, except maybe a story about how street vendors in Kinshasa are being pushed off of Lumumba Boulevard to prepare for a visit by the Pope.

    Martin Luther King, corporate media would have it, offers a lesson about hopes and dreams and the slow but steady push toward progress. Lumumba’s assassination, judging by attention, has zero lessons for US citizens or the press corps to learn about the past, the present or the future.

    That’s how you know you should pay attention.

    Maurice Carney, co-founder and executive director of the group Friends of the Congo, has another story. And we hear about it this week on CounterSpin.

          CounterSpin230120Carney.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of the Signal app.

          CounterSpin230120Banter.mp3

     

    The post Maurice Carney on Patrice Lumumba appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Paul Hudson on Airline Meltdown, Melissa Crow on Asylum Policy

     

     

    NBC News depiction of airport chaos

    (NBC News, 12/29/22)

    This week on CounterSpin: Media criticism is, at its heart, consumer advocacy. There’s an unarticulated underpinning to elite media conversation that goes: As a citizen you may have rights, but as a consumer, you don’t have anything called a “right”; the market is an arrangement—the best possible arrangement—but still, you can only hope you’re on the right side of it where it’s profitable to serve you. And if it isn’t, well, too bad. It’s a kind of caveat emptor, devil-take-the-hindmost situation, which would be bad enough if corporate media didn’t present it as though it were unproblematic, and as if we’d all agreed to it! Paul Hudson is president of the consumer group Flyers Rights. He’ll talk about what you did not, in fact, sign up for, in terms of air travel.

          CounterSpin230106Hudson.mp3

     

    Also on the show: Enacted under Trump, Title 42 instructed officials to turn away asylum seekers at US borders in purported protection of the country’s “public health” in the face of Covid-19. Officialspeak currently has it that Covid is over, so far as public regulations go…. Oh except for that exception about denying  hearings to people fleeing violence and persecution in their home country. The Supreme Court has just furthered this injustice with a ruling that, according to one account, “does not overrule the lower court’s decision that Title 42 is illegal; it merely leaves the measure in place while the legal challenges play out in court.” We’ll hear from Melissa Crow, director of litigation at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies.

          CounterSpin230106Crow.mp3

     

    The post Paul Hudson on Airline Meltdown, Melissa Crow on Asylum Policy appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Best of CounterSpin 2022

          CounterSpinBestOf2022.mp3

    All year long CounterSpin brings you a look, as we say, behind the headlines of the mainstream news. We hope both to shine some light on aspects of news events—perspectives of those out of power, relevant but omitted history—important things that might be pushed to the side or off the page entirely in elite media reporting. But it’s also to remind us to be mindful of the practices and policies of corporate news media that make it an unlikely arena for an inclusive, vital debate on issues that matter—that we need.

    CounterSpin is thankful to all of the activists, researchers, reporters and advocates who appear on the show. They help us see the world more clearly as well as the role we can play in changing it. This is just a small selection of some of them.

    Rakeen Mabud

    “Supply Chain Mayhem Will Likely Muck Up 2022”—that New York Times headline got us off to a start of a year of actual hardship, and a lot of obfuscation about that hardship’s sources (2/1/22). The pandemic threw into relief many concerns that it did not create—and offered an opportunity to address them in a serious and not a stopgap way. Rakeen Mabud is chief economist and managing director of policy and research at Groundwork Collaborative. We talked with her early in the year.

     

    Bryce Greene

    The ease with which US media step into saber-rattling mode, the confidence as they soberly suggest people other than themselves might just need to be sent off to a violent death in service of something they can only describe with vague platitudes, should be disturbing. Bryce Greene’s piece, “What You Should Really Know About Ukraine,” got more than 3,000 shares on FAIR.org. 

    The Peace Corps issued a press release warning that African Americans looking to support Ukrainians should accept that they might face racism—because of sooprise, sooprise of how we’re portrayed in US media.

    Layla A. Jones

    Layla A. Jones

    We talked about the basic story the world and the US hears about Black people, thanks to journalism—with Layla A. Jones, reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer. She’s part of the papers’ “A More Perfect Union” project, online at Inquirer.com. 

     

     

    As US media showed there is no playbook too dusty to pull out with their anti-Asian Covid coverage, we talked with Helen Zia, co-founder of American Citizens for Justice, and author of, among other titles,  Asian-American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People,  the 40th remembrance and rededication at VincentChin.org. 

    Jeannie Park

    Jeannie Park

    Of a piece with elite media’s denial that racist harm is still meaningfully happening is the flicking away of efforts—decades long, thoughtful, inclusive efforts—to address that harm. We talked with  Coalition for a Diverse Harvard‘s Jeannie Park about affirmative action at Harvard University. 

    Muslim Advocates' Sumayyah Waheed

    Sumayyah Waheed

    In September of this year, CNN hired John Miller as “chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst,”—a clear message to Muslim communities and anyone who cares about them—given that as deputy commissioner of intelligence and counter-terrorism for the New York Police Department, Miller told a New York City Council meeting that “there is no evidence” that the NYPD surveilled Muslim communities in the wake of September 11, 2001—”based,” he said, “on every objective study that’s been done.” We listened, instead, to Sumayyah Waheed, senior policy council at Muslim Advocates. 

    CounterSpin listeners understand that the news media situation in this country works against our democratic aspirations. There are so many problems crying out for open, inclusive conversation, in which those with the most power don’t get the biggest megaphone, leaving the vast majority outside of power to try and shout into the dominant noise, or try to find the space to talk around it.

    Corporate media work hard, will always work hard, to tell us that it’s their way or the highway….it’s just not true.

    Free Press's Mike Rispoli

    Mike Rispoli

    One of many projects we should know about that show us a way forward is one in New Jersey—that didn’t talk about shoring up old media outlets, which are for sure suffering… but about instead about invigorating community information needs—a very different thing! The New Jersey Civic Information Consortium uses public funding to support more informed communities. We talked with an early mover on the project Mike Rispoli, senior director of journalism policy Mike Rispoli at Free Press. 

    The post Best of CounterSpin 2022 appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.

  • Lisa Gilbert on the January 6 Report

     

     

    Rioters at the Capitol on January 6

    Image from January 6 Report (photo: Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

    This week on CounterSpin: The House committee on the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol heard more than 1,000 witness interviews and held multiple public hearings, resulting in criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Donald Trump, lawyer John Eastman and others involved in violent efforts to override the results of Trump’s electoral loss.

    The committee released transcripts showing some two dozen witnesses invoking their right against self-incrimination. Eastman, key advisor to Trump on how to overturn the election, cited his Fifth Amendment right 155 times. At one point, Democratic House member Jamie Raskin asked GOP operative Roger Stone if he believed “coups are allowed in our constitutional system.” To which Stone said, “I most definitely decline to respond to your question.”

    But the headwinds the Committee’s recommendations face are not just from the MAGA hatters, but also the Very Smart People who will tell us that our desire for justice is really just partisan or, worse, blood lust—and what we really ought to do, what the intelligent people would do, is, well, nothing. Let wiser heads prevail. We’re having none of that.

    We spoke with Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of Public Citizen and co-founder of the forged-for-purpose Not Above the Law Coalition, about what the hearings found and why it can’t end there.

          CounterSpin221223Gilbert.mp3

     

    Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Elon Musk, inflation and deadly conservatism.

          CounterSpin221223Banter.mp3

     

    The post Lisa Gilbert on the January 6 Report appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Richard Wiles on Fossil Fuel Lies, Rebecca Vallas on Disability Economics

     

          CounterSpin221216.mp3

     

    This week on CounterSpin: When the Keystone pipeline spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of hard-to-clean, sludgy oil in Kansas, AP‘s headline explained that the disaster “raises questions” about the pipeline’s operation. The utterly predictable harms of fossil fuel companies are forever “raising questions” for elite media. What in the world would happen if they were seen as answering them, and calling for requisite response? We talk about the latest revelations about fossil fuel industry lying about climate change with Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity.

          CounterSpin221216Wiles.mp3

     

    Disability rights are workers' rights.

    Disability Economic Justice Collaborative (11/2/22)

    Also on the show: As powerful people call loudly for a “post-Covid” “return to normal,” many are demanding we acknowledge that not only are we not post-Covid, but that “normal” was not actually good for millions of us. Rebecca Vallas is senior fellow and co-director of the Disability Economic Justice Collaborative, based out of the Century Foundation. We talk with her about what that new project does, and why they need to do it.

          CounterSpin221216Valles.mp3

     

    The post Richard Wiles on Fossil Fuel Lies, Rebecca Vallas on Disability Economics appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on CounterSpin.