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This week on CounterSpin: If US news media never used the terms “wake-up call” or “racial reckoning” again, with regard to the latest instance of institutional white supremacy brought to light, that would be fine. Far better would be for them to do the work of not just acknowledging that US news media have supported and inflicted racist harms throughout this country’s history, but shedding critical light on the hows and whys of those harms—and taking seriously the idea of repairing them and replacing them with a media ecosystem that better serves us all. The Media 2070: Media Reparations Project encourages conversation and action around that vision. We’ll hear about the work from Alicia Bell, a co-creator and founding director of Media 2070 and current director of the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund, housed within Borealis Philanthropy. And from Collette Watson, director of Media 2070 and vice president of cultural strategy at the group Free Press.

Transcript: “‘There’s a Lot of Jubilance and Healing in Reparations'”

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of student debt relief, China’s zero-Covid policy and Afghan sanctions.