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.

Transcript: ‘This Media Is Meant to Change People, and It Does’

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