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This week on CounterSpin:

When Robert Kennedy Jr. was just a famously named man about town, we heard about how he dumped a bear carcass in Central Park for fun, believes that children’s gender is shaped by chemicals in the water, and asserts that Covid-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” while leaving “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” immune.

But once you become RFK Jr., secretary of health and human services in a White House whose anger must not be drawn, those previously unacceptable ideas become, as a recent New York Times piece has it, “unorthodox.”

Kennedy’s unorthodox ideas may get us all killed while media whistle. We hear from Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, about that.

For many years, social justice advocates rather discounted the Federal Communications Commission. Unlike the Federal Trade Commission or the Food and Drug Administration, whose actions had visible impacts on your life, the FCC didn’t seem like a player.

That changed over recent years, as we’ve seen the role the federal government plays in regulating the power of media corporations to control the flow of information. As the late, great media scholar Bob McChesney explained, “When the government grants free monopoly rights to TV spectrum … it is not setting the terms of competition; it is picking the winner.”

We’ll talk about the FCC under Trump with Jessica González, co-CEO of the group McChesney co-founded, Free Press.

The post Paul Offit on RFK Jr. and Measles / Jessica González on Trump’s FCC appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

Israel has abandoned the ceasefire agreement and restarted its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza — a war that has destroyed the region and killed tens of thousands of human beings. The ceasefire, as Gaza-based writer Hassan Abo Qamar, among others, reminds us, still allowed Israel to deprive Palestinians in Gaza of “food, water, medical care, education and freedom of movement.” But it wasn’t enough and, as Belén Fernández writes for FAIR.org, Israel’s U.S.-endorsed resumption of all-out genocide killed at least 404 Palestinians right off the bat but was reported in, for instance, the New York Times as “Israel Tries to Pressure Hamas to Free More Hostages.”

We know that elite media will tell us someday that the whole world was horrified by the genocide of Palestinians, and that journalists decried it. But someday is not today. We need reporters who aren’t not afraid they will be targeted but who may be afraid and are nevertheless bearing witness. Reporters like Hossam Shabat, 23-year-old Palestinian correspondent for Al Jazeera and Drop Site News, targeted and killed March 24, and not even the first Israeli journalist assassination for the day: hours earlier, Palestine Today reporter Mohammad Mansour was killed in an Israeli strike on his home in southern Gaza.

We talk about this with reporter Michael Arria, U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss and the force behind their new feature called “Power & Pushback.”

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of transphobia and remembers FAIR board member Robert McChesney.

The post Michael Arria on Gaza Pushback appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

News site Popular Information alerted us to new Social Security Administration policy effectively requiring tens of thousands of recipients, by the agency’s own estimation, to travel to a field office to verify their ID. An internal memo predicts the shift will create “service disruption,” “operational strain,” and “budget shortfalls” — unsurprising, given concurrent staffing cuts and field office closures. The inevitable harms will no doubt be declared part of a necessary attempt to purge “fraud” from the system that has disbursed earned benefits to elderly and disabled people for generations.

Journalists have choices. They can, as did the Record-Journal of Meriden, Connecticut, report that the cuts derive from repeated claims of fraud from Elon Musk that are “without evidence,” that Trump echoes Musk’s “unfounded statements,” and then quote a retiree advocate noting that accusations of loads of dead folks collecting benefits are “baseless,” and put the words “fact sheet” in appropriate irony quotes when describing a missive from the White House.

Or you can go the route of the Arizona Republic, and lead with the notion that the interference in Social Security is most importantly part of Musk’s “implementing … measures to trim costs throughout the government.” Mention that the actions have “stirred a range of emotions, from cautious hope that the federal government might finally bring its deficit spending under control, to frantic fears that benefit cuts could undermine the financial or health security of millions of Americans” go on to ask, earnestly, “Where does Trump stand on Social Security and other benefits?” and begin with a White House statement “reiterating that the president supports these programs.” In paragraph 19, you might throw in that public polling shows that “most Americans would favor revenue increases rather than benefit cuts to Social Security,” which would include “requiring high-income individuals to pay taxes on more of their earnings.”

In short, easily verified facts, along with “most Americans,” can be centered or tangential in your reporting on the drastic, opaque changes aimed at the program that keeps the wolf from the door for millions of people but for Musk/Trump represents yet another pile of money they feel belongs to them and theirs. All that’s in the balance are human lives and health, and the ability of working people to plan for our futures.

We’ll talk about the new, yet also old, attacks on Social Security with Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent media coverage of Mahmoud Khalil, deportations and the FTC.

The post Nancy Altman on Social Security Attacks appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

In early February, when Representative Maxwell Frost tweeted that he and Representative Maxine Waters were denied access to the Department of Education, Elon Musk responded on the platform he owns: “What is this ‘Department of Education’ you keep talking about? I just checked and it doesn’t exist.” That, we understand, was the shadow president skating where the puck’s gonna be, as they say; a month later, we learned that indeed newly appointed Education Secretary Linda McMahon is tasked not with running but with erasing the department.

Elite media have talked about the political machinations, how this was expected, how it fits with Trump/Musk’s grand schemes. When it comes to what will happen to the under-resourced schools, and the students with disabilities for whom the DoE supported access and recourse for discrimination? Media seem happy with McMahon’s handwaving about how that stuff might be better off in a different agency.

The impacts of policy on people with disabilities are overwhelmingly an afterthought for corporate media, even though it’s a large community, and one anyone can join at any moment. We talked, on March 5, with journalist and historian David Perry about the threats McMahon and MAGA pose to people — including students — with disabilities.

You wouldn’t know it from what comes out of the mouths of today’s “leaders,” but there has long been a widely shared view in this country that people with disabilities deserve full human rights, but don’t have them. July 2023 marked the 33rd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And, as happens every year, a dismaying amount of the anniversary coverage was about buildings or spaces coming into compliance with the ADA — as though complying with a decades-old law was a feel-good story and despite the relative absence of feel-bad stories about decades of noncompliance.

CounterSpin spoke at the time with Kehsi Iman Wilson, co-founder of New Disabled South, about what’s lost when the public conversation around disability justice revolves around abiding by a baseline law, rather than a bigger vision of a world we can all live in. We revisit that conversation this week on CounterSpin.

The post David Perry on MAGA and Disability / Kehsi Iman Wilson on ADA (2023) appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

A NASA official warned workers to maybe think about not wearing their badges in public, to protect themselves from harassment against people identifiable as federal workers by MAGA randos who feel deputized by Trump and Musk to do whatever it is Trump and Musk suggest.

It’s early days of the Trump/Musk federal smash and grab, and the harms are already piling up. But so too is the resistance. And federal workers, presumed to be easy targets — based in part on years of corporate media coverage telling us government is fat and lazy and the private sector does everything better — are also on the front lines of the fightback.

We talk about the power of workers — with or without a union — with labor activist and organizer Eric Blanc. He’s assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University and author of the new book We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Trump’s congressional speech, “DOGE” and town hall repression.

The post Eric Blanc on Worker-to-Worker Organizing appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

Just because we might witness the daylight robbery of the social benefits we’ve been paying for and counting on for the entirety of our working lives, and just because Black people are no longer officially allowed to even mentor Black people coming in to fields they’ve been historically excluded from, and just because any program receiving public funding will now have to pretend there are “two genders” — doesn’t mean the environment isn’t still in immediate peril. It is.

But the lawsuits of deep-pocketed fossil fuel corporations against any and everyone who dares challenge their profiteering destruction are really also about our ability as non-billionaires to use our voice to speak out about anything. Not speaking out is increasingly a non-option. So where are we? We’ll learn about a case that is “weaponizing the legal system” against anyone who wants a livable future from Kirk Herbertson, U.S. director for advocacy and campaigns at EarthRights International.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent coverage of the FCC, the Washington Post, and Medicaid.

The post Kirk Herbertson on Big Oil’s Lawsuit Against Environmentalism appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

Donald Trump has declared that the U.S. is going to “take over” the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinians who live there will be “permanently” exiled. Asked whether Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza under his scheme, Trump said “no.” But even those corporate media who aren’t actually endorsing this illegal, inhumane plan still can’t seem to find it in themselves to call it what it is: ethnic cleansing.

Media critic, activist, and teacher Gregory Shupak has been looking into big media’s systematic refusal to use appropriate language about the human rights crimes unfolding before our eyes in Palestine. He teaches English and media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto and author of the book The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, from OR Books.

There is a deep, if muddled, sense that the U.S. tax system is unfair. The little guy pays too much and rich folks and corporations find loopholes and offshore accounts. And then, on a different page, there’s a story about how “we” as a country just don’t have “enough resources” to allow school kids to eat lunch, because that would mean the dreaded higher taxes!

Media outlets that fail to make meaningful connections — between those clever offshore accounts and the supposed inability to fund school lunch; between cutting funding for the IRS and doubling down on people who use the Earned Income Tax Credit — are certainly not the ones to look to for an understanding of the racial impacts of supposedly neutral tax policy and practices, however demonstrable those impacts may be. We’ll talk about that with Portia Allen-Kyle, interim executive director at Color of Change and author of the report Preying Preparers.

The post Gregory Shupak on Palestine Ethnic Cleansing / Portia Allen-Kyle on Tax Unfairness appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

A number of federal agencies rushed to make clear they would be scrubbing activities and events that “celebrate cultural awareness” in an effort to stay on the good side of the weird new White House. Trump and his abettors’ anti-anti-discrimination agenda is as subtle as a sledgehammer. “DEI hire,” for instance, is super-complicated code for the idea that if a person who isn’t white, cis, and male got a job, that can only mean a better qualified white cis man was unfairly denied it. That’s just, Trump says, “common sense.”

The irony is not lost that history itself is seen as being manipulated for political purpose when it comes to Black History Month — because we know that history is constantly invoked, if implicitly, as a way of justifying present-day unfairness. White supremacy can be presented as natural if white people invented everything, discovered everything, created all the wealth, and defined civilization.

What people try to silence tells us what they fear. So what is so scary about everyone, not just Black people, acknowledging the particular circumstances, and responses to those circumstances, of Black people in these United States — our experience, challenges, accomplishments? Is it that history — real history, and not comforting tall tales — connects the past with the present in ways that are powerful, grounding, and inspiring?

In March 2021, a hitherto no-name right-wing activist openly declared an intention to mislead around racism and to vilify any questioning of enduring racial inequities: “The goal,” wrote Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, “is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory’.” He bragged that he had “successfully frozen” the “brand” of critical race theory, and was “steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.”

A self-respecting press corps would have taken that as a shot across the bow. The corporate news media we have dutifully signed on to present a campaign openly defined as uninterested in truth or humanity and concerned only with rolling back the clock on racial equity as a totally valid, “grassroots” perspective, deserving respectful inclusion in national conversation.

That was a jumping-off point for our conversation with law professor Luke Charles Harris, co-founder with Kimberle Crenshaw of the African American Policy Forum. We hear that important conversation again this week.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of Venezuela, Elon Musk, and ICE.

The post Luke Charles Harris on Critical Race Theory (2021) appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

We know that once corporate news label something “controversial,” we’re in for reporting with a static “some say / others differ” frame — even if one “side” of the “controversy” is a relatively small group of people who don’t believe in science or human rights or democracy. As the Trump White House comes out fast and furious against transgender people, their weird hatefulness lands in a public arena that generally rejects discrimination, but also in an elite media climate in which the very lives of transgender people have long been deemed “subject to debate.” We’ll hear about the current state of things from civil rights attorney Ezra Young.

When the New York Times reported Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s revelation that parasites have eaten part of his brain, Kennedy, running for president at the time, offered to “eat five more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate.” We’re reminded of such “jokes” now, as Kennedy looks likely to be head of Health and Human Services, along with his claims that vaccines cause autism and chicken soup cures measles. But to resist Kennedy, we need to understand what fuels those who, even if they don’t like him, believe he might be a force for good in their lives. Anne Sosin is a public health researcher and practitioner based at Dartmouth College, who encourages looking around RFK Jr. to the communities that imagine he’s speaking for them.

The post Ezra Young on Trans Rights Law / Anne Sosin on RFK Jr. and Rural Health appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin:

You may remember the testimony: former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz pouting to a Senate hearing on the company’s union-busting in which he was referred to as a billionaire that using that “moniker constantly is unfair”: “Yes, I have billions of dollars — I earned it. No one gave it to me. And I’ve shared it constantly with the people of Starbucks.”

The delusion that a billionaire “earned” every penny of it, or that it is shared equitably with workers, may be special to billionaires, but the broader notion — that “the government only helps some people; other people do it on their own” is conveyed throughout corporate media’s narrative, even as it’s corrosive to an understanding of democracy, much less the fight for it. The increasing influence of not merely the rich, but the super rich, on the politics and policy we all have to live with is an urgent story, if not a new one. Yet somehow, elite media seem less and less interested in it.

We’ll talk with David Kass, executive director of the Americans for Tax Fairness campaign, about that on this week’s show.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at some recent press coverage of Trump’s illegal funding freeze, immigration raids and the Gaza death toll.

The post David Kass on Billionaire Election-Buying appeared first on KPFA.