On Spec Podcast

In Season Four, we bring you stories from six countries.  Next, we take a personal look at the Ukraine refugee crisis.

The French town of Calais is at the heart of a massive security infrastructure program meant to keep refugees and migrants from crossing the English Channel into the United Kingdom. Over the past 20 years, French and British authorities have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on walls, fences, cameras, more police, and security agents to keep people away from the shores. In order to do so, private firms have benefited from multi-year contracts to build, maintain or operate in the city and specifically around the port and railway tunnel areas. Rights organizations and other NGOs say that the infrastructure only forces migrants and refugees to seek out more perilous routes to the UK. Journalists Margaux Benn and Judith Chetrit report from the ground and shed light on this corner of Fortress Europe.

In Africa, herbal treatments are used to heal viruses in the absence of  modern medicine, but disinformation about these treatments and how they  can cure COVID-19 is having a deadly impact. Government officials and  local healers out to make money sell these treatments with fake news.  Congolese journalist Patrice Chitera, who has used these treatments for  his ailments in the past, adds his own story as well as those impacted  by these herbal meds. Patrice questions who to hold accountable for the  loss of lives in a country where there’s little trust of those in power.

Hong Kong protesters were on the streets for more than a year to fight for their freedom of expression after China announced laws to further curb their rights in 2019. Police violently attacked protestors, threw opposition politicians in jail and the country has been polarized as disinformation spreads. Journalist Lisa Jane Harding, based in Hong Kong for 19 years, reports through the eyes of a politician and a chef supporting opposing sides on how the protests split Hong Kong, and if the city can regain lost freedoms.

Some of the world’s most active climate deniers reside in the United States. Arkansas suffers from flooding and is one of the conservative red states where many farmers, who have the most to benefit from green policies, are actually voting against their best interests because of disinformation. Arkansas native and journalist Alice Driver introduces an organic farmer, who’s a climate activist, to a state senator, a climate change skeptic who also happens to be her neighbor, to see if they can find common ground.

Suno India speaks with journalists Prachi Pinglay and Kunal Shankar, who produced On Spec's Season 3, Episode 4 - Love in Times of Hate.  They discuss what the impact of fake news has been on India, and what it was like reporting and putting together the episode for On Spec. 

The Modi government has an agenda to make India a Hindu nation, and they have tapped into old prejudices and disinformation to brainwash influential and ordinary people into hating minorities, particularly Muslims. Indian journalist Prachi Pinglay Plumber is a Hindu married to a Muslim, and she touches on her own experience of interfaith marriage, as she tells the tale of India’s demise from a secular democracy to a country that has used fake news to fuel riots. She unravels the Delhi riots in 2020 through the lens of a Muslim family living in a Hindu neighborhood, and a right wing Hindu activist. And she asks, how is love possible in the midst of broiling animosity?

Since the elections in Brazil that brought Jair Bolsonaro to power,  Brazilian journalists Giovana Fleck and Carol Grune have been hearing  politicians insult women, threaten them with rape, and try to take away  their rights as women. For Carol, the polarized politics of Brazil led  to a breakup with her father. Giovana helps Carol tell her story as the  father and daughter quarantine together in Porto Alegre. Carol and her  parents are on different sides of the feminist debate in Brazil, and  they hash out their their political differences, realizing the divisions  are really about their own identities.

Putin’s Russia is a homophobic country. The state media spouts anti-gay rhetoric and creates fake news, Parliament passes laws that curtail LGBTQ activism, and hate crimes are on the rise. But in bigger cities, there are also thriving gay scenes, and a new generation of Russian activists is seeking to change public opinion. British journalist Theo Merz, who’s gay, takes us to Moscow where he lives across these two Russias. He explores this rainbow divide and brings two people with radically different viewpoints face to face for a discussion about sexual identity.