The Dissenter Update

Host Kevin Gosztola is joined by guest Adam Rose, who is the press rights chair for the Los Angeles Press Club. He discusses lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. 

Host Kevin Gosztola is joined by guest Jeff Cohen, the founder of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), the co-founder of RootsAction.org, and author of “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.” We discuss corporate media capitulation during Donald Trump's second presidential term. Jeff is a longtime media critic, who has spoken out against media conglomerates' ties to military contractors. Both Kevin and Jeff speak about how war led them to prioritize media reform advocacy. And later in the episode, Jeff recalls fighting the FCC in 2003 as the invasion and occupation of Iraq unfolded and war propaganda filled the airwaves.

Host Kevin Gosztola discusses the role of Western prestige media organizations in the mass starvation and death that the world is witnessing now in Gaza. In particular, as with families and their children, the last remaining Palestinian and Arab journalists are at risk of dying due to lack of food, water, medical care, etc. Headlines include a whistleblower revelation related to the Jeffrey Epstein files and extreme government secrecy as well as the release of 240,000 the Martin Luther King Jr. files.  

Host Kevin Gosztola talks with Los Angeles-based journalist Tina-Desiree Berg about ICE and the threat they pose to freedom of the press. Tina-Desiree and other journalists recently won an injunction in a lawsuit against the LAPD. A federal court ordered the police to stop shooting them with rubber bullets, tear gas, and other projectiles. 

Headlines for the week include the FBI using lie detector tests to identify disloyal personnel and death threats over political cartoon force cancellation of journalism event in Buffalo, New York.

Host Kevin Gosztola speaks with George Maschke, a former U.S. Army interrogator and reserve intelligence officer, about the Trump administration's reliance on lie detector tests to enforce secrecy. Maschke is the co-founder of AntiPolygraph.org, and he was falsely accused of being a spy after the FBI subjected him to a polygraph exam. 

Headlines include Spanish language journalist Mario Guevara outrageously remaining in ICE detention and the Trump administration attacking the legacy media that covered a leaked DIA intelligence assessment on US attacks on Iran's nuclear energy sites.

Chip Gibbons, policy director for Defending Rights and Dissent, joins host Kevin Gosztola for to further discuss the case against CIA analyst Asif Rahman, who was sentenced to three years and a month in prison. Gibbons reported on the sentencing for The Dissenter. 

Headlines for this edition include a Boeing whistleblower warning of Dreamliner problems prior to the Air India crash that killed 241 people and San Francisco police detaining two student journalists covering ICE protests—twice. 

Host Kevin Gosztola discusses the FBI sting operation that led to the arrest of a Defense Intelligence Agency employee, who allegedly agreed to trade state secrets for citizenship in Germany because he opposes President Donald Trump's agenda. Headlines for this edition include an Australia appeals court rejecting Australia war crimes whistleblower's David McBride challenge to his prison sentence and the Nevada Supreme Court effectively ruling that police may not sue Nevada residents over records requests. 

Host Kevin Gosztola is joined by Andy Lee Roth, a Project Censored editor at large, for a conversation about Big Tech algorithms and how they determine what content we see. Andy goes on to share the work he has been doing on algorithmic literacy for the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri.

Headlines include Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard firing intelligence officials for releasing a bombshell memo and a police whistleblower in Nashville, Tennessee, facing criminal charges in retaliation for exposing corruption.

Host Kevin Gosztola marks President Donald Trump's first 100 days in his second term. He is joined by two guests from the Freedom of the Press Foundation —Seth Stern, the advocacy director, and Lauren Harper, the Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy.

Seth assesses the daily attacks on press freedom that occurred, and Lauren describes several alarming developments related to the public's access to government information. They both discuss what is being done to fight back and how they feel about the effectiveness of this resistance thus far.

Host Kevin Gosztola highlights the case of Tesla whistleblower Cristina Balan. She recently won an appeal against Tesla and the company's CEO Elon Musk. This victory in her legal battle could lead to a trial where Musk testifies in court. 

Headlines include Israeli military strike killing Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna and a U.S. judge signaling that he's open to the Trump White House excluding not just the Associated Press but all newswire services from the White House press pool.