This week on CounterSpin: Some are wondering if the fatal shooting of 14 people in San Bernardino—along with a chart in the Washington Post showing that the year so far has included more mass shootings than days—might be the push corporate media need to stop covering gun control as a “culture war” issue on which “some say/others differ,” and move toward approaching it as an urgent public health concern.
A similar shift seems called for on abortion—which corporate media treat as, first and foremost, a “debate”—as though it can’t be the subject of straight reporting. But if media’s takeaway from the violent murders of three people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, by a man reportedly ranting about “baby parts,” is that “both sides” need to tone down their rhetoric, then women and women’s reproductive rights will be taking a step backward.
We’ll discuss the broader context for the Colorado Springs killings and how to move forward on reproductive justice with Jodi Jacobson, editor-in-chief of RH Reality Check.
And first, as usual, we’ll take a look back at the week’s press, including selective reporting on civilian deaths, Argentine elections and a forgotten massacre in Paris.
The American media either dismiss banning guns or fail to discuss the subject altogether. Our Fourth Estate generally assumes that tighter gun controls are the answer, while failing to point out that nearly all of our recent gun massacres have been committed with properly registered guns.
What does that tell us about the American media? That they have been bought off.
We are not just dealing here with gun mayhem. It is only one of the inevitable consequences of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in January, 2010, which handed the federal government over to the highest bidders.
Note to the sysadmins: I very much enjoyed being able to download separate segments, being on a fixed-monthly-data ISP. You stopped doing that after the 20 Nov CounterSpin. Could you please resume? I appreciate it’s extra work but it’s useful for my usecase and also for folks who want to post links to specific pieces (for, e.g., blogs and comments).
Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina are “serious people”?!?
Please!
John Q – –“in January, 2010… handed the federal government over to the highest bidder”
Problem is, in your comment you propose two absolutely impossible things.
For how can government be turned over to High Society, when in 1776 Empire USA was created by High Society and for the purpose of legalizing chain slavery, bond slavery and a police state for the laboring-class?
For how can mainstream media be “bought off,” when from the days of the town crier and the invention of the printing press, High Society has destroyed all hope of freedom of speech by a dictatorship called ownership, by their owning/funding all means of public communications? In short, how can there be freedom of speech when there is no freedom to be heard?
Good news — Bible in absolute support of Pro Choice
For in the early Christian church, in honor of their Lord’s example, everyone was a pacifist and the deadly force of government was considered to be diametrically opposed to all that Christianity stood for. It is written:
“Jesus said… You have a Command from Moses, ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ But now I give you a
New Command. Do not use force to overcome evil. If they strike you on the right cheek turn to them the
Other.” Matthew 5:37 OGV
“Every man – government with its deadly force he must be in submission to. Never for an absolute is there force that kills if not under God. The reason being, by God it is allowed to prove the corruption of it… Therefore it is necessary to be subject, not only because of the retribution, but also because of conscience. Because of this then also taxes pay to government authorities who rule by deadly force. For the Lord allows it to exist to establish something, for their terrorism in this way continues without end.” Romans 13:1-6 OGV
For everyone with extra wealth, at a time when over half a billion children are slowly starving to death, they are just as guilty of an immoral act as a woman who refused to carry full-term her unborn baby. And this is why our Constitution erects an absolute barrier between moral crime and civil crime, otherwise we all would be locked in prison and government would have no one to tax.
Abortion is murder.
Redistribution of wealth is coming, so nations who have waxen fat beware and heed the warnings.