Michael Hiltzik on ‘No One Wants to Work!’
Do elite media have space for people who don’t want to risk their lives for less money than they need to live?
UN Rebuke of US Sanctions on Venezuela Met With Stunning Silence
By omitting the devastating impact of sanctions, corporate media attribute sole responsibility for economic and humanitarian conditions to the Venezuelan government, thereby using the misery provoked by sanctions to validate the infliction of even more misery.
On Sunday Shows, the Only Biden ‘Promise’ That Matters Is Compromise
To hear corporate media tell it, the most important promise—and the only one they will hold him accountable for—is one Biden never even made: to compromise with the GOP for the sake of compromising.
Billionaire-Owned Media Look Out for Neediest by Demanding They Get No More Money
The $2,000 check is indeed far from a perfect plan to help ordinary Americans, yet if it is the only plan currently on the table, many in corporate media are inclined to leave it there.
‘We Structure the Market to Create Inequality’
“Just as we know that trickle-down, giving money to the rich, doesn’t help—we know long-term unemployment hurts. A lot of the people that are unemployed six, eight, ten months, they may never work again.”
Lisa Gilbert on Lame Duck Trump, Dean Baker on Trickle-Down Economics
While we await the day that Trump’s face and voice are no longer at the top of every newscast, it ain’t over til it’s over. And harms he does as a lame duck are harms nonetheless.
‘Independent Media Is About Introducing People to Each Other’
“The reality that we live in today is not immutable. It is the product of choices, of power dynamics, of motivations of certain sectors over others, a set of priorities that we can shift. And not just in some abstract, pie-in-the-sky, theoretical thinking, but actually right here, right now.”
Steve Wamhoff on Trump and Taxes
Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, discusses the takeaways from Trump’s taxes.
What Media Aren’t Telling You About Reopening Risks
While the question of how quickly to reopen will affect potentially millions of lives, equally important is asking what science can tell us about how to reopen.
Corporate Media Sideline Proposals to Relieve Those Hardest Hit by Covid Crunch
Covid-related arrears put nearly a quarter of all US households at risk of eviction or foreclosure, according to one estimate (Washington Post, 5/31/20). The poor and people of color are the hardest hit, not just by the novel coronavirus but also by the economic fallout: More than half of lower-income adults say they or someone […]
Proposals to Ease Covid’s Blow on the Hardest Hit All but Ignored by Corporate Media
It’s easy enough to find reporting in major US news outlets describing the hardships many Americans are facing. But lamenting inequality is one thing, and acknowledging—or, God forbid, highlighting—efforts to rectify it are very much another for corporate media.
We Can Stop a Million Deaths—but Will We?
It may be unlikely that the United States will summon the political will to implement a realistic plan for not just delaying, but stopping Covid-19. But it’s crucial for media reporting on options in the fight against the outbreak to distinguish.
We Can Stop a Million Deaths—but Will We?
It may be unlikely that the United States will summon the political will to implement a realistic plan for not just delaying, but stopping Covid-19. But it’s crucial for media reporting on options in the fight against the outbreak to distinguish.
US Jobless Rate Broke Depression-Era Record—but Most Media Missed It
Ignored by nearly all US news organizations, at least initially, was an explanation that the official unemployment rate was actually incorrect.
Learning All the Wrong Lessons From the 2008 Financial Crisis
When reporters and editorial contributors to the New York Times reiterate the notion that government spending is anathema, or that we need to be worrying about debt even as we fight the coronavirus, we are setting ourselves up for a rerun of the response to the global financial crisis,
Lives or Profits? For Corporate Media, It’s a Tough Question
It is perhaps not surprising that the view that profits are more important than lives has been treated as a reasonable opinion by corporate media.
Corporate Looting as ‘Rescue Plan,’ Robber Barons as ‘Saviors’
For a perfect illustration of how corporate media function as ruling class propaganda, watch how they spin a titanic upward redistribution of wealth as a “rescue plan” for the US economy, and paint a robber baron like US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin as a “savior” of the American public.
Economic Reporting on Hardships of Pandemic Should Explore Market Failures
Editorial boards and journalists should frame economic and public health problems in more structural and systemic terms going forward as they consider the scope of the pandemic.
‘The Federal Government Has the Resources That Could Stave Off the Economic Pain People Are Already Feeling’
“This is really an opportunity to think bigger and think in a bolder way than we have before about what it’s going to take, not just to fill the gaps in our infrastructure that the crisis has so clearly laid bare, but also to think beyond, about what we want our economy to look like.”
‘These Devices Making the Super-Wealthy Super-Wealthier Will Have to Come Apart’
“We now have 28 years of experience with Reaganism. The average income of the bottom 90% of Americans is today what it was back in 1980, when you adjust for inflation, and the incomes of the top tenth of 1% and above have gone through the roof. It doesn’t work.”
