Atlanta Murders Reporting Relied on Law Enforcement Narratives
At local and national levels, the initial media response focused primarily on the gunman’s story and police statements.
Ari Berman on the Attack on Voting Rights
Do elite media think that whether or not the US, in 2021, under pressure from racists, goes back on the whole “one person one vote” thing is a legitimate topic for debate?
‘Raising the Minimum Wage Has Direct Implications for Black Families’
“It is very clear that the people making decisions, at the national level, whether or not to increase the minimum wage are not representative of those folks who will be affected by a minimum wage increase, which is really women of color: Black and Latinas and Native American women and Asian women.”
‘When Other People Tell Our Stories, They Get It Wrong and Cause Us Great Harm’
The February 26, 2021, episode of CounterSpin included an archival interview Janine Jackson conducted with Joseph Torres of Free Press about his book News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, originally aired December 23, 2011. This is a lightly edited transcript. Janine Jackson: The Kansas City […]
Michelle Holder on Black Women & Minimum Wage, Alice O’Connor on the War on Poverty
While a federal minimum wage increase would affect millions of workers and the social fabric, it would have particular impact on one “essential” yet somehow expendable group: Black women.
Mitch Jones on Texas Freeze-Outs, Joe Torres on News for All the People
If media really expect people to actively challenge the promises pushed—aggressively and constantly—by the energy industry, maybe they could do a little more challenging themselves.
‘Woke Capital’ Isn’t Real—but Conservative Fearmongering Is
The Republican Party is looking toward a rebranding where it can channel anti-business rage toward standing athwart social progress on race, gender and sexuality.
You Can’t Fight White Supremacy With White Supremacy
The default reflex among corporate media, in step with the dominant US narrative, is to see cops and soldiers as good guys, and their presence as benign and reassuring.
Flint ‘Really Comes Down to People Not Being Listened To’
“Flint is a failure on a number of different levels, a failure from the city level to the state level to the federal level.”
Chris Savage, Talia Buford & Peggy Case on Flint Water Crisis
Conversations about Flint on CounterSpin, in its particulars and in terms of how it fits into bigger questions around environmental racism, resource control and local governance.
Reports of Racial Disparities in Covid Vaccines Distort Science
Much of the scientific journalism on US Covid vaccines has been inaccurate, misleading, fearmongering and irresponsible.
‘The Lost Cause in Some Ways Won the Civil War’
“I think we’ve underestimated how much you can whip up racism and xenophobia by just saying, ‘You were robbed of this, you’ve got something to be angry over, you’ve got something to be aggrieved about.’”
Keri Leigh Merritt on the New Lost Cause, Elisabeth Rosenthal on Troubled Vaccine Rollout
Historians are shaking their heads as media talk about January 6 as “unprecedented”; while shocking and dispiriting, it has layers and layers of precedent that need to be learned and engaged, if we are ever to actually have the racial reckoning that corporate media are forever insisting we’ve already had.
‘This Order Puts the Weight of the Federal Government Behind Anti-Antiracism’
“Critical Race Theory [is] basically the idea that we still have problems with structural racism, and we don’t get away from those problems by not talking about it, by having the ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ approach.”
Kimberlé Crenshaw on the Equity Gag Order
Trump’s obviously suppressive executive order has been largely shrugged off by media that ought to be sounding the alarm.
Latinx Voting Surge Boosted Biden’s Victory—but That’s Not the Story Corporate Media Want to Tell
The fact that in a few places in Texas and Florida, the Latinx vote appeared to move toward the right hardly negates the fact that the overall Latinx vote grew tremendously, and those votes overall went by large margins to the Democrats.
‘These Players Have Had a Very Special Place in American History’
“The Black athlete is the most important and most influential and most visible Black employee in the 20th century, because they’re the ones who were allowed to integrate the society.”
Heidi Beirich on White Supremacist Violence, Howard Bryant on Black Athlete Activism, Sharon Lerner on Plastic Recycling and PR
This week on CounterSpin, we feature three archived but relevant conversations.
Not All Criticism of Kamala Harris Is Created Equal
Emerging as a corporate media frame is a sloppy, mystifying confusion that refuses to distinguish the racist and sexist slurs against Harris from an authentic discussion of the trajectory of her political positions.
ACTION ALERT: Newsweek Should Disavow Racist Insinuation That Kamala Harris Is Not a Citizen
Please contact Newsweek’s editors and demand that they retract the op-ed insinuating that Kamala Harris (like millions of other Americans) is not a US citizen.
