Archive for category: FAIR

WSJ: Chile’s Left-Wing Constitutional Suicide Pact

The Wall Street Journal (7/27/22) warns that Chile’s proposed constitution will lead to “authoritarianism, chaos and possibly civil war.”

Chileans will vote in September on whether to approve a new constitution that promises to address inequality and lack of democracy (Reuters, 7/4/22). It would replace the present constitution imposed by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who came into power through a US-backed coup in 1973. The nation’s newly elected left-wing leadership is calling for a “yes” vote, although in the much-divided country, the constitution faces steep opposition from the right.

US and Western editorialists are also pushing for a no vote. Opposition to the constitution’s economic changes should be expected; of course conservative and corporate centrist outlets will be against a proposed constitution that would make way for economic regulation and nationalization. But the idea being pushed that a democratic process to upgrade the national framework from one designed under despotism is against “democracy” is both Orwellian and an effective propaganda tool against popular progress.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed (7/27/22), penned by Axel Kaiser of the right-wing Atlas Center, complained that the proposed constitution “could destroy Chile’s economy, democracy and integrity as a nation.” Exhibit A was “a new entity, the Council of Justice, to evaluate judges’ performance and decide whether they can remain on the bench”—thereby paving the way for a “dictatorial regime.” Given that unaccountable judges in the United States are stripping citizens of basic human rights, some US readers might be more sympathetic to the introduction of a check on judicial power.

The op-ed also warned that “Chile’s proposed constitution would eliminate the Senate—a more than 200-year-old institution that has historically played a crucial role in balancing political power.” In “the new system, a single chamber would reign,” Kaiser wrote, suggesting that this “does not comply with the minimum standards required by Chile’s democracy.” But as unicameral legislatures are common in many democracies–including 16 members of NATO–this fear seems overblown.

WaPo: Chile writes a woke constitution. Are Chileans ready for it?

Washington Post (7/5/22): The draft is “a woke constitution propelled by left-leaning millennials.”

In an otherwise fair piece, the Washington Post (7/5/22) described the draft constitution as “woke” in the headline, and remarked, “It’s a woke constitution propelled by left-leaning millennials and built for a modern nation led by one.” This is the continuation of a trend FAIR (11/17/21) has documented of corporate media using the word “woke,” an expression from African-American vernacular that signifies awareness of systemic oppression and inequality, as a buzzword to deride a wide range of left-leaning political positions, dismissing them as millennial over-sensitivity.

The Economist (7/6/22), in calling for the constitution’s rejection, focused much of its ire on constitutional protections for the non-rich, like the establishment of a national health system and declarations of rights to food, housing and trade unions–derided as “a fiscally irresponsible left-wing wish list.” The magazine did laud the draft’s devolution of powers to regions and to indigenous people—good on the Oxbridge fellows there—but complained that “the draft upends the budget process by giving Congress new powers to propose spending bills, although the president can veto them.” This is basically how the US budget process works; in theory the process starts with the president submitting a proposal to Congress, but as the Washington Post (2/13/22) noted, “It’s an American political tradition for Congress to consider every president’s budget as ‘dead on arrival’” (a tradition that has not changed under Biden).

In another article, the Economist (7/7/22) took to task not just what it saw as an undemocratic document, but an undemocratic process. It said:

Although it was demographically representative, its ideological slant was not. Only 43% of voters bothered to choose the convention’s members in May 2021. Around 55 delegates were hard leftists, many of whom ran on single-issue tickets. Scandals did not help. A deputy resigned for lying about having cancer. They bickered among themselves. Indigenous constituents complained about racism. Right-wing representatives accused other assembly members of wanting to create an “indigenous monarchy.”

This does sound messy and headache inducing. But to a Northeast US beat reporter, none of the shenanigans alleged here would seem out of place in, say, New Jersey state politics. This is what democracy looks like.

The National Review (7/24/22) warned “the referendum on September 4 is the last chance for citizens to stop Chile from becoming a socialist country as Venezuela did.” Again, it’s not out of character for conservative editorialists to be against a leftward drift in Latin America. What they seem to gloss over is that this is all the result of a democratic process. The people of Chile or Venezuela have the right to decide their fate.

‘Important limits and controls’

El Mostrador: Algunas reflexiones sobre lo medular de la propuesta constitucional

Chilean constitutional lawyer Christian Suárez Crothers (El Mostrador, 7/28/22) offers “Some Reflections on the Core of the Constitutional Proposal.”

It is true that while Chile’s current president won with a decisive victory, the constitution is a hard sell to a sharply divided Chilean electorate. But, again, that is democracy, and governments and constitutional assemblies are obliged to make the best case they can for the document they’re asking people to approve. Chile’s El Siglo (7/25/22) reported that in one weekend, “thousands of citizens were deployed in almost all regions of the country in plazas, house to house, parks, avenues, public places, delivering information on the text of the new Constitution, and calling” for a yes vote.

Christian Suárez Crothers wrote in El Mostrador (7/28/22) in response to the draft constitution’s dissenters:

The text is open to its reform and even its total replacement in a more flexible way than the current Constitution. Important limits and controls are established to the State, through the broad protection of rights and control of the administration through the creation of administrative courts; all this for the benefit of the citizens who will not be at the mercy of the arbitrariness of the administration. A regime much superior to the existing one. The right to property is guaranteed to standards superior to those of Italy or Germany, and the constituents did not expressly incorporate nationalization, while, for example, France is advancing towards the nationalization of the entire electricity sector.

Suárez added that in terms of economics, the political elite feared “the establishment of a regime that promotes transparency and fiscal responsibility at all levels, and the end of lobbying in the highest appointments.” He scoffed:

How difficult it will be to obtain aid outside the system of competitions for positions in the administration of justice, for example, with the existence of a transparent Superior Council of Justice and subject to rules of public competition and probity!

The media drumbeat about the crumbling of democracy in the world isn’t unfounded. From Hungary (Atlantic, 4/2/20) to Brazil (Foreign Affairs, 11/1/21) to the United States (NPR, 1/3/22), democratic institutions are crumbling, under attack from the right and the corporate class while feebly defended by the center-liberal parties.

Whether this constitution gets approved or not, Chile is going in the opposite direction. The press should highlight that instead.

The post Chile’s Draft Constitution: Undemocratic—or Too Much Democracy? appeared first on FAIR.

WaPo: Ghost papers and news deserts: Will America ever get its local news back?

Washington Post (12/26/19): “Rather than investing in a digital future for its newspapers…Alden-owned subsidiaries sell off the publications’ real estate and transfer pension savings into its own funds.”

The hedge fund Alden Global Capital is notorious for plundering newspapers, relentlessly creating “news deserts” and “ghost papers.” The news is disturbing to anyone who cares about journalism. Indeed, most journalists agree that Alden, the nation’s second-largest newspaper owner by circulation, is a major threat to the existence of good, strong and enduring local journalism in America.

I’ve been covering this hedge fund for four years, for a film-in-progress, Stripped for Parts: American Journalism at the Crossroads. This film is a cautionary tale: What is lost when billionaires with no background nor interest in a civic mission, who are only concerned with profiteering, take over our most influential news organizations?

But the story we will tell is not only about the havoc wreaked by Alden daily, but about the journalists who have opposed them, and continue to do so. At the center is one reporter whose investigation, in more than 100 articles over six years, exposed Alden’s profiteering methods. It features several other journalists who became active, and activists—speaking out, informing the public or otherwise opposing their employer, often at great risk to their careers; some even created new, alternative news organizations.

Individually and together (with the support of the NewsGuild union), they are fighting for the preservation, and re-imagining, of vibrant local journalism in America. It is that notion that I want to highlight, above and beyond the devastation caused by the hedge fund.

‘Distressed investing’

Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press (1996)

I’ve been a news junkie all my life. My first feature film, begun in the late 1980s, was on the life and legacy of George Seldes—muckraker, press critic, maverick journalist. A later film, on Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, documented the decision-making inside the New York Times that led to its publication, in the face of attempted government censorship, of a “top secret” government document. It was one of the mainstream press’s finest hours. So mine has been a love/hate relationship with the news media: adoring but critical.

I got into my current film in the spring of 2018, on the heels of an uprising at the Denver Post against the paper’s owner that went viral. But the story starts even earlier, when almost no one had ever heard of Alden Global Capital.

At the center of it all is Julie Reynolds, who, after covering gang members, drug lords and gun runners for two investigative organizations, came to the small-town Monterey County (Calif.) Herald, “where I became the night cops reporter—and I loved it!” Until Alden Global Capital bought the newspaper in 2011. Layoffs followed, morale plunged, and Reynolds took a buyout.

But in 2015, she began investigating the hedge fund, with the backing of her former union, the NewsGuild. “You’re an investigative reporter,” she told herself. “Why don’t you look into Alden, because people don’t know who they are or what they do.”

Reynolds found a hedge fund shrouded in secrecy. From her home office, and using her investigative toolbox, she exposed Alden’s shell companies in the Cayman Islands. She explained the intricacies of “distressed investing”—how to make money off of failing businesses, by “stripping them for parts” and slashing payroll. She discovered a real estate scam that allowed Alden to make millions and siphon off the profits for private use.

Cascading events

Denver Post: As vultures circle, The Denver Post must be saved

A slider that accompanied the Denver Post‘s editorial (4/6/18) illustrated the dramatic reduction in the paper’s staff.

Reynolds’ reporting triggered a series of cascading events. Her exposés reached the newsroom of the Denver Post, including editorial writer Chuck Plunkett. In April 2018, after another large layoff of 30 (out of 100) from the newsroom staff, Plunkett had had enough. Using Reynolds’ investigations as raw material, he wrote a blistering editorial (4/6/18), excoriating the “vulture capitalists” that owned the Denver Post. He demanded, “If Alden isn’t willing to do good journalism here, it should sell the Post to owners who will.”

Plunkett’s editorial, in turn, sparked an uprising of journalists at the Post and elsewhere throughout the Alden chain. Usually reporting the news, now they were making it. Supported by the NewsGuild, they uncharacteristically joined picket lines at their local papers and in front of Alden’s headquarters in midtown New York’s Lipstick Building.

More cascading events: Alden’s top brass issued an edict not to mention Alden Global in the pages of their newspapers. Dave Krieger of the Boulder Daily Camera defied the edict and wrote about Plunkett’s editorial and the national wildfire it sparked. Krieger was instantly fired, Plunkett resigned due to censorship, and senior Post editor Larry Ryckman led eight reporters and editors out the door of the Denver Post, forming their own democratically run, ad-free, online news organization, the Colorado Sun.

Certain of the upper hand

NYT: Hedge Fund Called ‘Destroyer of Newspapers’ Bids for USA Today Owner Gannett

The New York Times (1/14/19) quoted Nieman Journalism Lab’s Joshua Benton: Alden‘s “Digital First is the worst owner of newspapers in America and they will do their best to draw blood from even Gannett’s already desiccated stone.”

For all the pushback, Alden remained undaunted. Its principals, Randall Smith and Heath Freeman, refused interviews, or any requests for comment, even by reporters from their own newspapers. They held themselves accountable to no one and were certain they held the upper hand. They were wrong.

Alden made a takeover attempt for the entire Gannett newspaper chain in early 2019. If successful, the new entity would have become the largest chain of newspapers in America. The stakes were huge.

The Gannett board knew its shareholders would be attracted by the lucrative stock offer by Alden. But the work of Julie Reynolds and the NewsGuild would turn the tide. A Gannett board member explained:

Julie Reynolds’ stories were devastating in their clarity about the motivations of the principals at Alden… [and] it was the NewsGuild rather than the corporation [Gannett] that stood for the careers, the professionalism, the sense of mission that these individual journalists brought to work every day. And so their speaking about the importance of journalism and their sense that this particular buyer was not a friend of journalism was at least as credible as any message that our board of directors could deliver.

The shareholders voted against Alden, and its takeover attempt of Gannett failed.

Tribune takeover

But the hedge fund re-grouped. In 2020, Alden went after the Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News and Baltimore Sun, among others. Public opposition was fierce, led again by the journalists and the NewsGuild.

But Alden had other tricks up their sleeve. As an already-large stockholder, the hedge fund was able to put its founder, Randall Smith, on the Tribune board, where he helped write and manipulate the rules of a shareholder election. Despite public outcry about the hedge fund’s reputation as “destroyer of newspapers,” Alden won the shareholder vote, but under a cloud of election irregularities, including, as Julie Reynolds wrote in a detailed investigative article, confusion about the voting intentions of Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire surgeon and LA Times owner who held 24% of Tribune shares, and whose vote, even in abstention, was the key to the Alden victory.

Voices of Monterey Bay: Hedge Fund Blues

Julie Reynolds Martinez (Voices of Monterey Bay, 7/18/19): “Alden Global Capital…is intentionally destroying the Monterey Herald, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the Mercury News and scores of other news sources around the country.”

The Tribune takeover made Alden the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country, and it appears to be determined to become the largest. In late 2021, Alden attempted the takeover of Lee Enterprises, owner of daily newspapers in 77 markets in 26 states. Again journalists and the NewsGuild took action, and the Lee Enterprises board, like the Gannett board before them, rode a wave of public outcry and key legal decisions to beat back, at least for now, the hedge fund’s designs, as Reynolds reported. The Alden/Lee battle is apparently not finished, and journalists and their union continue to stand at the ready.

Julie Reynolds went to Washington a couple of years ago, joining Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others, to push pending congressional legislation that would regulate hedge funds more strongly. Reynolds said at an event introducing the bill:

It is catastrophic when hedge funds systematically and intentionally destroy the sources of information that are so essential to society. It’s time to make hedge funds and private equity transparent and accountable.

History will not judge us kindly if one day we wake up to realize we failed to protect our community’s right to know and, in turn, our very democracy.

Lifeblood of democracy

My task in the months ahead is to finish constructing a narrative that is truthful, reflective of the realities of hedge fund ownership and the crisis in local journalism, but still projects the drive and dedication of the journalists who are in the forefront of change.

Journalism is all-important, especially today. It connects and unites communities. At its best it comforts the afflicted, afflicts the comfortable and tells truth to power. When robust, it is the lifeblood of democracy.

Journalists are our everyday heroes: exposing secrets, uncovering abuses and giving us better understanding of our communities, our cultures, our politics, our world. Vigorous journalism is essential to our lives. Let’s help save it.

Visit strippedforpartsfilm.com to learn how you can support Rick Goldsmith’s current film-in-progress, Stripped for Parts: American Journalism at the Crossroads.

The post Documenting the Struggle Against a Hedge Fund Stripping Journalism for Parts appeared first on FAIR.

CNN: How gerrymandering makes the US House intensely partisan

CNN (1/25/22) focuses on the issue that gerrymandering is “polarizing our politics”—i.e., making the two major parties less interchangeable.

The arc of coverage of 2020 congressional redistricting went from speculation that Republicans would end up with a massive advantage—because they controlled significantly more state legislatures—to surprise that Democrats managed to gerrymander their way to roughly the same number of seats as Republicans. This result was deemed good news, as announced for instance in this news “analysis” from the New York Times (3/10/22): “A Potential Rarity in American Politics: A Fair Congressional Map.”

Along the way, articles generally noted in passing the overall decrease in competitive elections resulting from the aggressive partisan gerrymandering, but to the extent that this caused concern, it wasn’t about disenfranchising voters.

“Gerrymandering is all about elected officials trying to keep their power by manipulating the makeup of the population that they represent, thereby making it easier for their party to win,” CNN (1/25/22) accurately explained in a “Gerrymandering 101” piece. “The consequences are severe.” So far, so good.

What are those consequences, you ask? The increase in partisanship, “increasing polarization” and the resulting congressional “gridlock.” This concern about “an even more divisive Congress,” as USA Today (2/21/22) put it, was a consistent theme across corporate outlets. In these two stories, increased ideological diversity was the main problem identified with gerrymandering. (In fairness to CNN, the headline here, “How Gerrymandering Makes the US House Intensely Partisan,” leaves open the possibility that there are other problems with gerrymandering to be covered in other articles, though a search on CNN’s site didn’t turn up mention of other problems.)

But even when they got the headline right—as the New York Times (2/6/22) did with “’Taking the Voters Out of the Equation’: How the Parties Are Killing Competition”—articles failed to explain either how voters are “taken out of the equation” or why doing so is a problem. Here the Times called the current round of gerrymandering “the latest worrying sign of dysfunction in the American political system,” and went on to identify that worry as the “lack of competition in general elections [that] can widen the ideological gulf between the parties.”

‘Bright spot for democracy’

Ideological polarization wasn’t the only threat corporate media identified stemming from gerrymandering. They were also worried that gerrymandered maps could result in a lopsided distribution of power between the two major political parties.

A case in point was Ohio, where the Washington Post’s The Fix (1/13/22) explained that Republicans redrew congressional maps in a way that turned 64% of them into safe Republican districts in “a particularly brazen attempt…to skirt the will of voters.” This plan was struck down by the state’s supreme court because it ran afoul of the state constitutional requirement that redistricting reflect the “relative statewide preference of voters,” and Republicans get on average 54% of the votes in statewide elections. Had the GOP gerrymandered its way to 54% safe districts for their party instead of 64%, all would have been hunky dory as far as the Washington Post (and the state’s supreme court) were concerned.

NYT: A Potential Rarity in American Politics: A Fair Congressional Map

By a “fair map,” the New York Times (3/10/22) means fair to Democrats and Republicans—not fair to voters.

But what if voters have a preference for something other than single-party districts? What if they actually want a choice on election day? This problem isn’t even on the radar.

The focus on party rather than voter representation reached its absurd logical conclusion in the March 10 Times piece cited above (“A Potential Rarity in American Politics: A Fair Congressional Map”). The premise here is simple: Because the Democrats managed to gerrymander their way to roughly the same number of districts as the Republicans, all is well with US democracy. Sure, the article admits:

Democrats and Republicans…drew extreme gerrymanders with twisting and turning district lines, denying many communities representation in Congress. Dozens of incumbents were shielded from serious challenges. The number of competitive districts declined.

But, unlike in previous cycles, both parties’ extreme gerrymanders have effectively canceled each other out.

Ergo, no problem! The article actually says, I shit you not, that the result is “a surprisingly fair map” and a “bright spot for American democracy.”

I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Democracy is a form of government based in popular sovereignty, in which the people choose their leaders and have agency in the decisions that determine their social and economic conditions. Note: people, not political parties.

Irrelevant voters

Missing from all of these articles is a rudimentary understanding of what uncompetitive districts—that is, one-party districts—actually mean for voters. Which is to make them irrelevant.

Media understand this when they are looking at authoritarian regimes elsewhere (or at least the ones that aren’t US client states): Where there is only one party on the ballot, or only one party with a chance of winning, voting is a meaningless activity, and is not evidence of democratic decision-making.

Moreover, one-party rule in the US is also incumbent rule. In 2020, congressional incumbents had a win rate of 96%. Lest you be lulled into thinking—as corporate media would have you believe—that uncompetitive districts simply move the site of political contestation from the general election to the primary election, please know that incumbents win primary races at an even higher rate. In 2020, more incumbents lost primary races than in any year since 1974, and the win rate was still 98%. As Maddow Blog (8/19/20) noted, “The number of congressional incumbents who lose primary campaigns is, in general, vanishingly small.”

These figures took me a few minutes to google, which is to say they are readily available and should be known to political reporters. Yet the articles fretting over the growing ideological divide back that claim up with the idea that primary threats are driving hardening partisan positions. Here’s CNN (1/25/22):

When the results of a general election are a foregone conclusion, the primary race is what matters. A threat from inside the party—be it Republican or Democrat—can pull candidates to the extreme edges of their party.

And the New York Times (“‘Blood Red’: How Lopsided New District Lines Are Deepening America’s Divide,” 2/27/22):

When primaries are the only campaigns that count, candidates are often punished for compromise. The already polarized parties are pulled even farther apart. Governance becomes harder.

While neither piece outright says that primaries are meaningful political contests, these statements certainly imply that they are—and the argument that one-party districts drive political polarization depends on that fiction.

Vanishing democracy

USA Today: Voters get fewer choices as Democrats and Republicans dig partisan trenches in redistricting

Few outlets took the voter-centered approach of this USA Today report (2/21/22).

In fact, one-party rule, whether divided district by district equally between two parties or not, is exactly as undemocratic as that term sounds; and it is journalistic malpractice not to point that out. Especially while you are reporting that the percentage of competitive districts in Congress is set to shrink from an already appalling 17% after the 2010 redistricting to a truly deplorable 9% after the 2020 redistricting (New York Times, 2/6/22).

Given this political reality, it is not at all surprising that there is no relationship between popular political opinion and congressional action. Or, in the words of the reform group Represent US, “The number of Americans for or against any idea has no impact on the likelihood that Congress will make it law.” Now this is what I would call a “severe consequence” of gerrymandering (and other anti-democratic dimensions of US electoral systems, mainly campaign finance and voter suppression). But I could find only one, brief, reference to this, a quote from Represent US’s Joshua Graham Lynn in the USA Today piece (2/21/22): that uncompetitive districts are “driving the lack of action on issues that a lot of Americans really care about.”

There’s a word for this reality, but it isn’t democracy: It’s oligarchy. Just don’t look for that word in media outlets that are owned and run by US oligarchs.

The post Gerrymandering: Making Elections Safe From Democracy appeared first on FAIR.

CNBC: Malone: Discovery-WarnerMedia May Close Sooner Than You Think

John Malone told CNBC (11/18/21) he’d like to see CNN “actually have journalists”—citing Fox News as an example of a channel with “some actual journalism.”

What will CNN become under John Malone?

“I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing,” the media billionaire Malone told CNBC (11/18/21) in November.

“I do believe good journalism could have a role in the future portfolio that Discovery/TimeWarner’s going to represent,” he went on.

In the interview with CNBC‘s David Faber, Malone also said:

Fox News, in my opinion, has followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have news news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions.

Brian Flood of right-wing Fox News (11/19/21) said of Malone’s CNBC declaration:

Liberty Media chairman John Malone, who sits on the Discovery, Inc. board of directors, wants to see left-wing CNN revert back to nonpartisan journalism following the completion of a merger that would put the liberal network under the Discovery channel.

More than a board member

Malone, in fact, is more than a Discovery board member; he’s its chair and largest shareholder. CNN, started by Ted Turner and now owned by AT&T, is part of an $85 billion acquisition by Discovery, expected to be finalized this year.

Malone’s links to politics include being an active supporter—he’s currently a board member—of the Cato Institute, the Washington-based libertarian think tank that espouses the privatization of numerous US government agencies and programs, including Social Security and the Postal Service.

His Liberty Media empire was among the big contributors to Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration festivities in Washington, DC, with personal and corporate contributions adding up to $1 million.

However, in 2019, in another interview with Faber on CNBC (11/21/19), Malone said:

Look, I think a lot of things Trump has tried to do—identifying problems and trying to solve them—has been great…. I just don’t think he’s the right guy to do it. Half the people that he’s hired and thrown under the bus are now trying to kill him. I mean, what kind of thing is that?

Malone then said he would vote for former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg for president in 2020.

No ‘coward’s way out’

Newsmax

Brian Freeman of right-wing Newsmax (11/21/21) said:

CNN will be the key news property in the merged company, one that will be dominated by entertainment programming. There had been rumors that CNN might be spun off or sold, but Malone indicated [in the CNBC interview] that’s not likely.

Malone, Freeman said, described such a move as a “coward’s way out.”

Freeman asserted that “Malone has cause to worry about the left-wing network,” because

CNN’s ratings have collapsed over 50% in the past year and may be suffering from a credibility gap with viewers…. Last March, a Hill/HarrisX poll found that 47% of registered voters believe CNN holds a liberal bias in reporting.

(In the same poll, 48% of respondents said they believed Fox had a conservative bias—but who’s counting?)

Steve Straub of the right-wing website the Federalist Papers (11/22/21) said of Malone’s CNBC comments:

CNN’s soon-to-be new owner just made a startling admission, one that has been obviously apparent to us and many others for some time, that the so-called news network has no actual journalists.

‘The most powerful man you’ve never heard of’

Gentleman's Journal: John Malone: everything you need to know about America’s single largest land owner

Gentleman’s Journal called Malone “one of the most powerful, yet unknown, individuals in America.”

“John Malone… Meet the Most Powerful Man That You’ve Never Heard Of,” was a heading of a 2018 piece on the website of the British-based Gentleman’s Journal. Malone owns

services and TV channels you’ve most likely used or watched…yet the name John Malone still draws a sea of blank faces…. One of the most powerful, yet unknown, individuals in America…as Liberty Media’s chairman and largest stakeholder, John Malone is one of the world’s most influential media magnates.

In addition to being part-owner of the Atlanta Braves, the website noted,

he currently owns more land in America than anyone else: 2.2 million acres to be precise…. Malone has a net worth of around $9.22 billion, and thanks to his buccaneering role in media deals and land ownership, he’s been nicknamed the “Cable Cowboy.”

The article related how Malone, born in Connecticut, has a Ph.D. in operations research from Johns Hopkins University, and

joined the worldwide management consulting firm McKinsey & Company in 1968. However, fatigued from the constant traveling his job required, he left after five years to join General Instrument; while at GI, he ran Jerrold—a subsidiary which produces minicomputers for the cable TV industry—and was eventually offered the role of CEO of Tele-Communications, Inc… [which] only had 400,000 subscribers and owed creditors $132 million…. Malone was only 29 at the time.

Within 17 years of snapping up smaller operators and acquiring minority stakes in other channels, TCI, under the management of Malone, had accumulated 8.5 million subscribers and grew into the second largest cable company after Time Warner. Because of his business deals in the byzantine world of cable TV, Malone was compared to “Darth Vader” by former US Vice President Al Gore….

At the helm of Liberty Media, the young American changed the organization from just providing cable services to actually owning the networks broadcast on its infrastructure, including the Discovery Channel, QVC and Virgin Media.

‘CNN could face a reset’

Variety (2/8/22) says former CNN president Jeff Zucker (left) “pushed CNN to be blunt and unstinting in its efforts to hold feet to the fire,” while Discovery‘s David Zaslav (right) is “behind the scenes a relentless operator.”

The headline last week in Variety (2/8/22): “CNN Could Face a Reset Under Discovery Control.” The article by Brian Steinberg spoke of how under its recently resigned president, Jeff Zucker, “CNN became more swashbuckling, more colorful…”

But Discovery is “a media company that tries to maintain a quieter corporate demeanor.” Zucker

changed the culture of the news outlet, shoving it into more direct competition with Fox News Channel and MSNBC…. Will Discovery change the recipe? There are signs that executives at the company see Zucker’s departure as an opportunity for a reset at CNN.

The piece spoke of those who “argue Zucker’s strategies have been good for CNN—and for people who have been helped by its aggressive accountability journalism in Washington.” The article concluded:

Executives charged with leading CNN in the wake of Zucker’s exit have vowed to staffers in internal meetings that his vision for the network will remain intact, but chances are Discovery will dim Zucker’s flash.

That would not be good news.

The future of democracy in the United States is at stake amid the polarization and deadlock of the political process in Washington. Media are increasingly under the control of right-wing zealots like Rupert Murdoch and those behind Newsmax, etc., who are poisoning communications.

Critically needed now is an independent, honest, credible press providing, yes, aggressive accountability journalism—a light to enable people to find their way out of this mess. Instead, the nation’s oldest cable news channel will soon be under the control of someone who appears to want it to follow the “interesting trajectory” of Fox News.

The post Trump Donor John Malone Could Soon Be Calling Shots at CNN appeared first on FAIR.

NY Post: Biden is either lying, was never told or forgot about $450K migrant payouts

The New York Post (11/4/21) was either lying, was never told or had forgotten about the dubiousness of Peter Doocy’s question.

Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked a bizarre question at President Joe Biden’s November 3 press briefing. The president seemed to misunderstand the question, which referred to potential settlements of a lawsuit stemming from the Trump administration’s notorious 2017–18 family separation policy. Biden bungled his response, apparently calling reports about the settlement “garbage.”

Not surprisingly, the media ran with the story of Biden’s blunder. Doocy’s question, on the other hand, was mostly ignored or played down.

The Fox reporter had asked whether the possible settlements, reportedly as high as $450,000 a person, “might incentivize more people to come over illegally.” But as the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake (11/4/21) noted, the question didn’t make sense: “The [family separation] policy is no longer in effect (thus rendering such future payments inapplicable for would-be border-crossers).”

Other reporters, however, didn’t seem to notice this issue. CNN’s Daniel Dale (11/5/21) factchecked Biden’s answer, but not the notion that a settlement based on a terminated policy could somehow incentivize future migration. Over at Politico (11/3/21), Myah Ward reported Doocy’s question, but not how strange it was. New York Times White House correspondent Zolan Kanno-Youngs (11/3/21) didn’t even bother to report the question, merely noting that Biden was “asked on Wednesday about compensating the migrants.”

In contrast, the New York Post (11/4/21) (owned, like Fox, by the Murdoch family) responded with an editorial backing Doocy’s implication that the settlement could encourage unauthorized migration. This followed an earlier Post article (10/29/21) that quoted a total of 11 Republican politicians denouncing the reported settlement amount. Neither piece mentioned the public outrage at the practice of tearing apart children and parents fleeing violence (PBS, 6/18/18)—an outrage so intense that the Trump administration was forced to end the policy in June 2018 (NPR, 6/20/18).

Misperception or misrepresentation?

Unfortunately, this imbalance is typical of much corporate media immigration coverage. Right-wing media figures and Republican politicians get little pushback when they promote evidence-free, often absurd claims about incentives for unauthorized immigration.

Manhattan Institute: Why Did You Come to the United States?

Chart: Manhattan Institute/National Immigration Forum (3/30/06)

Doocy didn’t answer emails asking him to explain his November 3 question, but presumably he was referring to a misperception migrants might have that the Biden administration was handing out money to border crossers—a misperception the right has worked overtime to create. But two surveys of unauthorized immigrants indicate that misperceptions about US migration policies don’t actually play a significant role in spurring unauthorized border crossing.

In 2005, the Bendixen & Associates polling company interviewed 233 undocumented immigrants for a study sponsored by the National Immigration Forum and the conservative Manhattan Institute. The study reported that 68% of the subjects said they’d migrated here to work, 15% to get better education and healthcare for themselves and their families, 12% to escape violence and 3% to join their families. Just 2% cited other reasons.

Eight years later, Latino Decisions surveyed 400 undocumented immigrants for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund and America’s Voice Education Fund. This study reported that 39% of the people interviewed came for better jobs and economic opportunities, 38% for a better life for family or children, 12% to join family members, and 4% to escape political oppression. Other reasons accounted for 6%.

What history shows

Migration patterns over the last half-century support the findings of the two surveys. Increases and declines in unauthorized immigration mostly correlate with changes in job opportunities and other economic conditions in the United States and in nearby countries.

The US undocumented population grew at a fairly steady rate during the first half of the period, but the pattern had started changing by the mid-1990s, when the undocumented population increased sharply, tripling by 2007. It then gradually declined through 2019. There was an increase in asylum seekers after 2010, although not enough to reverse the overall decline.

Pro&Con: Undocumented Immigrant Population by Year in Millions

The population of unauthorized immigrants has been mostly declining since 2007. (Chart: ProCon.org)

Vox: What a Reagan-era law can teach Democrats about legalizing undocumented immigrants

Vox (7/4/21) pointed out that a “law to legalize the undocumented population…could actually reduce unauthorized immigration and give the US economy a boost.”

The US economy was growing during most of the 1990s, but Mexicans continued to suffer from the effects of the 1982 debt crisis. Their situation worsened after a 1994–95 financial crisis, and NAFTA’s disruption of the rural economy left millions of Mexicans unemployed or underemployed. The resulting increase in undocumented immigration from Mexico eased a little in the early 2000s, as the Mexican economy stabilized; border crossings dropped further when the 2007–09 Great Recession knocked out millions of US jobs.

The more recent increase in asylum seekers came as levels of violence rose in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

It’s true that one US policy helped swell the undocumented population, but not because the policy attracted migrants. The Clinton White House started a significant intensification of border enforcement; this continued through subsequent administrations. The policy made border crossings more dangerous, resulting in at least 7,000 border deaths from 1998 to 2020 (Guardian, 1/30/21).

And as Vox reporter Nicole Narea (7/4/21) explained, Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey and other scholars have found that the stepped-up enforcement ended a circular pattern in which Mexicans had alternated periods working in the United States with periods spent at home. As crossing the border became riskier and more expensive, many Mexican workers chose to settle here instead of returning to Mexico.

Long wait for ‘amnesty’

The New York Times (2/22/00) blamed the rise in unauthorized immigration on a 1986 amnesty—not on the trade policies that it editorially supported.

This history explains most spikes in unauthorized immigration, but anti-immigrant forces prefer to make up their own explanations.

Their favorite centers on a 1986 law that provided a path for legalization to some 2.7 million immigrants during the Reagan administration. The right claims that the sharp increase of the undocumented population during the mid-1990s—seven or eight years after the law went into effect—somehow resulted from this “Reagan amnesty.” So legalizations must “beget more illegal immigration,” as the New York Times (2/22/00) announced in a 2000 editorial:

Amnesties signal foreign workers that American citizenship can be had by sneaking across the border, or staying beyond the term of one’s visa, and hiding out until Congress passes the next amnesty.

The Times and other centrist media now seem to have backed away from this post hoc, propter hoc argument, but they often don’t challenge others who make it, despite studies by demographers that undercut the premise.

LA Times: "House passes ‘Dreamers’ bill as immigration debate intensifies — at the border and in Congress "

LA Times (3/18/21): “As each side seeks to rally supporters and shape public opinion, the parties have pressed dueling narratives.”

US News & World Report (2/18/21) quoted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s claim that Biden’s proposed immigration reforms would create “huge new incentives for people to rush here illegally,” but the publication failed to present any alternative view. The Los Angeles Times (3/18/21) deferred in the same way to Sen. Lindsey Graham when the South Carolina Republican charged that legalization without increased border enforcement would “continue to incentivize the flow” of migrants.

Reporters often ignore a rather obvious problem with this argument: the fact that no legalization bill has been passed since 1986.

“Legalizing countless millions of illegal aliens—even discussing it—rings the bell for millions more to illegally enter the US to await their green card,” Heritage Foundation researcher Lora Ries announced in January, according to New York Times reporter Miriam Jordan (1/27/21). The paper’s Nicholas Fandos (3/18/21) cited Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican, as claiming in March that a new legalization would mean border crossers “need only wait until the next amnesty.”

Apparently neither reporter thought to point out that based on past experience, the wait “until the next amnesty” could last as long as 35 years, nearly half a lifetime.

The center does not hold

Washington Post (10/7/21): “The journey starts with a calculation: What am I willing to sacrifice to reach the United States?”

What’s striking about corporate media’s immigration coverage is that conservative think tankers and Republican politicians so often get a platform, while the US public hardly ever learns about immigration from the immigrants themselves (FAIR.org, 6/19/21).

There are important exceptions. Jordan’s January New York Times article failed to question the notion of “awaiting” the next amnesty, but it did include valuable reporting on migrants’ point of view. A recent Washington Post feature (10/7/21) by Arelis Hernández provided nuanced descriptions of the complex motives that have led Haitians to appear at the US border. And the Vox explainer cited above is a good example of how the media can present a realistic picture of immigration patterns.

But there’s too little reporting of this caliber. The right wing goes all out; the center rarely provides the necessary balance. Coverage of the poverty and violence that actually drive migration—and the role of US policies in creating them—appears in left media, as in a Jacobin piece (6/8/21) by Suyapa Portillo Villeda and Miguel Tinker Salas, but this sort of reporting is marginalized in corporate media.

The result is a public that’s primed to believe a Republican politician like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz when he casually distorts a lawsuit’s possible settlement into “@JoeBiden wants to give $450k to every illegal immigrant.”

The post Media Don’t Factcheck Right-Wing Migration Myths appeared first on FAIR.

After the 2021 elections, in which Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost the closely watched Virginia governor’s race to Republican Glenn Youngkin, many in corporate media coalesced around a set of lessons for Democrats—question Biden’s “ambitious” agenda, blame progressives, and disavow anti-racism—that echoed the same overarching moral they repeat year after year, seemingly regardless of outcome: Move to the right.

‘Doubts for Biden agenda’

Politico: Dems vow to plow forward on Biden agenda, even after election faceplants

Politico (11/3/21) reported that Democratic Party”moderates blamed progressives for withholding their support for Biden’s massive infrastructure bill.”

“Dems Vow to Plow Forward on Biden Agenda, Even After Election Faceplants,” announced Politico‘s top headline (11/3/21) the day after the election.

Time (11/3/21) suggested that

a McAuliffe defeat, at least in part based on a[n infrastructure] bill that hasn’t even been passed, is sure to rattle legislators who may interpret the voters’ wrath as a rejection of the party’s current agenda.

“Elections Spur Doubts for Biden Agenda, Party’s Outlook,” declared the Washington Post‘s home page (11/3/21). The Post seemed to be on auto-pilot with its headline and the lead of the accompanying story, spooling out the theme that Democrats are moving too far to the left with virtually no supporting evidence:

Democrats reeling from the party’s showing on Tuesday night were sharply critical of its direction and agenda—already the subject of months of infighting on Capitol Hill—concluding it threatens to devastate their efforts to hold on to the House and Senate next year, much as it dragged down this year’s candidates.

The implication seems to be the same as Time‘s analysis—that Biden’s social spending and infrastructure agenda are hurting the party, and the state and local election results show the public’s displeasure with them. But the key provisions of the bills are highly popular, with recent polls putting support at 60% for the full $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill (which would seem like a better indication of the public’s feelings about Biden’s agenda than a governor’s race that focused on education). That agenda is being held up and watered down by corporate Democrats, particularly senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (FAIR.org, 10/6/21, 10/22/21). So what aspects of the “direction” or “agenda” threaten Democrats’ efforts and drag down their candidates?

The Post‘s Sean Sullivan never quite got around to making that clear. In fact, his sources seemed to suggest the opposite—that the Democratic Party needed to “improve its economic pitch, engage with young voters, voters of color and women under 50,” which relies in part “on speeding up Biden’s agenda,” including both the spending bills and voting rights.

Rather than drawing the logical conclusion that the loss might at least partly be blamed on the obstructionist corporate Democrats, Sullivan wrote that “the results in Virginia stoked concern that centrist Democrats might urge party leaders to pause the agenda and rethink priorities,” and that “there were fresh doubts in the party about Biden’s ability to push his domestic agenda across the finish line.”

Placing blame

CNN: Democrats need a reckoning after misjudging the nation's mood

CNN‘s Stephen Collinson (11/3/21) says that analyst Van Jones thinks the Democratic Party “needs to consider a change of course.”

Some went so far as to directly blame progressives for the stalled Democratic agenda. CNN White House reporter Stephen Collinson (11/3/21) wrote of the Democratic losses:

It likely hasn’t helped that progressives—who lost out in a series of city elections and ballot initiatives decided on Tuesday—have been a dominant force in the party in Washington, playing into GOP claims that the President is hostage to far-left influences in his own party.

Collinson noted that “the party’s vulnerable lawmakers in suburban districts…have fumed at House progressives who have held up a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package to secure a larger social spending plan”—even while arguing in the next breath that the Democrats need to pass both bills.

Of course, the only reason the centrist Democrats are even negotiating on the reconciliation bill, which contains the heart of the Democratic agenda, is because the progressives won’t allow the infrastructure bill through until the social spending is hammered out. Without the bipartisan bill as leverage, the social spending priorities would have no chance of passage.

Politico‘s “faceplant” story similarly pushed conclusions that didn’t match the evidence. It noted the argument that the Democratic loss in the closely watched Virginia governor’s race and the too-close-to-call gubernatorial result in New Jersey (eventually called for Democrat Phil Murphy) signaled that voters weren’t happy that Washington Dems had made good on vanishingly few of their promises. However, Politico wrote:

Privately, several Democrats complained that it was Biden himself who helped slow progress on his own agenda by giving progressives tacit approval to hold up a vote on bipartisan infrastructure legislation as they hashed out the social spending plan.

The piece ultimately reduced analysis of why the Democrats’ agenda has stalled to finger pointing. “The party’s moderates blamed progressives for withholding their support for Biden’s massive infrastructure bill, while progressives charged centrists with stalling and watering down the president’s agenda.”

‘Progressives have a problem’

US News: Who Lost on Election Day? Progressives

The election results “put the limits of the progressive and socialist wing of the Democratic Party on stark display,” reported US News‘ Susan Milligan (11/3/21).

For many news analysts, the problem was Democrats moving too far to the left—despite the fact that McAuliffe and Murphy ran as centrists.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board (11/3/21) wrote that McAuliffe’s loss was “a clear warning sign” that Democrats need to “start appealing more to the center instead of America’s hard-left fringe,” pointing primarily to the social spending bill that Americans are supposedly not “ready to embrace.”

Dan Balz of the Washington Post (11/3/21) argued:

It wasn’t just Virginia or New Jersey that suggested Democrats will need to regroup. In races across the country, there were signs that voters see the party as having moved too far to the left, even as its progressive wing has been flexing its muscles.

“Who Lost on Election Day? Progressives,” declared US News (11/3/21). “Progressives have a problem,” another Politico piece (11/3/21) reported as one of the “Five Things We Learned from Republicans’ Big Night,” arguing that “even in Democratic-rich swaths of the country, the electorate was hewing closer to the center than the left.”

The Post‘s Aaron Blake (11/3/21) likewise took “Setback for the far-left” as a key “takeaway.” “To the extent some on the left might argue that the antidote…is for the party to move further to the left, there was plenty to rebut that,” Blake wrote.

Most of these pieces pointed as evidence to some combination of progressive losses in mayoral races in Buffalo and Seattle, centrist Eric Adams’ mayoral win in New York City, and the defeat of a ballot measure in Minneapolis to replace the troubled police department with a department of public safety.

Some acknowledged one or two notable progressive victories, but it’s not clear why one ought to put more weight on the losses than the victories, with progressive new mayors in Boston, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, plus the re-election of progressive district attorney Larry Krasner in Philadelphia and public advocate Jumaane Williams in New York City.

Journalists might also have highlighted the striking refusal of the state Democratic Party to support Buffalo’s India Walton, a self-declared socialist, after she won the party’s primary, or the immense amounts of money that poured into her opponent’s campaign (Jacobin, 11/3/21)—or the similar stacking of institutional weight against the Minneapolis measure.

And as FAIR (7/16/21) pointed out in the primaries, Adams faced no strong progressive candidate in his run for office, while many progressives won down-ballot races in the NYC primary. In other words, there’s plenty of evidence of an appetite for progressive policies, despite the energy and funds the establishment dedicate to defeating them.

‘Combustible issue of race’

Of course, the biggest Democratic loss on Election Day 2021 was not by a progressive, but by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, a standard bearer for the corporate-backed right wing of the party. McAuliffe has been outspoken about Democrats hewing to the center on things like healthcare and corporate tax cuts, and backed two major fracked gas pipeline projects in the state while raking in big money from pipeline developers.

One central driver in the Virginia election was not Washington politics, but education. Just as the right fanned panic over gay marriage in the early 2000s to drive voters to the polls, today it is pouring its energy into a campaign to convince both its base and swing voters that schools are teaching “critical race theory” —and that this is an urgent crisis that must be stopped (FAIR.org, 8/14/21; CounterSpin, 7/31/21).

Youngkin fed this panic over how race is taught in schools—his racist dog-whistling characterized almost fawningly at the Washington Post (11/2/21) as “a deft handling of the cultural battles that Republicans pushed to the forefront”—helping to fuel turnout and his victory. Exit polls showed education coming in second place among voters’ most important issues, after the economy, and Youngkin besting McAuliffe by 10 percentage points among “education” voters.

Politico: One Lesson of Virginia? The Culture War Still Works.

Jeff Greenfield (Politico (11/3/21) credits Bill Clinton’s political success to his willingness “to push back against what we would now call the ‘woke’ wing of his own party.”

For Politico‘s Jeff Greenfield (11/3/21), the main lesson to be learned was that “The Culture War Still Works.” Greenfield argued that “‘cultural’ matters have been challenging and bedeviling Democrats for well over half a century”—and by “cultural,” he seems to mean “race,” since he only refers to civil rights backlash.

“Only when Bill Clinton directly repudiated his party’s orthodoxy on crime and welfare did the political tide turn,” Greenfield wrote. (Note, as Greenfield did not, that Clinton’s supposed iconoclasm increased deep poverty and drove the country’s mass incarceration crisis—and also that the Clinton years saw Democrats losing large numbers of senators, representatives, governors and state lawmakers.)

Today, “the combustible issue of race in America and how to teach about it has quickly become the Republican Party’s issue of choice,” Greenfield continued. “And Democrats face a significant challenge in pushing back.”

He conceded that students ought to learn about “the nation’s scarred past,” but insisted that some of the anti-racist ideas being introduced into schools, such as “the idea that certain widely admired attributes are rooted in ‘whiteness,’” are a bridge too far.

(The link Greenfield sent readers to, a column by New York‘s Jonathan Chait, is headlined, “Is the Anti-Racism Training Industry Just Peddling White Supremacy?” and, in addition to answering that question in the affirmative, regurgitates the right-wing myth about CRT/anti-racism that it “collapses all identity into racial categories”—see FAIR.org, 8/4/21.)

As a result, Greenfield concludes, Democrats “will need to find ways to position themselves loudly and clearly against these views,” despite the fact that it “creates the risk of another ‘Sister Souljah’ moment, in which Bill Clinton alienated a generation of Black voters even while cementing the coalition he needed to win.”

‘Fake moderates and dissembling leftists’

Bret Stephens (New York Times, 11/3/21): “The tragedy of the Democratic Party may yet be its own loss of nerve against its in-house extremists.”

Greenfield’s argument was popular among conservative pundits like the New York Times‘ Ross Douthat (11/3/21), who likewise argued that the lesson for the left is to abandon progressive stances on racism: “The immediate future of the Democratic Party depends on its leaders separating themselves, to some extent, from academic jargon and progressive zeal.” (You see, Douthat argues, “this debate was actually instigated not by right-wing parents but by an ideological transformation on the left.”)

Fellow Times columnist Bret Stephens (11/3/21) wrote that beyond Youngkin’s dog-whistling, Biden’s tanking popularity and the historical trend of voters shifting away from the party that dominates in a presidential election year, Democrats’ “deeper problem” is “the persistent and justified perception of a party too often composed of fake moderates and dissembling radicals.” The fake moderate is Biden (“trying to govern as the most socially transformational president since Lyndon B. Johnson”), while the dissembling radicals pretend that “critical race theory” is “obscure” and “anodyne.” The Democratic Party will continue to pay the electoral price for its “loss of nerve against its in-house extremists.”

Politico‘s takeaway piece concluded with an unnamed Democratic strategist arguing, “Tonight really empowers Manchin and Sinema.” Two senators, in other words, who have so far managed to block the passage of popular legislation may now have even more power to do so. It’s an illustration of how corporate media’s “move to the right” narrative—supposedly based on listening to the people—works to ensure that the people don’t get what they want.

The post Media’s Election Lesson: ‘Ambitious’ Dems Must Move to the Right appeared first on FAIR.

Janine Jackson interviewed the Center for Biological Diversity’s Jean Su about People vs. Fossil Fuels for the October 15, 2021, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

CounterSpin211015Su.mp3

People vs. Fossil Fuels

Janine Jackson: Media sometimes say that “we” are dawdling on climate change, that “we” need to take it more seriously. That language is worse than lazy. It obscures the fact that many people are shouting at the top of their voices about making the changes today needed to avert further climate disaster. And some others are resisting, and pretending, and indeed profiting from the inaction.

Just as we aren’t all affected the same way by floods and fires, heat waves and hurricanes, the fight for action on climate is also about race and class and power. It’s still pretty simple, though—as reflected in the name given to the five-day mobilization of Indigenous, faith-based, and advocacy groups currently going on in Washington, DC: People vs. Fossil Fuels. Hundreds of people have been arrested in the protests, which will wrap up Friday with a march from the White House to Congress.

Our next guest is part of this mobilization. Jean Su is director of the Energy Justice Program and senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. She joins us now by phone from DC. Welcome to CounterSpin, Jean Su.

Jean Su: Great. Thanks for having me, Janine.

JJ: This week’s actions are something more than sounding an alarm about climate disruption. There’s an urgency, and there are concrete demands. And I would say, these are things the White House can do without Mitch McConnell. Isn’t that right?

JS: Correct. Without Joe Manchin, as well.

JJ: Yeah. Right, right. So what are the demands, and what is the spirit of this mobilization?

JS: So as you said, it is really obvious what the spirit of the mobilization is. It’s a real call for anyone in power to listen and heed the demands of people who, all across the United States and the world, are literally suffering, physically being harmed, by the climate emergency.

What was really compelling in the past, I don’t know, decade, it feels like, of being in the Covid pandemic, is the lumbering presence of the climate crisis on our everyday lives. Whether you are in Oregon facing the heat domes out there, or the horrific, fatal hurricanes sweeping everywhere from Puerto Rico to New England to the Southeast, people right now are absolutely feeling the climate emergency in ways that I think a lot of folks did not comprehend before, and that a lot of folks in the Global South absolutely have felt for decades.

So this is a call right now to stop the delay, stop the BS, and act, seriously act, on real, bold climate initiatives that can both slash our fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions, but also address the really deeply hurtful and racial components of our energy systems that have led to a racist electricity system that we have today.

JJ: Let me ask you, because these actions are targeted to some degree at the White House, which is something in particular, and there’s a sense of betrayal, almost. So I want to ask you, what did candidate Joe Biden say that President Joe Biden has not done? And what’s the concern there?

JS: Yeah, so candidate Biden made some pretty important statements about the climate, about how it is a crisis that needs to be dealt with, and generally about addressing certain aspects of fossil fuel production. And certainly in his initial speeches as the president, really emphasizing this idea of a renewable future that generated an amazing amount of good-paying, union green jobs. I think that is the overall push that the Biden administration has put forth.

But in the eight months that Biden has been in power, we haven’t seen much actually getting done on the ground on this. For instance, he absolutely has the power right now, he and Secretary [of the Interior Deb] Haaland have the absolute power, to deny and stop the fossil fuel leasing program in this country. People will be shocked to know that one-fourth of our fossil fuel emissions in the United States are generated from public lands that we all own together. And those are being drilled and fracked and extracted for fossil fuels, to profit oil and gas companies and utility companies in this country, against the public interest and the planet.

So one of the very initial things and simplest things that Joe Biden can do is put a halt to our fossil fuel lease sales and permits. He has not done that yet. With a stroke of a pen, he and Secretary Haaland could end that. They could, with the stroke of a pen, end Line 3, which so many people, hundreds of Indigenous leaders, are here on the streets, demanding those two things.

Separately, one of the other crucial fossil fuel moves that the Biden administration can do is reinstate the crude oil export ban. So in 2015, under the Obama administration, the Senate actually overturned a decades-long embargo, essentially, on the export of crude oil. But in a stunning turn of events, that ban was lifted. And that has really caused the huge fracking shale boom that we have seen in this country. And with that, the horrific amounts of pollution and harm that have come to communities that live in fracking states.

So he could absolutely, single-handedly, the Congress gave him the ability to reinstate that crude oil export ban. That is totally within the presidential powers, and he absolutely has the authority to do it, and we are urging him to do so this week.

Guardian: Prince Charles says he ‘totally understands’ frustrations of climate protesters

Guardian (10/11/21)

JJ: I want to direct people to PeopleVsFossilFuels.org, where you can get more details on the demands of this mobilization.

Well, nobody’s looking to him for cutting-edge criticism. But Prince Charles just recently said that he understands why climate activists take to the street to demand action. But he said he’s calling for “more constructive rather than destructive” methods, and he’s talking about protesters blocking streets. Besides the patrician nature of all of this, activism around climate actually works, doesn’t it?

JS: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve seen that it works with Keystone XL. We have seen political movement shift because people are here participating in a democracy to make our voices heard.

This is still a democracy. I know under the Trump administration, we were all wondering whether it is. But it is now, and especially for the Biden election, droves of our Black communities rolled out to support Joe Biden and elect him. He actually has to fulfill the promises to environmental justice communities, and he has not.

And it is absolutely incumbent on the administration to listen to the people who actually voted them in. Black communities right now are suffering from poisonous gases and air pollution coming out of dirty oil and gas facilities. The president, if he were to truly fulfill his commitments to his voter base, he would stop the pollution, and actually get us on the transition that we need to 100% renewable energy.

Jean Su: “The president actually has the ability to use the Defense Production Act to jumpstart our renewable energy industry.”

You know, I think that one of the pieces that Prince Charles can elaborate on is this idea of having a constructive solution. The Biden administration right now actually has powers like the Defense Production Act at its fingertips. The Defense Production Act is a wartime footing statute that has been mobilized during wartime to basically revolutionize private industry to deal with the emergency at hand. Right now, it is very obvious that the climate is an emergency, and the president actually has the ability to use the Defense Production Act to jumpstart our renewable energy industry in a way that it is lackluster right now. He has the ability to actually coordinate industry to get our solar panels, our transmission lines and all of our clean-energy infrastructure in line to be built.

He also has the ability to leverage financial pockets that the administration has to give loan guarantees and direct grants, so that communities, especially communities of color who have been historically poisoned by our racist energy system, can have access to community solar and rooftop solar, and be climate resilient with batteries and microgrids.

These are not only issues of climate. But they are sincerely issues of racial justice in this country. And if we really want to tackle both, which we absolutely have to, we can’t solely be looking at decarbonization; we have to be looking at solutions that respect and honor and restore and build justice in our communities that have been so disproportionately harmed by our fossil fuel system.

JJ: Yes, absolutely, the putting forward of a positive vision is part of the role that I think journalists could play.

And I just want to ask you, finally, media have generally stopped giving serious platform to climate change deniers. They’ve even begun to mention climate disruption in their coverage of extreme weather events. But keep it in the ground, stop burning fossil fuels, is still presented as one view among others. And we’re very aware of how powerful the fossil fuel industry is, how captured many regulators are, how influenced many lawmakers are. But media have a role here.

And yet when it comes to change, when it comes to policy, it seems to become this Beltway, partisan—you mentioned Joe Manchin—it becomes this story like it’s horse trading over a sales tax or something.

And so I just want to ask you, finally, what role would you like journalists to play in this fight? Is there anything you’d like to see more or less of?

JS: Absolutely. I think journalists should cover the facts. And the facts that we are dealing with is that we have a ticking time bomb on our hands. The IPPC has been very clear that we have until 2030 to make extreme shifts away from fossil fuels, toward renewable energy. People looking at those facts will see science very plain and clear. Yet, for some reason, media and politicians will obscure the facts, and say that’s not feasible, we can’t do it, let’s do another slower-walk type of approach. And if you look at the facts and the science, we don’t have that option if we truly are going to try to beat this climate crisis, and really respect, in a lot of ways, the rest of the planet who has suffered from what has happened in the United States and other Western countries, who have been the biggest emitters over time.

It’s fascinating to see how people believe that climate activists are radical when, in fact, climate activists are actually just looking and following the science. And I think that’s absolutely something that needs to be clear and front of mind, in terms of journalists who are here to report the facts.

I think another thing that journalists can absolutely do is really reveal and go deep into the stories that make the climate crisis so devastating. And especially in the United States, the stories are so abundant, because they are really wrapped up in Jim Crow laws and in racial injustices that at the same time are ravaging the country, and have done so since the beginning of slavery in this country.

If you look at places like North Carolina, or different parts of the Southeast, you’ll see communities of color, Black families, brown families, really ravaged by an electricity system that is choking them, and giving their kids asthma and eventually cancer. You will see that they are also being ravaged, at the same time, by horrific hurricanes that cut off electricity and access to lifesaving medicines all in the same go. And if they just had access to rooftop solar, to batteries, to microgrids, they actually would essentially end the need for that fossil fuel plant three miles away from them, as well as have the access to clean and affordable and renewable energy that won’t be cut off when a climate disaster hits them.

These are stories, one and the same, of the same communities that receive the harm. But they should also be the same communities that are prioritized in terms of a renewable energy future. And I think those beautiful stories, that address both the climate crisis and racial injustice together, create a story of potential restorative justice on both the climate and racial and social fronts.

I would really encourage our journalists to go after those types of stories, and stop the inside-the-Beltway nonsense, where Joe Manchin and the Biden administration and Congress right now are considering implementing a “clean electricity payment program” that would allow for gas to perpetuate and continue to poison communities across the states.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Jean Su of the Center for Biological Diversity. They’re online at BiologicalDiversity.org. You can also check out PeopleVsFossilFuels.org. Jean Su, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

JS: Thanks for having me, Janine.

The post ‘People Right Now Are Absolutely Feeling the Climate Emergency’ appeared first on FAIR.

Tucker Carlson (Fox News, 9/27/21) interviews far-right Polish President Andrzej Duda.

When Fox News host Tucker Carlson (Fox News, 9/27/21) interviewed Polish President Andrzej Duda, Carlson began by lamenting of the United States, “Has a better country ever been led by worse people?” That’s why, he explained, he tries to interview “leaders on this show from other countries who actually care about their people.”

Duda, through a translator, illustrated this by declaring his opposition to

the so-called quota system of which was proposed by some of the EU member states, which means that every single country would have to accept a given number of migrants.

He also pledged his support for the Polish constitutional declaration that “marriage is the union of a man and a woman,” since “families have to be supported as strong as they can, because family is the foundation of every nation. Everything is based on family.”

The policy prescriptions to support families Duda promoted on the show could have come from NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio. The government was offering welfare payments to families with children, Duda boasted to Carlson.

But Duda’s record is much uglier than was reflected in the interview. The Polish president, as Carlson noted, was suggested as a guest by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whom Carlson also recently visited and interviewed (8/5/21), heralding his notorious campaign for “illiberal democracy” as a model for the modern US right (FAIR.org, 8/3/21). Carlson has also engaged socially with far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (Daily Beast, 3/13/20), who has championed anti-environmentalism and anti-gay extremism (NPR, 1/1/19; Washington Post, 2/18/19).

In search of enemies

President Andrzej Duda addressed 200,000 people at a march in Warsaw organized by nationalist and far-right groups. (cc photo: Konrad Lembcke)

Poland this year introduced a “near-total ban on abortion,” resulting in “huge protests,” because a “majority of Poles oppose” such strict measures (BBC, 1/28/21). Duda ran on an anti-gay platform, and as a result of his victory, “dozens of Polish municipalities have enacted ‘LGBT ideology free zones,’” forcing “members of the gay community in this European Union member state [to] fear for their safety” (PBS, 8/29/21).

European Union opposition has blunted the homophobic campaign: Reuters (9/27/21) reported that “three Polish regional councils voted…to repeal motions declaring their provinces ‘LGBT-free zones’” after the EU threatened to withhold funds. But Duda signed a so-called “Family Charter” that “opposes same-sex marriage and adoption rights, as well as comprehensive sexuality education in schools” (Human Rights Watch, 2/24/21).

The country’s harsh anti-migration stance has likewise raised concerns within the United Nations and the European Union, especially after “three migrants died on the Polish side of the border” with Belarus (UN News, 9/21/21; Reuters, 9/24/21).

Poland also drew scorn when it approved a “law that will make it harder for Jewish people to recover property lost during and after World War II,” claiming that the government has faced a “period of legal chaos” (BBC, 8/16/21). The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (8/15/21) explained that, in actuality, the law “is a clear continuation of the country’s right-wing government’s longstanding crusade to separate itself from the effects of Nazi war crimes,” as the regime made it “illegal to blame Poland for any Holocaust atrocities, despite the fact that many Poles collaborated with the Nazis.”

Attacks on democracy

The Polish government has attacked press freedom, as the nation “slipped from 18th place in a World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders…to 64th, its lowest-ever ranking” (Economist, 8/14/21). Using the excuse of trying to deter Chinese and Russian interference in Polish media, lawmakers introduced a controversial bill that would prevent “non-European shareholders from owning a majority stake in Polish media companies” (HRW, 8/12/21).

Most recently, the Committee to Protect Journalists (10/6/21) blasted the Polish government for seizing laptops, phones and other equipment from journalist Piotr Bakselerowicz of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s second-biggest daily. CPJ said the Gazeta‘s “journalists have faced smear campaigns by pro-government media outlets, as well as defamation and privacy lawsuits by politicians and state-linked companies.”

And what has happened to Poland’s independent court system? The EU has fined the country over “new laws that were deemed to undermine judicial independence” (AP, 9/7/21), while Amnesty International (1/9/20) called the court restructuring “the end of the separation of powers in Poland.” A Council of Europe anti-corruption taskforce (9/27/21) noted that Poland’s “developments regarding disciplinary proceedings against judges…have left judges increasingly vulnerable to political control.”

Birds of a feather

Carlson interviewing Hungarian fascist leader Viktor Orban for Tucker Carlson Tonight (8/2/21).

In many ways, Duda’s Poland resembles the Hungary that Carlson is so enthusiastic about, as Orban’s cultural extremism mirrors Poland’s renegade traditionalism. According to the European Federation of Journalists (12/3/19), Hungary has “dismantled media independence, freedom and pluralism, distorted the media market and divided the journalistic community in the country,” thus creating government “media control unprecedented in an EU member state.”

The Brookings Institution (7/24/19) noted that Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party’s “campaign against immigration exploits Hungarian society’s objection to ‘others,’” and Reuters (7/7/21) reported that Hungary “rejected a demand from the European Commission and many EU lawmakers to repeal new legislation banning schools from using materials deemed to promote homosexuality.” Organized labor’s hatred of the Fidesz regime makes the Hungarian leader a perfect poster boy for the American right: Thousands of workers protested “new law that allows employers to ask staff to work up to 400 hours of overtime per year. Employers can delay these overtime payments for up to three years,” which protesters called a “slave law” (NPR, 12/16/18).

Promoting the revolting

Carlson’s embrace of politicians with these kinds of records is no accident. The Brookings Institution (6/24/21) also criticized then-President Donald Trump—to whom Carlson has remained fiercely loyal—for hosting Duda at the White House, as the group claimed Duda’s “tenure as president has been characterized by democratic backsliding and the shrinking of civic space for the exercise of fundamental rights,” and the New Yorker (7/7/17) reported that Trump gave Duda “a political boost” with his visit to Poland in 2017.

Interviewing a political leader isn’t necessarily an endorsement. Yet Carlson, who is still the top-rated US cable news host (Deadline, 8/31/21), has gone out of his way to overtly support European leaders who have horrified the human rights community: When he described his interview with Duda as part of an effort to spotlight international leaders “who actually care about their people,” he noted “that’s why we went to Hungary this summer to talk to Viktor Orbán.” These aren’t disinterested Q&As. These are public relations events to promote governments Carlson thinks are good.

These two European leaders have prompted revulsion not just because their platforms are politically extreme, but because they stand against the very ideals—multiculturalism, transnationalism, gay rights and openness in media and academia—that were meant to prevent the kind of nationalistic and authoritarian fervor that resulted in World War II.

‘Great replacement’

Tucker Carlson: 'An Unrelenting Stream of Immigration'

Tucker Carlson (9/22/21): Biden is trying “to change the racial mix of the country…to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here.”

Carlson (Daily Beast, 9/23/21) has also repeatedly advocated the “great replacement theory,” most recently citing it by name in regard to the ongoing violence against Haitian immigrants by US border enforcement agents. Biden, Carlson (9/22/21) charged, is trying

to change the racial mix of the country…to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here, and dramatically increase the proportion of Americans newly-arrived from the Third World….

In political terms, this policy is called “the great replacement,” the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries. They brag about it all the time, but if you dare to say it’s happening they will scream at you with maximum hysteria.

This theory is the cockamamie idea, first espoused in France but later exported elsewhere, that liberal Western governments promote immigration as a kind of quiet genocide, as new, often non-white immigrants “replace” what Carlson called, in this country’s case, “legacy Americans.”

What’s interesting about the “replacement theory” is that Duda, in his interview with Carlson, taunted Poland’s political opposition by noting that his party received the most votes, so therefore the government wasn’t dissuaded by criticism of its actions: The arguments the “opposition are saying about the current Polish government” are “totally untrue,” he declared, “and the best proof of that is the fact that the incumbent government has won the election.”

Tyranny of the right majority

Media Matters: Leaked chat messages show members of white supremacist group Identity Evropa are obsessed with Tucker Carlson

Leaked chat messages (Media Matters, 3/8/19) show members of white supremacist Identity Evropa see Carlson as “a lone voice of reason in the media,” consciously working to “nudge people further to the right.”

The assertion that any policies are OK as long as a majority votes for them is what US conservatives like to call the “tyranny of the majority,” which is why they defend anti-democratic institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College. But the message Duda and Carlson share is this: If more immigrants come, it will be harder for us to rule them.

Add that to the long list compiled by journalists and civil rights organizations that show Carlson has promoted white supremacist ideas on his show before: His show has been accused of airing nods to white nationalist slogans like the “14 words” (Independent, 7/9/20), and has the support of white nationalist groups like Identity Evropa (Forward, 3/14/19).

Lump that with what Carlson (9/28/21) said just a day after his Duda interview: “What’s dying is the faith that created Western civilization—Christianity,” which has been replaced by “the cult of coronavirus.” As bizarre as that might sound, the eeriness is clear: America’s Christian fabric is being undone by secular reason, so the secular reason must be stomped out not just by religious sentimentalism, but one very specific religion over all others.

Features of fascism

Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works, told FAIR in a phone interview that Hungary and Poland have many of the same characteristics of Nazi rule before World War II. “We’re not looking at the imperialism that’s characteristic of fascism,” he said, noting that neither country has increased its military might to threaten its neighbors. “But we’re looking at states that are ultra-nationalist, targeting the rule of law, eliminating democratic institutions and targeting the press.”

It’s alarming that Carlson and Fox are making this so central to their message, he said, because it fits neatly with the Republican campaigns of voter suppression, stacking the courts and discrediting a free press. “You could take over the courts and transform the country into a one-party state with harsh gerrymandering,” Stanley said.

There’s a banal angle here, too, because under all the rhetoric from these regimes is just self-interested corruption: Reuters (3/15/18), for example, exposed how the Hungarian regime lets the prime minister’s friends and family pillage its treasury. The ultimate goal for Carlson, Stanley said, is to emulate how these countries have united voters against minorities and democratic institutions, while economic elites tied to the regime use the country as their own personal piggy bank. “It’s quite clear that’s what the Republican Party wants, to unite the billionaires and the religious right,” Stanley said.

Inching toward authoritarianism

Daily Beast: Tucker & Guest Suggest Right Will Go Full Fascist Because Hunter Biden

Tucker Carlson tells guest Jesse Kelly (Fox News, 3/25/21; Daily Beast, 3/25/21): “At some point, people are going to say, ‘Why should I follow the rules?’… We are moving toward actual extremism because they’re undermining the system that kept extremism at bay.”

And yet the cataloging of Carlson’s record, and the mounting evidence of his fascist tendencies, appear to lift his status, not just at Fox but in the right-wing generally. After the Anti-Defamation League attacked Carlson for his most recent invocation of the “great replacement theory,” Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz (USA Today, 9/28/21) fired back in defense of Carlson, charging, “The ADL is a racist organization.” The message is clear: a Jewish civil rights organization is clearly a racial enemy if it criticizes Fox’s nativist message, according to this bombastic but influential conservative lawmaker.

At the least, Carlson accepts the notion that the conservative movement is inching in an authoritarian direction, as he agreed that the perceived depravity of the current administration will make it likely that the right will “pick a fascist” to be its leader (Daily Beast, 3/25/21). He is not simply aligning with the country’s conservative movement, which would be par for the course at Fox. He is telling his many viewers that the United States should mimic countries that pine for a world that led us to two world wars, where the press is reined in by strong leaders and where sexual minorities are deemed a deviant threat to the national fabric.

Americans might take comfort in the fact that the United States is too pluralistic, and its constitution too strong, for its political class to sink into the narrowness of Poland or Hungary’s medieval provincialism. But from the recent violence against Haitian immigrants to the near-ban on abortions in Texas taking effect, one can clearly see the emergence of little Polands and Hungaries all over the country. And that very much indicates that Carlson, given his influence as one of the country’s top media personalities, is steering the right into a loose global confederation of illiberal political movements.

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Floods, fires, ice caps melting, hurricanes—all attest to the violence of human-caused climate disruption. It’s undeniable and undeniably fatal, and the only question for historians will be not what mysterious “factors” prevented humans from responding, but which political structures prevented the humans that wanted to respond meaningfully from doing so. When those books are written, at least a chapter will be devoted to cases like that of Jessica Reznicek, the activist now facing eight years in federal prison for damaging equipment at the Dakota Access Pipeline in Iowa.

Rolling Stone: 'You Strike a Match' Why two women sacrificed everything to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline

Jessica Reznicek (Rolling Stone, 5/26/21): “Property destruction, or as I prefer to call it, property improvement, is the only solution I foresee.”

In 2016, Reznicek, with fellow activist Ruby Montoya, set fire to heavy machinery, delaying construction for weeks on the pipeline that would move a half-million barrels of crude oil a day under the Missouri River and Lake Oahe, the reservoir that is the primary water source for the Standing Rock Reservation. Listeners will know of longstanding protests against the threats pipelines like Dakota Access present for water, land and communities—as well as the global climate. The pipeline violates Indigenous sovereignty and treaty rights, and contributes to the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women, exacerbated by the so-called “man camps” set up near pipeline projects.

Reznicek’s sentence was doubled by the labeling of her property damage as “terrorism,” and the Des Moines Register (7/22/21) contrasts her eight years to the three years and change given to an Iowa man who defrauded the government of more than $1.3 million in federal loans intended for Covid relief.

Years from now, corporate media may note that Reznicek’s imprisonment came the same week the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a new report that the planet faces climate catastrophe unless drastic efforts are made to reduce greenhouse gases. They will probably not note their own complicity in reporting on pipelines like Dakota Access as “controversial,” while silently abiding that only one side of the controversy is labeled “terrorist” and goes to prison.

Featured image: Jessica Reznicek (screengrab: Des Moines Register, 7/22/21)

The post Only Those Taking Action Against Climate Violence Are Labeled ‘Terrorist’ appeared first on FAIR.

NY Post: Gunfire explodes over seven bloody hours in NYC

It’s always possible to produce alarming headlines about crime—even in the safest year in New York City history, as the New York Post (7/30/18) demonstrated.

The stories were horrible.

A woman tied up and fatally shot in her own apartment. Her neighbor was killed in his apartment two days later in the same way. In another tragic episode, a young teenager was killed in a horrendous machete attack in the Bronx that made national headlines. The New York Post (7/30/18) reported on a violent stretch of seven hours where 16 people were shot, one fatally, in 10 separate incidents: “Gunfire Explodes Over Seven Bloody Hours in NYC.”

There were almost 300 reported murders in New York City that year, almost one per day. There were over 20,000 reported felony assaults, about 55 per day, and more than 12,000 robberies, 35 on an average day. The year was 2018, and it was the safest year in New York City’s recorded history. In a city of over eight million residents, crime, even in the safest times, will always be a headline.

Fast forward to 2021 as the city, and nation, begin to climb out of a pandemic that saw mass economic and social fallout—to say nothing of the lives lost. A historic, once-in-a-lifetime worldwide event destabilized the lives of countless people, and also led to an undeniable rise in shootings and homicide across the country. However, right-leaning media have used the uptick in certain crime categories to weaponize a counter-narrative to social justice movements, one that argues we need more cops and law enforcement to save our cities.

‘Fear City’

The narrative isn’t a new one, and it certainly doesn’t seem to be a genuine one. Local conservative tabloids, like the Post and the New York Daily News, have for years tried to stir fear of a city overrun by crime (FAIR.org, 6/21/21). As we’ve pointed out at FAIR (6/28/18), the local tabloids were apocalyptic in their predictions for the city when stop and frisk, a dragnet policing tactic, was ruled unconstitutional in its application by the NYPD. These papers have supported controversial police tactics like “broken windows”—a crackdown on minor offenses in poor communities, no matter the costs on vulnerable populations. (“Broken Windows ‘Works,’ and if It Hurts Immigrants—‘Too Bad,’” was how FAIR summarized the Daily News‘ position—3/8/17.)

The Post, which has been sounding the alarm bells since Democrat Bill de Blasio took office in 2014, has operated much like a media outlet that wants crime to increase. It seems to have an ideological drive to frame the city the way police unions in the 1970s once did: as “Fear City” The cartoonishly predictable newspaper’s pro-police bias is well-documented.

NY Post: With squeegee men back, NYC’s bad old days can’t be far behind

To the New York Post (2/18/20), “squeegee men” have long been a terrifying symbol of disorder.

Their fascination with squeegee workers (people that go up to cars to clean windshields for tips), for example, is in itself a master class in hyping a moral panic for a larger public policy goal. In 2014, Post headlines railed against squeegee workers making a “comeback” (the prevailing belief being they were run out of the city by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani) and “terrorizing” the city (8/7/14). In 2020, before Covid, the Post editorial board (2/18/20) was arguing that with squeegee workers “back,” “the bad old days can’t be far behind”—only to then run a story (5/31/21) declaring that the “pandemic gives way to return of NYC’s infamous squeegee men.”

Unable to decide whether squeegee workers are now “back” or had already “returned” (or perhaps never really left at all), the Post‘s reporting was never anything less than a naked attempt to signal a shadowy side of Gotham that is perpetually lurking around the figurative corner. With certain categories of city crime increasing from the previous year, media fearmongering has hit the ground running.

In the city, tabloid and television media have tried to explain crime increases—often described as “crime waves”—primarily in two ways. One, as a result of police reforms, notably New York state’s passage of legislation aimed to modestly reduce the use of cash bail (reforms that were watered down amid right-wing scare tactics). And secondly, to a “defunding” of police, as some municipalities have reduced official police spending. Quoting controversial former police commissioner William Bratton, the Post (6/10/21) made both arguments, claiming that city and state lawmakers (who make and maintain laws to make crime, well, illegal) “went too far to aid criminals.”

CCI: Percentage of Cases Receiving Bail or Detention at Arraignment

It’s unlikely that bail reform has had a major impact on crime, because bail reform hasn’t had all that much impact on bail. (Chart: Center for Court Innovation)

Data, however, doesn’t back the assertion that bail reform has led to crime increases. The Center for Court Innovation found “no evidence to support the claim” that bail reform was behind a spike in gun violence. In a more recent publication, the New York City–based non-profit that works closely with the state’s court system (not exactly a radical anti–law enforcement outfit) also found that more people have been in pre-trial detention, despite what the mayor and police commissioner were telling the public:

Beginning in May 2020, and increasing throughout the summer as some New York City public officials made unsupported claims linking bail reform to a spike in gun violence, judges reverted to setting bail more often. Combined with the effect of the July 2020 amendments to the original legislation—which made more cases again eligible for bail—this contributed to a steady, months-long rise in the number of people in jail awaiting trial.

‘Defunding’ police

Fox News: Dermot Shea: Defunding the police in NYC had a 'significant impact' on crime surge

A police commissioner telling you that you need more cops (Fox News, 9/25/20) should be treated with the same skepticism as a McDonald’s executive telling you that you need to eat more burgers.

What about “defunding” the police? Since those three magic words were seen on protest signs of George Floyd demonstrators last year—and become the fascination of right-wing pundits (and even establishment Democrats, as I wrote about last year—Medium, 11/16/20)—some have claimed that not only have the police been defunded, but that that defunding is to blame for increases in violence.

The New Republic (5/26/21) did a rather succinct job last month of bursting that bubble, showcasing the National Fraternal Order of Police’s twitter graphic of “SKYROCKETING MURDER RATES,” which claimed elected leaders in cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles “turned the keys over to the ‘Defund the Police’ mob.” The FOP, the New Republic‘s Matt Ford pointed out, actually

took care not to link the rise in homicides explicitly to actual material declines in police budgets. That’s because some cities did not actually “defund the police” in any meaningful way.

In other words, the very premise that reducing, even moderately, police spending caused a crime increase was flawed, because the asserted cause didn’t really happen in some cities.

In fact, that’s the case in New York City, a city that conservatives have breathlessly complained “defunded” the police (with help from the police commissioner: “Dermot Shea: Defunding the Police in NYC Had a ‘Significant Impact’ on Crime Surge”—Fox News, 9/25/20). New York did reshuffle some school police spending. However, the much-hyped decrease in the police budget by $1 billion annually was found by an independent budget watchdog to be only about a third of that. Any of the so-called cuts wouldn’t figure into the policing puzzle, because increases in shootings began early last summer, before the “defunded” budget would have even been felt in the police department.

In fact, the city saw crime increases as its police department was still far and away the largest and most expensive urban police department in the history of mankind. (This, of course, begs the question as to why the police themselves aren’t blamed for the increase in violent crime, because they certainly are given the credit when there is decrease in crime.) Further undermining the supposed causal relationship between “defunding” police and increases in crime is the fact that several cities saw increases in violent crime even as they increased police spending (Chicago Tribune, 6/10/21).

National outlets pile on

Fox: The Ingraham Angle on the Radicals Behind America's Crime Wave

Fox News‘ Laura Ingraham (6/10/21) explains how criticizing racist police violence causes crime to increase.

While local media has been increasingly reporting about crime for more than a year, national outlets have also piled on. Fox News host Laura Ingraham (6/10/21) ranted against activists in Minneapolis recently: “Now, a year after the ruinous deadly riots that ripped apart America, we see the corrupt poisonous fruits of BLM’s work.” The show, framed as Ingraham’s analysis of “the radicals behind America’s crime wave,” also included an interview with right-wing pundit Heather MacDonald—who was promoting a crime wave six years ago, when there was no crime wave (FAIR.org, 6/10/15).

MacDonald’s visceral hatred of the Black Lives Matter movement led her to complain to Ingraham that “thanks to this phony, racist attack on law enforcement, Black lives are the ones that are lost.” MacDonald, who is frequent contributor to the Post, the Wall Street Journal and City Journal (the magazine of the right-wing Manhattan Institute), has also claimed that “No, the Cops Didn’t Murder Sean Bell” (City Journal, Winter/07) after cops murdered Sean Bell, so you have to take what she says with several mountains of salt.

Attempts to tie violent crime to the racial justice movement has been an ongoing theme for the right since Black Lives Matter entered mainstream national discourse. MacDonald’s initial attempt to do so was with the conservative fairy tale known as the “Ferguson Effect” back in 2015, when several media outlets, including the New York Times (6/4/15), opened their pages for her to argue that the “vitriol” of protesters and police critics led to cops not being “proactive” enough to stop crime.

Columbia University professor Bernard Harcourt, a critical theorist who countered the Broken Windows theory of policing and also debunked MacDonald’s “Ferguson Effect” fiction, notes the historical parallels:

The attacks on the movement to defund policing or reform bail come straight out of the conservative playbook. It’s the same script from the 1960s and the reactionary response to the civil rights movement.

Harcourt notes conservatives see easy political opportunities from high crime or increases in crime. “It’s what turned crime into a national priority with Goldwater and Nixon.”

Politicization of crime

Pew: US Violent and Property Crime Rates Have Plunged Since the 1990s

Rudy Giuliani took credit for a decline in crime that was going on all over the country. (Chart: Pew Research, 11/20/20)

New York City—where our crime increases, notably in reported shootings and murders, still only result in a fraction of city crime levels in the early 1990s—has experienced this before. Former mayor Rudy Giuliani was elected twice on a law and order platform that seized on fear of crime and laid the groundwork for decades of mass arrests and stops of mostly Black and Latino New Yorkers.

After his election, in a sort of inverse of what is happening today, Giuliani took credit for declines in crime in the ’90s that began a year before Giuliani became mayor and were part of a nationwide crime decrease. “The same politicization of crime happened in the 1990s with broken windows policing. Each time, it’s just manipulation to score a political point,” Harcourt reminds me. That crime decrease benefited not only Giuliani and law and order Republican politics, it also gave police leaders like William Bratton, Giuliani’s commissioner, political power by defining them as saviors of the city.

However, more than a quarter century later, there is no consensus of what caused that crime decline. Similarly, the causes of this current crime increase probably won’t be clear for a long time—although the pandemic’s destabilizing effects on society are a very likely culprit—so the voices that claim to immediately know the causes are saying so based on a predetermined agenda. “If there are national trends in crime and strong variations in policing across jurisdictions,” Harcourt notes, “it’s likely that police strategy has little to do with those trends. And that applies when crime is going down, as well as when it is going up.”

The media, unfortunately, tend to gravitate to quick assessments rather than correct ones. As such, the industry’s tendency to rely on police for answers—which they habitually do in everyday crime blotter journalism (Washington Post, 6/30/20)—subtly works to center police expertise, and therefore power.

CNN’s ‘bloody summer’

CNN: How US cities are preparing for a potentially bloody summer of gun violence

What makes this a CNN headline (6/9/21) is that Fox News would have left out “potentially.”

CNN (6/9/21) did its part with coverage warning its audience of a “bloody summer,” featuring an interview with a representative of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement policy group. The network didn’t focus on why crime has gone up, but rather on the police response to it. In fact, CNN quoted four police leaders and one former police commissioner, which narrowed the entire concept of crime to something that only police are experts at addressing. This sort of journalism, while not as inflammatory as the New York Post or Fox News, reinforces the politics that favor police as saviors.

Chuck Wexler, spokesperson for the policy group, told CNN, “It’s challenging to be a police officer right now but it’s also from a police chief’s standpoint. They’re not getting much sleep.”

CNN‘s Jim Sciutto followed up with a police ride-along piece (6/22/21) where they quite literally jumped into police cars so that cops could explain to them the crime situation. “Here’s what they told us about spiking crime in the city,” which was part of the story’s headline, is in fact what any reasonable person would identify as police stenography—uncritically regurgitating police talking points. CNN apparently likes to embed themselves with cops. In 2014, CNN‘s Jake Tapper agreed with the police chief’s request for the network to report alongside cops after initially reporting on how militarized police were attacking protesters (FAIR.org, 8/19/14).

If one doesn’t simply take the police’s word on what is causing crime, there are numerous factors to consider. For example, in addition to the pandemic’s social economic and human toll, there has been an unprecedented surge in gun sales across America that can often work their way into urban centers.

Whatever the reason for certain crime increases—and again, while some violent crimes, like shootings, have increased, overall crime in America has not (FAIR.org, 6/21/21)—the media’s fascination with crime and crime-fighters embraces simplistic, digestible police-provided soundbites (e.g., “NYPD Blames Police Reform for Violent Holiday Weekend“—NY1, 7/6/20) and ready-made police heroes.

This form of journalism completely omits the idea that social and socio-economic stability profoundly affects crime—which might make people want to address crime by addressing those underlying conditions, rather than reflexively relying on police. By hyping a crime trend and platforming police experts in how to deal with it, the media show that they aren’t neutral observers but actually providing a journalistic cover to the idea that police—or the “thin blue line“—are the only thing standing between us and bloody carnage.

The post The Thin Blue Lies Behind Crime Wave Hype appeared first on FAIR.