Afleveringen
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âIsrael built an âAI factoryâ for war. It unleashed it in Gaza,â laments the Washington Post. âHospitals Are Reporting More Insurance Denials. Is AI Driving Them?,â reports Newsweek. âAI Raising the Rent? San Francisco Could Be the First City to Ban the Practice,â announces San Franciscoâs KQED.
Within the last few years, and particularly the last few months, weâve heard this refrain: AI is the reason for an abuse committed by a corporation, military, or other powerful entity. All of a sudden, the argument goes, the adoption of âfaultyâ or âoverly simplifiedâ AI caused a breakdown of normal operations: spikes in health insurance claims denials, the skyrocketing of consumer prices, the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. If not for AI, it follows, these industries and militaries, in all likelihood, would implement fairer policies and better killing protocols.
Weâll admit: the narrative seems compelling at first glance. There are major dangers in incorporating AI into corporate and military procedures. But in these cases, the AI isnât the culprit; the people making the decisions are. UnitedHealthcare would deny claims regardless of the tools at its disposal. Landlords would raise rents with or without automated software. The IDF would kill civilians no matter what technology was, or wasnât, available to do so. So why do we keep hearing that AI is the problem? Whatâs the point of this frame and why is it becoming so common as a responsibility-avoidance framing?
On todayâs episode, weâll dissect the genre of âinvestigativeâ reporting on the dangers of AI, examining how it serves as a limited hangout, offering controlled criticism while ultimately shifting responsibility toward faceless technologies and away from powerful people.
Later on the show, weâll be speaking with Steven Renderos, Executive Director of MediaJustice, a national racial justice organization that advances the media and technology rights of people of color. He is the creator and co-host, with the great Brandi Collins-Dexter, Bring Receipts, a politics and pop culture podcast and is executive producer of Revolutionary Spirits, a 4-part audio series on the life and martyrdom of Mexican revolutionary leader Francisco Madero.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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âItâs fair to call the deteriorating situation at the US/Mexican border a crisis,â declared NBCâs Meet the Press in 2021. â[CNN anchor Dana] Bash presses Netanyahu on Gaza death toll: 'Is Israel doing everything possible to... avoid civilian casualties?',â boasted CNNâs State of the Union in 2023. âPrinciple over party⊠The latest high-profile Republican endorsement for Harris. And she got another Cheney endorsement,â announced ABCâs This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
These shows â ABCâs This Week, NBCâs Meet the Press, CNNâs State of the Union, CBSâs Face the Nation â are fixtures of a major genre of television: the Sunday morning news show. Since the 1940s, these weekly shows have featured panel interviews with government officials, lawmakers, candidates, and other political figures, usually from the US, as part of their stated missions to âtackle pressing issues,â produce robust discourse on current events, and hold electeds and aspiring electeds accountable.
A relic from a different era, these Sunday News Show still loom large today. No, they donât have particularly high ratings, but much like the role editorial boards of major newspapers play, they matter to people who matter. They shape the agenda and tell lawmakers, advisers, CEOs and other people who wield power across our political, economic and social systems what to care about that week and how to analyze the current moment.
But to what extent do they serve any real journalistic function? To what extent do they actually ask difficult and challenging questions? Do the Sunday morning shows truly illuminate our political moments and interrogate the powerful, or essentially do the opposite? And what effect do these shows, known for âsetting the agendaâ in Washington, have on policymakers, news media, and the public?
On this episode, we discuss the history, ideology, and effects of Sunday morning news shows, look at howâdespite their lofty claims to challenging journalismâthey prioritize and revel in prestige and access, flattering existing power structures and further enabling reactionary policy.
Our guest is FAIR's Julie Hollar.
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In this Beg-a-Thon live show, "Ancient Rome and the False Histories Inspiring Musk & the MAGA World," with guest Dr. Sarah E. Bond, we discuss Sarah's new book, Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire, and how Elon Musk and everyone in his MAGA orbit appropriate the aesthetics of Rome while understanding almost nothing about the history they're seemingly so infatuated with.
Originally livestreamed on YouTube on Wednesday, February 19.
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In this News Brief, we interview journalist and author Eoin Higgins about his new book, "Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left," discuss the new model of tech billionaire funding, and detail how some of the biggest names in Left media became MAGA-aligned, Tucker-boosting petty, score-settlers.
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In this News Brief, we detail the Trump's administration's strategy of trying to terrorize migrant communities, why it's not working as planned, how The New York Times is manufacturing a pro-mass deportation consensus and how migrant communities and their allies are fighting back.
We are joined by Chris from the humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths.
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"Clinton seeks common ground with Republicans," reported the Associated Press in 1994. "Obama hosts dinner, urges bipartisanship," announced the AP again, in 2009. "Resist Trump? On Immigration, Top Democrats See Room for Compromise," stated The New York Times in late 2024.
For decades, weâve heard Democratic policymakers extol the virtues of working with Republicans. Through a series of stock terms, e.g. bipartisanship, finding common ground, reaching across the aisle, compromising, they tout their willingness to set aside their political differences with Republicans in order to stop quibbling, quit stalling, work pragmatically, andââthe holiest of the holiesââGet Things Done.
This all might sound well and good; surely an active government is better than an idle, incapacitated one. But which things, exactly, are getting done? Why is it that the act of making decisions or passing legislation is deemed more important to elected officials than the actual content of those decisions and legislation? And how does an incurious, largely compliant media contribute to the harms of a Democratic party that, in its embrace of Republican ideology under the seeming noble banner of "bipartisanship" continues to move further to the right on key issues?
On this episode, we dissect the popular appeal for bipartisanship, examine how folksy calls for âWashingtonâ to âwork togetherâ more often than not serve to promote war, austerity, anti-LBGTQ policies and crackdown on vulnerable migrants, and show how this seemingly high minded formulation serves to push Republicans further right and launder the Democratsâ increasingly conservative political agenda.
Our guest is journalist and author Malaika Jabali.
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In this News Brief, we talk to Joyce Ajlouny of the American Friends Service Committee, discuss a recent episode where the New York Times refused to run an AFSC pro-ceasefire ad with the word "genocide" in it, and detail the broader battle within liberalism over labeling the US and Israel's "war" as genocideââand what it would entail if our media did.
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"White House frustrated by Israel's onslaught but sees few options," reports the Washington Post. "White House cancels meeting, scolds Netanyahu in protest over video," announces Axios. "Biden Works Against the Clock as Violence Escalates in the Middle East," asserts The New York Times.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, we've heard seemingly endlessly that the Biden White House disagrees with the violence in Gaza, but can't do anything to stop it. A number of hindrances frustrate the administration, we're told. There are limits to the United Statesâ influence and power. President Biden is furious and anguished at Israeli leadership. The administration is working around the clock toward a ceasefire, which â we are repeatedly told â will come any day now.
But, as everyone from the Brookings Institution to the Financial Times to Israeli officials and generals themselves make clear: Biden has been able to, and still can, end Israel's genocidal onslaught whenever he wants. The US has dispositive leverage over Israel, leverage Biden has repeatedlyââand openlyââruled out using.
The stark reality is that Biden simply doesn't want to stop Israel and, while he may have complaints about the excesses and PR around the margins, he largely agrees with the outlines of Israelâs destruction of Gaza.
To obscure this central fact, US media has now spent over a year pushing out three White House and Israeli-curated media genres of hand-wringing deflection: (1) Helpless Biden, (2) Fuming/Deeply Concerned Biden, and (3) Third Partying.
On this episode, as Biden is set to step down next month, we will go over the media's legacy of covering for the President for 15 months, examine these fictitious reporting genres designed to distance him from the carnage in Gaza, and look at how they worked tirelessly to minimize responsibility and absolve US officials from their involvement in a genocide being live-streamed for over a year.
Our guest is journalist Dalia Hatuqa.
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"The Bad Guys Are Winning," wrote Anne Applebaum for The Atlantic in 2021. "The War on History Is a War on Democracy," warned Timothy Snyder in The New York Times, also in 2021. "The GOP has found a Putin-lite to fawn over. That's bad news for democracy," argued Ruth Ben-Ghiat on MSNBC the following year, 2022.
Within the last 10 years or so, and especially since the 2016 election of Trump, these authors â Anne Applebaum, Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, in addition to several others â have become liberal-friendly experts on authoritarianism. On a regular basis, they make appearances on cable news and in the pages of legacy newspapers and magazinesâin some cases, as staff membersâin order to warn of how individual, one-off âstrongmenâ like Trump, Putin, Orban, and Xi, made up a vague âauthoritarianâ axis hellbent on destroying Democracy for its own sake.
But what good does this framing do and who does it absolve? Instead of meaningfully contending with US's sprawling imperial power and internal systems of oppression â namely being the largest carceral state in the world â these MSNBC historians reheat decades-old Axis of Evil or Cold War good vs evil rhetoric, pinning the horrors of centuries of political violence on individual "mad men." Meanwhile, they selectively invoke the "authoritarian" label, fretting about the need to save some abstract notion of democracy from geopolitical Bad Guys while remaining silent as the US funds, arms and backs the most authoritarian process imaginable â the immiseration and destruction of an entire people â specifically in Gaza.
On this episode, we look at the advent and influence of MSNBC-approved historians, dissecting their selective anti-authoritarian posture and discussing how their work does little more than polish their careers and provide cover for US and US-allied militarism.
Our guest is historian and author Greg Grandin.
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"Salvadoran Ties Bloodshed To a 'Culture of Violence'", reported The New York Times in 1981. "The violence in Lebanon is casual, random, and probably addicting," stated the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in 1985. "Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims," wrote long-time New Republic publisher and editor-in-chief Marty Peretz in 2010.
Thereâs a recurring theme within media coverage of subjugated people in the US and around the world: theyâre mindlessly, inherently savage. Whether the subject is immigrants from Central and South America, Black populations in major American cities, or people in Lebanon or Palestine, weâre repeatedly told that any violence they may be subjected to or carry out themselves is inevitable, purposeless, and baked into their "culture."
The pathologizing of violence in certain racialized communities is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin, which reinforces this notion, is the equally sinister concept of selective empathy. Itâs a conditional sense of compassion, reserved for victims who media deem deservingâsay, Ukrainian victims of Russiaâs invasionâand not for those who media deem undeserving, like Palestinians under siege by Israel in Gaza. What motivates this asymmetry, and how does it shape public understandings of suffering throughout the world? How is empathy as a form of media currency central to getting the public to care about victims of certain violence, while a lack of empathyââand even worse, pathologizing violence in certain communitiesââconditions the public to not care about those whose deaths those in power would rather not talk about, much less humanize.
In this episode, we look at the concept of selective empathy in media coverage, examining how it continues centuries-old campaigns of dehumanization â particularly against Arab, Black, and Latino people â bifurcates victims of global violence into the deserving and the undeserving, and influences contemporary opinion on everything from pain tolerance to criminal-legal policy.
Our guest is Dr. Muhannad Ayyash.
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The PC Police Outlaw Make-Believe." "Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web." "The Roots of Campus Hatred." "End DEI."
These articles all have something in common: they were written by Bari Weiss. Weiss, the New York Times opinion editor and columnist turned horseshoe theorist media proprietor, has made a name for herself as a victim, and enemy, of that perennial right-wing bogeyman: so-called wokeness. For over a decade now, Weiss has taken to the pages of major news media to complain, vilified â and sometimes target â college kids and protesters who wonât let her and the fascistic company she keeps, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and the like, speak their minds as loudly and publicly as possible.
There is, of course, a comical level of irony here. Amid her claims of being silenced and repressed by a hostile left, Weiss has been paid to voice her opinions in legacy paper after legacy paper and been given millions by venture capital firms to start her own media company, The Free Press, and her so-called "university," the University of Austin. And despite her insistence that mainstream institutions are too intolerant of heterodox views like hers, she's warmly embraced on CNN broadcasts, in the pages of her former employer, The New York Times, and has been given glowing profiles in Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Magazine, Ha'aretz, The Information, and the Financial Times.
On this episode, we discuss the rise of Bari Weiss Silicon Valley-funded media empire, the trope of the Iconoclast rebel, truth-telling media lightening rod with banal conservative political positions, and the broader, seemingly uniquely American psychological need, and branding convention, for people with 95% boilerplate rightwing positions to see themselves as persecuted outsiders who donât fit into any labels.
Our guest is Discourse Blog's Katherine Krueger.
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"An inflation conspiracy theory is infecting the Democratic Party," The Washington Post frets. "'Greedflation' is a nonsense idea," The Economist insists. "Harris' plan to stop price gouging could create more problems than it solves," CNN warns.
Over the last few years, as the prices of groceries, cars, and other necessities have risen, often dramatically, leading news outlets and influential pundits have claimed that these rising prices are simply a matter of supply and demand. Corporations aren't taking advantage of inflation, weâre told; they're simply responding to it. If materials are in short supply, or if thereâs a surge in demand, retailers have no choice but to raise prices to control production flows and costs. Likewise, if prices of goods are significantly higher, then the people who want those goods enough to pay higher prices can still have them.
But these pat arguments don't hold up to scrutiny. Since the most recent round of inflation began, multiple studies have shown that corporations are indeed taking advantage of inflation, using tactics like price gouging to boost profits while creating barriers to quality food, medication, and other essentials. So what explains this discrepancy?
On this episode, we examine the tendency of media to defend corporate price-gouging and other inflationary maneuvers, how high status pundits and Serious Economists critique the White House from the right on this issue and condescend to anyone who might be even slightly suspicious that corporations are animated by something other than just the Invisible Hand, painting them as wacko conspiracy theorist who simply need to take the vaulted "Econ 101."
Our guest is the Revolving Door Project's Dylan Gyauch-Lewis.
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"Calls for Transforming Police Run Into Realities of Governing in Minnesota," cautioned The New York Times in 2020. "Democrats Face Pressure on Crime From a New Front: Their Base," claimed the paper of record again, in 2022. "How Bidenâs recent actions on immigration could address a major issue voters have with him," announced PBS NewsHour, republishing the Associated Press, in 2024.
Thereâs a common ethos in Democratic politics: Do whatâs popular. In recent years, a certain class of political pundits and consultants have been championing so-called âpopularism,â the principle that political candidates should emphasize the issues that poll well, in everything from healthcare to labor, policing to foreign policyââand deemphasize, or sometimes outright ignore, the ones that donât.
It seems reasonable and democratic for elected officials to pay close attention to the will of the publicâand, in many cases, it is. But itâs not always this simple. Far too often, the leading proponents of popularism, chief among them Matt Yglesias and David Shor, only apply the concept when it suits a conservative agenda, ignoring, for example, that 74% of American voters supporât âincreasing funding for child care,â 72% of Americans want to expand Social Security 71% of Americans support government funded universal pre-K. 69% of Americans support Medicare for All and so on and so on.
More often than not, leftwing agenda items that poll very well are never mentioned meanwhile that which polls well AND aligns with the interests of Wall Street and other monied interests, we are told is of utmost urgent priority.
Itâs a phenomenon weâre calling on this show Selective Popularism, the selective use of polling and generic notions of popularity to push already existing rightwing and centrist agendas without needing to do the messy work of ideologically defending them.
On this episode, we look at the development and implementation of Selective Popularism, exploring how this convenient political pseudo-analysis launders the advocacy and enactment of reactionary policy as a mere reflection of what the "people" demand.
Our guest is journalist, writer and host of Jacobin's The Dig podcast, Daniel Denvir.
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