Citations Needed

"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. There’s a recurring theme within media coverage of subjugated people in the US and around the world: they’re 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, we’re 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. It’s a conditional sense of compassion, reserved for victims who media deem deserving—say, Ukrainian victims of Russia’s invasion—and 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 empathy––and even worse, pathologizing violence in certain communities––conditions 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 – particularly against Arab, Black, and Latino people – 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.

In this pubic News Brief, we detail the usual scapegoats for party, pundit, and press failure to stem the tide of ascendant fascism.

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 — and sometimes target — college kids and protesters who won’t 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 don’t fit into any labels. Our guest is Discourse Blog's Katherine Krueger.

"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, we’re told; they're simply responding to it. If materials are in short supply, or if there’s 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.