CounterSpin – Gina Plata-Nino & Crystal FitzSimons (2025) on Food Aid Cuts

This week on CounterSpin: If you look for media coverage about the Farm Bill that’s currently passing through Congress, you can find it–at sites like agriculture.com or agri-pulse.com, or those outlets that have “ag” sections. If you look for coverage of SNAP, the largest food assistance program in the country, you can find that lots of other places. And while some of those headlines are about “Deadbeat Parents” and “SNAP Fraud,” these days many more say things like “Nearly 19K State Kids Have Lost SNAP Benefits Over Past Year” (that’s Connecticut) or “Illinois Launches New Program to Provide Food Benefits to People Who Lost SNAP,” or “Small Grocery Stores Cutting Inventory, Considering Layoffs as SNAP Dollars Decline.” Overwhelmingly, local reporters are documenting how cuts to SNAP are hurting people and communities. But the lack of major media stories linking the program to the Farm Bill seem somehow emblematic of the opacity around this country’s lawmaking on critical questions around food. We get an update from Gina Plata-Nino, director of SNAP policy and advocacy at the Food Research & Action Center.   CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week’s major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting). The post CounterSpin – Gina Plata-Nino & Crystal FitzSimons (2025) on Food Aid Cuts appeared first on KPFA.