Julie Hollar on Roe Reversal, Tesnim Zekeria on Baby Formula Shortage

  Washington Post (5/11/22) This week on CounterSpin: Corporate news media want you to be alarmed about an “extraordinary breach” of privacy. It’s the privacy of the institution of the Supreme Court which, one CBS expert told viewers, had been dealt a “body blow” by the leak of a ruling overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision allowing the right to terminate a pregnancy to remain between the pregnant person and their doctor. And corporate media are in high dudgeon about protecting people from invasions of their right to privacy—but again, only if by that you mean protecting Supreme Court justices and their “right” to never be confronted by people who disagree with the life-altering decisions they make. You almost wouldn’t think the real news of the past week was the nation’s highest court declaring that more than half of the population no longer have bodily autonomy. That’s to say, no longer have the control over their own body that a corpse has—since people can refuse organ donation after their death, even if it would save another person’s life. Elite media are interested in abortion as an issue, as a thing people talk about, but that it is not understood as a human right is clear from reporting—years of reporting—that suggest that for them it’s most importantly a partisan football, and any fight over it needs equal and equally respectful attention to “both sides,” even if one of those sides is calling for human rights violations. We talked with FAIR’s Julie Hollar about that. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220513Hollar.mp3 Transcript: ‘The First Story They Tell Is About the Leak Itself’ Popular Information (5/12/22) Also on the show: In corporate media–land, it’s controversial that people be allowed to determine whether they give birth, because, after all, we care so much about the birthed. It sounds sarcastic, but that’s the underlying premise of coverage of the shortage of baby formula—which incorporates an implied shock at the denial of basic healthcare with another implied shock that somehow capitalism doesn’t allow for all infants to be treated the same. There’s really no time left for pretended surprise at system failure in this country. We can still talk about journalism that shines a light on it, rather than an obscuring shadow. We’ll talk with Tesnim Zekeria from Popular Information about applying a public interest prism to, in this case, the story on baby formula.   https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220513Zekeria.mp3 Transcript: ‘We Live in an Economy That Provides Little Support to New Parents’ Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at coverage of murdered Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220513Banter.mp3