Melissa Crow on Asylum Restrictions, Dave Zirin on NYT’s Vanishing Sports Section

  https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin230728.mp3   Houston Chronicle (7/11/23) This week on CounterSpin: Listeners may have heard that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott installed barrels wrapped in razor wire in some parts of the Rio Grande to block migrants from crossing and harm those that try. As revealed by the Houston Chronicle, Texas troopers have been ordered to push people back into the river, and to deny them water. The cruelty is obvious; the Department of Justice is talking about suing. But there are other ways for immigration policy to be inhumane. Advocates have long declared that Biden’s asylum restrictions (which look a lot like Trump’s asylum restrictions) are not just harmful but unlawful. And a federal judge has just agreed. We learn about that from a participant in the case, Melissa Crow, director of litigation at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. Transcript: ‘People Have to Be Able to Access the Asylum Process, Regardless of Manner of Entry’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin3230728Crow.mp3   New York Times (10/23/17) Also on the show: In October 2017, the New York Times ran a story headlined “Why the Athletic Wants to Pillage Newspapers,” that began, “By the time you finish reading this article, the upstart sports news outlet called the Athletic probably will have hired another well-known sportswriter from your local newspaper.” In January 2022, the Times bought the Athletic for $550 million, saying that “as a stand-alone product…the Athletic is a great complement to the Times.” It’s now July 2023, and the New York Times has announced it’s shutting down its sports desk, outsourcing that reporting to…the Athletic. Dave Zirin joins us to talk about that; he’s sports editor at The Nation, host of the Edge of Sports podcast, and author of many books, including A People’s History of Sports in the United States. Transcript: ‘The Athletic Is the Negation of Local Sports Coverage’ https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin3230728Zirin.mp3   Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at some recent press coverage of Europe’s economy. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin3230728Banter.mp3