Sarah Lipton-Lubet on Ginni Thomas Conflict, Dave Maass on Transparency and Journalism

    Ginni and Clarence Thomas, 1991 (image: C-SPAN) This week on CounterSpin: Headlines right now are full of the conflict of interest represented by Ginni Thomas, spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and her non-trivial role in the January 6 insurrection aimed at overturning, violently, the last presidential election. Our question is: A week or a month from now, where will we be? Will we still have one of nine Supreme Court justices declaring himself “one being” with his spouse, who declares the 2020 election an “obvious fraud”? And will the corporate press corps have reduced that to yet another partisan spat that shouldn’t interfere with our belief that all is proceeding as it should, no deep fixes necessary? We speak with Sarah Lipton-Lubet from the Take Back the Court Action Fund, about how to respond to the Thomas scandal if we really don’t want it to happen again. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220401LiptonLubet.mp3 Transcript: ‘Someone Who Cared About Integrity Would Have Recused Himself’ (image: EFF) Also on the show: For many Americans, the word “journalist” calls up an image of scruffy firebrands, rooting through official documents to ferret out critical truth—defined as what those in power don’t want you to hear—and then broadcasting that truth to a public thirsty for a democracy more answerable to human needs. Many things stand in the way of that vision of the press corps we imagine and deserve. One is the stubborn and at times brazen opacity and secretiveness of government and other powerful agents. Dave Maass, director of investigations at Electronic Frontier Foundation and the driving force behind the Foilies, an annual award of sorts given to those who make the job of shining necessary sunlight particularly difficult. We talk with him about that. https://media.blubrry.com/counterspin/content.blubrry.com/counterspin/CounterSpin220401Maass.mp3 Transcript: ‘You Have to Laugh at the Ways Agencies Will Evade Giving You Information’