This week on CounterSpin: In the immediate wake of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel in October 2023 that killed some 1,200 people, the Washington Post editorial board was warning that it was unacceptable to suggest that the attack “should be considered in context with previous actions by Israel”—those actions including decades of occupation, dispossession, deprivation, harassment and fatal violence.
Even now, two years on, as NBC News’ "What to Know" feature includes the information that Israel’s actions, denoted as “in retaliation” for October 7, have killed more than 67,000 people in Gaza—with many more wounded and maimed—US corporate media still twist themselves in knots trying to say that, yes, something very wrong is happening in Gaza—but somehow trying to stop it is worse than enabling and prolonging it. They do this in part by saving respectful space for someone like Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton to flatly declare there is “no famine in Gaza,” that “Palestine is a made-up fiction,” and that there is an “international media and political chorus…try[ing] to bully Israel into submission.”
Academic and writer Gregory Shupak, author of The Wrong Story:Palestine, Israel and the Media, has been looking at the tactics major media deploy to suggest that we use something other than our own eyes and judgment and humanity to assess the situation, and how to act in the face of it. We hear from him this week on CounterSpin.
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at CBS's coverage of the Supreme Court's Amy Coney Barrett.
