The Roots of Fake News Book Launch
PCIM and the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) hosted a conversation, moderated by Raza Rumi, with authors Brian Winston and Matthew Winston about their book, “The Roots of Fake News: Objecting to Objective Journalism.” Their conversation explores where the book’s dismantling of objective journalism—“a pompous contradiction in terms,” as Matthew Winston calls it—fits into […]
Infiltrating News — Sharon Lerner and Rodrigo Brandão of The Intercept
PCIM and the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) hosted a discussion with Rodrigo Brandão and Sharon Lerner from investigative independent news outlet The Intercept on Wednesday, March 24. Moderated by Raza Rumi, the conversation centered recent stories by Sharon Lerner that interrogated the human cost of cancer-causing emissions from large factories near towns. Rodrigo […]
Trump’s “Chinese Virus” Tweet Led to a Huge Rise in Anti-Asian Tweets
On March 16, 2020, as COVID-19 was first spreading across the U.S., then-President Donald Trump issued a tweet about his support of U.S. industries, saying that he would protect them from the “Chinese Virus.” What followed, a new study has found, was a steep rise in tweets containing anti-Asian hashtags as anti-Asian sentiments rose across […]
‘Someone Needs to Actually Do Something’: a Grim Reflection on Anti-Asian Hate
A year ago this month, Eddie Song was accosted by a stranger at a Costco in New York City. The man accused him of spreading the coronavirus and threatened to punch him in the face. It was a clarifying moment for Song, a Korean American entrepreneur who grew up in the city. He later witnessed […]
Hesitant Coverage of the Hateful Atlanta Shootings
ON TUESDAY EVENING, a white gunman killed four people at Young’s Asian Massage, a spa in a suburb of Atlanta. He then traveled into the city and killed four more people, also at spas—three at a business called Gold Spa, and one at Aromatherapy Spa. In total, six of the victims were Asian women. The four […]
Austerity-Addicted Media Scaremonger Over Infrastructure ‘Spending Spree’
As soon as Democrats took over Washington with big plans for reviving the economy, corporate media started sounding the alarm about government spending (FAIR.org, 1/25/21). With the party’s infrastructure bill—which could come in around $2 trillion over four years—now pending, the media deficit hawks are on high alert, tossing around big, scary numbers to throw cold water […]
Democrats Take the First Steps to Make Biden’s Infrastructure Bill a Climate Bill
Four congressional Democrats on Friday unveiled the BUILD GREEN Infrastructure and Jobs Act, a bill that would invest $500 billion over 10 years in state, local, and tribal projects to galvanize the transition to all electric public transportation — reducing climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions and health-threatening air pollution while expanding clean mass transit and creating up to one million new jobs. Modeled […]
Biden Labor Board Strikes Barrier to Unionization of 1.5 Million Grad Students
Campus organizers are hoping that dozens of new unionization campaigns may be on the horizon nationwide following the recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision to withdraw a proposed Trump-era rule that would have barred graduate students from joining a union. During his campaign, President Joe Biden had vowed to “empower the NLRB to fulfill its intended […]
‘This Is Tax Evasion’: Richest 1% of US Households Don’t Report 21% of Their Income, Analysis Finds
A new analysis by IRS researchers and academics published Monday morning estimates that the richest 1% of U.S. households don’t report around 21% of their income, often using complex tax avoidance strategies that allow them to outmaneuver the federal government’s increasingly rare audits of the wealthy. Led by two IRS researchers as well as Daniel Reck of the London […]
Senate GOPers Use Gun Violence Hearing To Denigrate BLM Protests
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday held the first in a series of hearings aimed at mitigating gun violence in the wake of two recent mass shootings within one week — first in Atlanta, Georgia, and then in Boulder, Colorado. The hearing, which was scheduled before a suspected gunman opened fire in a Colorado supermarket, […]