News Brief - NYT, BBC, Guardian: Starvation in Gaza Doesn't Really Count if Victim Has Preexisting Condition
Release Date: 08/27/2025
Live Show: 'How to Sell a Genocide' Book Talk at The Word Is Change Bookstore in Brooklyn, NY
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This is a live recording between Nima and Adam at the Word is Change Bookstore May 7, 2026. In this conversation, we discuss key findings that can be found in Adam's new book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza.
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News Brief: "Peak TV," Streamer Studio Accounting Gimmicks, and the Precarity of Hollywood Labor
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In this News Brief, we talk with Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller, authors of the new book Boom to Bust: How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers, about rising inequality and precarity in Hollywood, studio consolidation, and how the dream of fame and fortune, 100 years on, is still used to concentrate power and drive down wages.
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News Brief: How the Right Invented — and Exploited — the “Liberal Media” Trope
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In this News Brief, we talk with A. J. Bauer, assistant professor at the University of Alabama, about his new book," Making the Liberal Media: How Conservatives Built a Movement Against the Press". In our discussion we break down the corporate and ideological forces that shaped the popular idea mainstream media was crawling with fifth columnist agitators hostile to the values of Real America.
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Ep 237: How Selective, Patronizing 'Deradicalization' Discourse Pathologizes Anti-Colonial Struggle
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In this episode, we break down the long history of US media reducing recalcitrant populations' grievances to "terrorism," "hate," and "radicalism" in urgent need of re-education. With guest Prem Thakker.
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Ep 236: Manufactured Austerity and the Media Assisted 'Public-Private Partnership' Rip-Off
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In this episode we discuss how privatization was rebranded 'Public-Private Partnerships' and unleashed decades of raiding of the public coffers by Wall Street. With guest Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest.
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News Brief: As American Troops Hide in Civilian Hotels, US Media Ignores Pentagon's Use of ‘Human Shields’
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In this News Brief we examine CNN, the Atlantic, Washington Post and NYT’s blatant ‘human shields’ double standard as reports emerge of US troops hiding from Iranian attacks in civilian infrastructure.
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News Brief: How Decades of Media Distortions and Lies about "Iran's Nuclear Program" Lead to War
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In this News Brief, we discuss a recent poll showing 70% of Americans are fundamentally wrong about the nature of Iran's "nuclear program"—including 1 in 4 who think Iran currently possesses a nuclear weapon, and detail how decades of sleazy media innuendo and fabrications got us to this point.
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"Shadow Fleets," Sanctions & Western Media's International Law-ification of Arbitrary US Dictates
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In this episode, we explore how arbitrary—often unilateral—sanctions against Enemy States are given the halo of international legal legitimacy with a combination of lies, slippery language and brainless court stenography. With guest Maryam Jamshidi, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado School of Law.
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News Brief: As Trump Crushes Academia, the NYT and Atlantic Still Fight 'Woke' Wars from 5 Years Ago
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In this News Brief, we are joined by Chenjerai Kumanyika and Todd Wolfson of the American Association of University Professors to discuss Trump's gutting of higher education, its expansion on previous neoliberal privatization efforts, and how big donor and media backlash against "woke "academics and anti-Gaza genocide protestors is fueling the possible end of academic independence as we know it.
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Ep 234: TikTok, Gen Z's Move to Social Media and Elite Panic Over Unsanctioned News
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In this episode, we examine our political class' TikTok neurosis, how Gaza fueled its sell to US and Israeli military contractors, and the long history of elite panics around unsanctioned information flows. With guest Omar Zahzah.
info_outlineIn this News Brief, we detail recent "updates," "clarifications" and "added context" pro-Israel crybullies have pressured Western media outlets to make (some more willingly than others) that give readers the distinct impression emaciated children in Gaza aren't really an urgent humanitarian crisis if they have rickets, cancer, or cerebral palsy. With guest Beatrice Adler-Bolton.