sandhya dirks
@audiosand
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National correspondent @NPR covering race in America. Pods: On Our Watch, American Suburb. "alarmingly divisive." she/her. RTs not endorsements
Oakland, CA
Joined February 2011
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Journalism has a power problem: The way we give power 2 authority and let it set narratives (
#powerbias
). The way we fail to see r own power. A central myth/saying in audio journalism is that listening is an act of love; I argue it's an act of power:
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My baby's cancer may have returned and my insurance,
@Cigna
, is refusing to help cover a PET scan so we can find out if it has, and if needed, continue our work to save his life. No qualms about putting my child's life on the line for their bottom line. He is not even 2 years old
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student reporters trying to hold back tears as they have to report on the fact that NYPD will have a permanent presence on campus until May 17th
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UPDATE: Cigna has approved the scans!!! I appreciate y'all so deeply for making this happen, & Cigna for doing the right thing. But this tweet shouldn't have to go viral for this 2 happen. It's an individual solution to a systemic problem, which is to say no real solution at all.
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I wrote this last night in anger and pain. I am overwhelmed - in tears - by y'alls response. Heartened by all the support and advice, heartbroken by so many with similar stories. We will spend today trying to get this changed, and will keep this thread updated. THANK YOU ALL
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according to WKCR the NYPD threatened to arrest
@jelani9
-- the dean of the journalism school -- if he left the j-school building.
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When I went to Columbia they were proud of the scholarship of Edward Said & the history of student protest (including the 1968 anti-war protests which included historian Eric Foner). These things helped defined the school. Which makes what is happening right now deeply ironic.
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Some of you asked about a go fund me. Because we live in America, we set one up to cover the bills and many auxiliary expenses of our first, over-a-year long, battle with cancer. I fear we may need to resurrect it, so sharing again now:
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this is the hill i will die on: SUBURBS ARE THE MOST DIVERSE SPACE IN AMERICAN LIFE. my reporting has shown that demographic shifts in these once white spaces is central to WHY racial resentment is rising. in excluding non white ppl they are also missing the roots of this story
@soledadobrien
Fact: a majority of African Americans now live in suburbs, not urban centers . So It would seem that if you really want to know what “suburban moms” think you might seek a variety of perspectives , not just this one group.
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as a reporter covering race in America, i find myself a constant chronicler of asymmetry
can’t stop thinking about charlottesville and how white nationalists just waltzed through UVA’s campus with tiki torches shouting the most terrifying shit, *after* one of them slammed a car into a crowd and killed someone, and yet there is not one uniformed officer in this photo
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UPDATE:
@Cigna
has approved the PET scan. THANK YOU to each and every one of you who boosted this and helped make that happen. But reading so many of the stories in this thread is a clear reminder this is a systemic problem. Which means it requires systemic solutions.
My baby's cancer may have returned and my insurance,
@Cigna
, is refusing to help cover a PET scan so we can find out if it has, and if needed, continue our work to save his life. No qualms about putting my child's life on the line for their bottom line. He is not even 2 years old
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A reminder that the first hate crime killing after 9/11 was a Sikh man, Balbir Singh Sodhi.
THREAD: The Sikh Coalition is aware of—and deeply disturbed by—an apparent hate-motivated attack on a Sikh teen on a NYC bus yesterday. Per reporting, the assailant insulted and attempted to tear off the young man's turban and punched him repeatedly.
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@EBHarrington
@jamescappio
@Cigna
@DHMCandClinics
I am so sorry. It is hell enough having a sick child, let alone trying to deal with insurance on top of that. Sending all hopes for health and healing to your son and your family.
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Happy Monday! Race and equity isn’t a beat, it is the lens through which all reporting must be framed, understood and investigated.
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@DrJaimeFriedman
@Cigna
@UHC
I'm so so sorry you went through this. Other imaging is useful but NOT the same as a PET scan when it comes to detecting cancer. Oncologists and other doctors should be fighting cancer, not companies.
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In other words, journalists are being trapped inside the home of the pulitzers by police. WKCR reports that an NYPD officer peaked his head inside the j-school, and told faculty and press they could not leave. not a free press, at the home of the Pulitzer Prizes.
the journalists on campus for
@WKCRFM
are being told that if they leave the J-school they will be arrested -- no students are being allowed on campus at all. tons of police on campus.
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The censoring and banning of teaching Black history are deeply connected to the attempts to censor and silence the existence and histories of gay and queer people. The same folks who spread the CRT panic, spread the groomer panic. You might even call it intersectional... ahem.
DeSantis is asked during a news conference about the state's rejection of an AP African American history class. He says "this course on Black history, what's one of the lessons about? Queer theory ... that's the wrong side of the line for Florida standards."
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There has also been rising hate for Arab & Muslim students on campuses too - doxxing, intimidation, threats of violence.
To them - this feels like yet another sign this administration only cares about Israeli and Jewish students and Palestinian & Arab Americans don't matter.
The White House's anti-Semitism strategy moves ahead.
Sadly, there hasn't been any outreach or guidance about the rise in Islamophobia.
Why can't the WH align its outreach for all students on campuses?
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Actual reporters who are on campus are pointing out that they are seeing their classmates arrested and taken away, that campus has been restricted to students for over a week (it would reveal deep failures of Columbia's own security) and that there is NO EVIDENCE OF THIS.
On CNN
@andersoncooper
won’t stop implying that the students occupying the hall aren’t students. He’s not disclosing and explaining what this is based on.
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"this has been a traumatizing event for many people a the station, a harrowing event" -- a WKCR reporter.
raw journalism, incredibly vulnerable and powerful work these reporters are doing. it's both inspiring and humbling.
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at what point do journalists call a lie a lie? if we can't call out people in power for lying -- than are we more beholden to power than we are to the truth?
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@Chris_Chmura
@susieneilson
@Cigna
Chris -
Thanks for this! We’re are hoping for a different outcome today, but if not…
Appreciate your work.
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I can’t stop listening to WKCR. Some of the most riveting live radio I’ve ever heard.
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THREAD: It is journalistically unethical to use the power of your position to press other journalists not to criticize proven-to-be-false reporting BECAUSE IT MIGHT HURT powerful journalists feelings. 1/7
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When the British Raj colonized India, they did so with the help of some Indians, offering wealth and power to help maintain an oppressive system. Which is to say, racist systems embedded with white supremacy can be perpetuated by people of color. Apropos of nothing.
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Some reporters on WKCR are now taking refuge in Pulitzer Hall ... which is the J school -- talking about the threats that reporters have faced from police tonight, and choking up... saying they can't say more... it is very clear the police are not making students feel safer.
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"Around 41 percent of the banned books on the index address LGBTQ+ themes or have characters who are LGBTQ+. Roughly 40 percent of the books feature characters of color, and 21 percent of the banned books address issues of race and racism."
What is being banned, exactly.
I woke up this morning to a news alert that our
@GirlsWhoCode
middle-grade book series was banned by some school districts as part of the Mom for Liberty effort to ban books. To be honest, I am so angry I cannot breathe.
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This. I’ve found that people who are marginalized by systems of power and control are experts on - how systemic poverty and racism work. Shocking.
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scholars of genocide will tell you that suggesting a besieged population of people -Palestinians - is LYING when they are literally begging for their lives -- is dehumanizing and dangerous language.
Biden doesn't have confidence in the Gaza death toll: "I have no notion if Palestinians are telling the truth...I'm sure innocents have been killed & it is the price of waging war..Israel should be incredibly careful to ensure they're going after the folks propagating this war."
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Congrats to all the brilliant reporters who won the Pulitzer!! I'd like to remind y'all that 1 of the finalists (in audio) is still incarcerated inside of San Quentin State Prison, during a deadly pandemic which disproportionately impacts the incarcerated
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it doesn't have to be this way. it's designed to be this way.
As of 11am, voters waited 5+ hours to cast ballots @ the main Cobb Co. early polling location (736 Whitlock Ave, Marietta). Some seemed unbothered by the line. “It doesn’t matter how long it takes…we’re voting like our life depends on it,“ said a voter.
#gavotes
@11AliveNews
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Update from cancerland: Day four in the hospital. Treating extreme side effects from chemo - all sorts of nasty stuff. So many bags of blood products. Trooper Z is staying positive. And the cuddles are everything.
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this did #'s so: if you are a student or a teacher/prof facing suppression of speech or arrest /expulsion on ANY campus right now (or if you are an admin who is concerned with what is happening), i'm working on multiple stories around all of this - dm me if you want to talk more
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By this logic the civil rights movement was "violent" protest.
As with those protests, the majority of actual violence (not vandalism, which is not legally considered a violent crime) in these protests has so far, by all accounts, come from police.
“Violent protest is not protected; peaceful protest is. ... Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes ... none of this is peaceful protest.”
— President Biden condemns many campus demonstrations.
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130,000 lives could be saved in the next few months by wearing a mask.
Universal mask use could prevent nearly 130,000 of deaths from Covid-19 through next spring.
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SHOUP there it is
Gavin Newsom has signed AB 2097: all parking requirements for new housing are now eliminated within a half-mile of train, ferry and bus-rapid stations and major bus stops in California. The biggest parking reform law in the country.
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reporters and editors: you are reporting on a system(s). who has the power in that system? who doesn't have the power? are you giving more authority to the folks/ forces with power? then you have a power bias and are NOT being objective.
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And it should be said — NYPD said the same to all student journalists and journalism faculty who were taking refuge there; trapped inside what is supposed to be a monument to the free press.
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There is so much wrong - journalistically and ethically - with the framing of “if rich people in a historically rich neighborhood aren’t safe, nobody is.”
“When it’s not safe in the Marina, it’s not safe anywhere.”
A former San Francisco fire commissioner is in the hospital with a fractured skull, broken jaw and knife wounds to his face after being attacked with a crowbar on a Marina street.
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THIS. The default to suburbs as white spaces, and the underlying media assumption of white = suburbs flies in the face of drastic demographic change in suburbia. Suburbs are the most diverse space in American life and I will die on this hill.
#AmericanSuburb
As a few people pointed out to me yesterday, to the extent that the blue flip in Maricopa County was because of suburban moms, it was because those suburban moms are now *brown* and their energized kids have been doing work:
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This is just misinformation. It was our doctor - including our whole oncology team from UCSF - that requested and deemed the PET scan medically necessary. Our doctor got the denial and was fighting to overturn it. I truly hope you never have to learn the truth the hard way.
@LacLemanBeauty
@Cigna
@audiosand
That’s how I (we) know you are lying. That diagnostic tool is an automatic approval upon form submission. 100% of the time. It never is denied by any regulated health insurance plan. Never!
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A sneak peak into what we’ve been working on ...
@NPRinvisibilia
@nprmusic
@rodneyology
@Sid_Madden
@kcur
@ChrisHaxel
@wabenews
@TwitrHagen
@GunsReporting
Unsealed, launching in early 2021, looks at how police police themselves through an analysis of hundreds of police misconduct files, body camera footage and audio recordings of internal investigations that have been kept secret for decades. From
@kqed
’s
@audiosand
&
@SukeyLewis
.
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I spent the last week talking to Palestinian Americans as they mourn the devastation in one country, while feeling completely abandoned by the other. They are grieving, devastated, terrified. This is what it is like to be erased, more than one said.
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Sources don't have to feel good once we publish a story -- reporters are supposed to follow truth. But vulnerable communities deserve care and honesty & we should make this part of a holistic ethics. An ethics that understands who has power. Perhaps most striking though...(cont)
This is the story of a NYT reporter who played hardball with a vulnerable family, and won.
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So much oxygen given to the narrative Democrats must move to the right (in an already establishment, moderate ticket) because of the white voters — and all I can hear is now that Black and brown people turned the tide and changed the course of history, let’s re-center whiteness.
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There is literally a political and coordinated "cultural" war working to silence discussions of race or racism in this country right now. They often use a version of this same argument - that talking about race is the real problem, the real racism.
A faction of left-progressives act as if raising the salience of race in every corner of American culture somehow advances racial justice. The more likely effect is to increase interracial antagonism and bigoted othering. What matters more, intentions or results?
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if we didn't have political reporters and instead had democracy reporters whose job was not to center personalities and narratives controlled by people in power, but rather to center democracy and the people who don't have power - how do you think the reporting on this would go?
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Often this line from her has been taken as a magical ode to narrative when in fact it is a dire warning. Joan’s writing helped show me that the stories we tell are often the stories that allow us to live with ourselves. Ppl would rather change the narrative then then themselves.
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if you think your work is centering the voices & stories of people of color, but the framing is intended to make white people feel comfortable & safe (& if the framing is FLAWed in order to accommodate the needs of the white listener) your work is not actually centering POCs ...
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I often talk about how allowing those in power to control the narrative is a power bias — the biggest bias in journalism. But the NYT reporting on this, allowing a extremist group that exists to create spectacles of violence to define themselves is ...white power bias, honestly.
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@DaynaECopeland
@Cigna
@SarahNumber4
I'm so so sorry that you are going through this as well. Having a child with cancer is a special kind of hell. We've been going through this year for a year and a half (he's still on maintenance chemo) and we had hoped -- we still hope -- that we are near the finish line.
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... is this reporter seems to have had the evidence for a blockbuster story that said one thing, and she... erased that and wrote the opposite story? She erased the stories of the transgender families she spoke with. That's not just unethical, it's bad journalism.
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@samsanders
Coronavirus the novel: the novel Coronavirus (speculative non fiction from inside the end)
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This article is missing a crucial fact in the killing of Oscar Grant. A recently unsealed investigation didn’t believe Mehserle actually mistook his gun for his taser. In the Grant case mistaking a gun for taser doesn’t have precedence — using it as an excuse does.
While not common, officers have mistaken pistols for Tasers — as the police in a Minneapolis suburb said happened on Sunday when an officer shot and killed Daunte Wright — sometimes with deadly outcomes.
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Update from cancerland: Day 9 in the hospital. Z is finally beginning to get better, and at least there’s something on TV other than Law and Order. Ahem.
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The irony of him talking about forming political opinions without deep examination. It's almost like he's picking a convenient narrative, like a fashion label or way of dressing.
I've been talking to student activists for months. You know, reporting. This is actively wrong.
This is probably right. Most people don't form political opinions through deep examination of the issues or reasoning from first principles. It's more like picking some particular fashion label or way of dressing. Especially for younger people, who face more peer pressure.
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@noorzzaidi
I should have probably put “proud” in quotes. Was trying to get at the space between the “story” and the reality. It’s certainly not the first time that gap has been revealed; just found it striking today and in the images from tonight.
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Sometimes you have to explain the subtle ways in which capitalism, culture, and the power of the status quo consumes — literally — all dissent, turning it into denuded product for more consumption, quashing radical revolution and change. And sometimes…
Usher, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Julianne Hough will host competition series ‘The Activist’.
Activists go head-to-head in challenges to promote their causes, with their success measured via online engagement, social metrics, and hosts’ input.
()
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Let us not, as students of history and reality, ever believe that what happened the last 4 years was NOT America. It is deeply dangerous to dismiss Trumpism as an aberration; it ignores the past and puts the future at dire risk.
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A year ago today my partner (long distance) came home for a planned visit and just never left. The kitten is still my constant lap companion, but the lap is a lot smaller. We didn’t set out to bring life into the end of the world, but here we are, looking for hope in the apocalyi
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Mother's day is a complex day, wrapped up in love & loss, for so many, especially this year.
I wanted to share something about my journey as a mom. Because when you are told that the lump on your 5 month old's butt is, in fact, cancer... the world doesn't go dark at once.
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I wrote a thing (a long thing!), about a family that I've been talking with for the past year, a family with deep roots in American history. It's a story about what it means to heal the past, a story about the power of telling, and knowing, our histories.
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This is a wonderful start. I wish more places did it and for much longer than a few hours on one day.
This Sun, Dec 4, we'll be offering our monthly mask-required hours from 11–1. These hours are offered to better accommodate immunocompromised individuals & those who prefer to visit when everyone is masked. If that's you, we hope you'll stop by!
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Unexpectedly spending the night in the hospital, my little baby has some scary growths. Tomorrow a biopsy, MRI. They tell you it’s like having your heart outside of your body. And it’s so damn true. I think we’re gonna be okay, but right now my heart is breaking just a little.
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It’s been an incredibly hard 2+ years. Having a child with cancer is brutal. It’s brutal. Tomorrow is scan day, so tonight there’s scanxiety.
And then there have been a couple of big dreams that didn’t happen, including one lost 2day. It cuts deeper when your not yet healed.
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If you don't understand racism as a massive system underpinning American life & pinning some down more than others-if you don't strive to understand how racism is embedded into the systems that control, delimit and seek to define us-you honestly can't do your job as a journalist.
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Earlier this year I wrote about how race & whiteness weren't being directly discussed in the Jan 6th hearing, and yet how it is there -- in every moment:
@kathleen_belew
One thing that's been bothering me: Our national reckoning over 1/6 has not really grappled with the role of white power movements in driving the insurrection, and what that means.
I asked
@kathleen_belew
what she thinks of that. It got interesting:
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I'm sorry "was seen by many readers as racist"?
Some racisms are coded, and perhaps on the surface complex, but this was not one of those things.
It wasn't a dog whistle. It wasn't subtle. It was some of the oldest, grossest Islamophobic stereotypes we have.
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@oneunderscore__
this woman is most likely wonderful, delightful, and deeply intelligent but do not diss ms. frizzle, who is all that and also MAGIC
Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!!!
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Erasing, diminishing and nitpicking documented evidence - actual PAPER PROOF - to fit a pre-ordained narrative (that is the opposite of what evidence shows) is what agenda driven outlets do. It is not what fact-based reporters do. We're supposed to be fact-based reporters.
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Honest question: at what point, what point, do we call a lie a lie?
BREAKING: President Trump has falsely claimed that he has won the 2020 election.
That is wrong. Millions of votes are still being counted in key states.
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Reminder to journalists: we hold power to account, we should not just give those who have it the authority to determine truth. When someone in power says something, or pushes a narrative, it does not make it true. Truth should be our guiding star, not power.
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This takes on extra layers when that reporting reinforces a dangerous orientalist narrative about “brown terror” (at the same time the very real issue of white supremacist homegrown terror was exploding as the clear real threat). 2/7
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No matter your politics this should be unfathomable.
13,022 children.
Israel has killed 13,022 Palestinian children. In just 111 days.
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@alexismadrigal
It’s homesickness. It really is. And yet we haven’t gone anywhere. There is no new to replace the hole carved out, just the familiar outlines of a place that is no longer, in its essence, there.
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Also how are they going to be defining antisemitism here? Will it include just being critical of Israel - a Nation State - and Zionism? Will it include protesting the bombing? Is this not only an ignoring of Arab & pro-Palestine students, but also a threat to their free speech?
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@tuckwoodstock
That’s horrific. From someone who hasn’t been able to leave her house for 3 weeks cause the air is death and it doesn’t end: My air purifier is my new best friend. (Also I’m so lucky to have a home and a job to afford an air purifier). Sending solidarity to your apocalypse.
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Kamala is a Black woman, but she is also Desi / South Asian. She's both. (There's also whole new big book just published linking casteism and bigotry in Indian culture and history to America's treatment of Black people). My point is: identities are complex and layered things.
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"the most appalling thing -- well it's not the most appalling thing, that's a high bar tonight" -- KCRW reporter talking about the events of the evening.
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Every Arab or Muslim person I have talked to this past week knew it was going to happen. It’s so much like 9/11 all over again, now w/ the online outrage / misinfo machine in full gear. It was hard not to predict … and yet.
Devastating.
Another devastating thing.
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Today the person who has been my person for 9 years “officially” became my domestic partner, which meant going into the world so a notary public could see us sign up to assume “mutual obligation for the welfare and support of each other” SO: I’m basically married now?
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@LacLemanBeauty
@Cigna
I am so so sorry you also had to go through this. We were first diagnosed at five months. I almost didn't make it through last year. I don't know if I can do this again. I hope your child is healthy now, and that the treatment worked.
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Accountability is not justice. Individual accountability is not systemic accountability. But even individual accountability has been very rare in cases of police violence.
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Where was the concern for the “feelings” of ME journalists critiquing the orientalist narratives embedded in your reporting? Where is the concern for the "feelings" of women who were hurt, professionally and personally, by the lead producer on this project? 6/7
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Seems relevant
Analysis: Nearly half of Republicans agree with “great replacement theory”
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In both cases we see how power > truth, revealing journalists who care more about the "feelings" of the people who control the narratives than the actual facts and the damage their bad reporting did - the damage their “star” producer did to many women...4/7
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Right now journalists need to be naming racist behavior, racist beliefs, & racist actions. It's not "some said it was racist," and "he says it isn't." To report so is to be biased on the side of (white) power. There is a historical, moral, & intellectual truth. Find it.
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As a journalist, structural racism is like climate change -- they are both solid facts, not up for debate -- only false denial. reporting should follow facts, not frame itself around false equivalencies.
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Not pointing out that this is illegal is a prime example of the
#powerbias
in legacy media institutions like the New York Times, which is deeply biased on the side of those in power and not, as they claim to be, objective at all.
Louis DeJoy’s rise as GOP fundraiser was powered by contributions from company workers who were later reimbursed, former employees say - The Washington Post
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Last night, over 200 people called in and sent comments to the Antioch, California city council meeting demanding
#JusticeForAngeloQuinto
, after midnight, when those comments were still being made, the Antioch police department killed someone in their custody. Details to come.
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I didn’t become a professional journalist until I was 33, and I’m still far from doing the things I want to achieve and fully telling the stories I am driven to tell, so here not quite a decade later still beginning, learning, and dreaming.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you’re 25 and telling yourself, “Oh, I’m too old to learn X or do Y,” just know that you are not too old.
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The one where everyone is masked to protect my baby, sick with cancer and on chemo (who we often have to take to the ER), from an infection that could kill him. THE ONE WHERE DOCTORS ARE FIRST AND FOREMOST TRYING TO SAVE LIVES. Either you care about others, or you don't.
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I believe
@cerisecastle
-- this is a deep, systemic problem in
#pubmedia
. We need to work to undo white supremacy in our newsrooms and in our news.
KCRW was aware of what I was going through for months. It’s heartbreaking to see them choose to deny my and other’s experiences. Here is my resignation letter from the station, which details more of them.
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this is the drum I beat, that we must do systems reporting -- not solely focus on individual stories framed as exceptions or outliers, not even get bogged down the cultural narratives (like "culture wars") but rather: find the system(s) in our story.
Hi. I think this fact bears repeating in light of reporting on Uvalde:
The media's bias in favor of specific events/stories about individual people contributes to a way of thinking about the world that emphasizes the role of the individual over systemic solutions... 🧵
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"officer involved shooting" was literally a police propaganda term created by LAPD intended to stop people from looking at police violence. to any media using this term, you are letting one side of the story write the language for you -- you are biased, on the side of power.
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THIS is why I believe instead of covering “politics” (which results in framings that center “entertainment” and the narratives of power) news orgs should cover democracy— centering our democratic institutions and processes and the people. Which by the way aren’t doing so well.
President Trump's flair for the dramatic has introduced a sense of showmanship when it comes to nominating a Supreme Court justice.
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And all this under a cloak of bullshit objectivity when really the bias is clear: white-centered, empire-centered, cis-male-centered, self-centered power
#powerbias
. 7/7
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There is no way to fully understand that verdict without understanding the power of whiteness and white innocence in this country. White freedom has always been defined in American history as the freedom (POWER) to harm / control others.
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There is a seeming rising presence of antisemitism on campuses, what happened at Cornell yesterday was horrific -- but focusing primarily on antisemitism sends a very serious message.
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(all this while not disclosing in your professional coverage of the fallout your compromising personal relationships with the ppl who worked on the show. The ethical failure of the initial reporting is doubled down on in reporting on that ethical failure.) 3/7
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