cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28456429
Generated Summary below:
Video Description:
Civil rights lawyer and social justice advocate Alec Karatkatsanis returns to Bad Faith to talk to Briahna Joy Gray about his new book: Copaganda: How Police & The Media Manipulate Our News. Alec focuses on the liberal media and political sphere to explain the establishment left's role in pushing mythologies that fund the police, defund social services, and make the world less safe. Alec responds to growing pro-police arguments on the left, that claim that the left needs to take crime more seriously if we want to win. Is Ana Kasparian right? Or does funding the police have no relationship to public safety?
Generated Summary:
Main Topic: The video discusses how mainstream media, particularly liberal media, universities, and non-profit organizations, contribute to "copaganda" – propaganda that reinforces narratives benefiting law enforcement and the criminal punishment bureaucracy, often at the expense of addressing root causes of societal problems.
Key Points:
- Definition of Copaganda: The guest, Alec Karatkatsanis, defines copaganda as the mainstream news media narrowing our fears to focus on specific types of crime (police-reported crime) while ignoring other significant harms like wage theft, tax evasion, and environmental crimes.
- Three Components of Propaganda:
- Narrowing the scope of what we fear (focusing on stranger violence and police-reported crime).
- Creating a constant sense of crisis around police-reported crime, even when overall crime rates are declining.
- Promoting the idea that more investment in police, prosecution, and prisons is the solution to these fears.
- The Role of Liberal Institutions: The discussion emphasizes how liberal media, universities, and non-profits often unintentionally reinforce pro-police narratives through their reporting, research, and framing of issues.
- For-Profit Motives: The video highlights the significant financial incentives driving the criminal punishment bureaucracy, including private prisons, telecom companies profiting from prison phone calls, and industries that benefit from increased police funding.
- Root Causes vs. Police Solutions: The conversation underscores that crime is primarily driven by structural issues like poverty, inequality, lack of access to healthcare and education, and lead exposure. These root causes are often ignored in favor of promoting police-centric solutions.
- The Shift After 2020: The host, Briahna Joy Gray, notes a perceived shift after 2020, where the Democratic Party seemed less willing to advocate for social safety net reforms as a means of addressing crime, instead prioritizing a "tough on crime" approach.
- The Power of PR: Police departments actively manage the narrative through paid PR professionals who provide ready-made stories, video clips, and expert quotes to journalists, creating an asymmetry in media coverage.
- The Role of Police: The guest argues that the role of the police is to serve those in power and enforce the status quo distribution of wealth and power.
Highlights:
- The discussion of the inverse relationship between the amount of money lost to different types of crime and the amount of media coverage they receive (e.g., tax evasion vs. burglary).
- The example of children of incarcerated people being denied in-person visits to force families to spend money on prison phone calls.
- The anecdote about Ivy League professors being easily convinced to reduce police budgets after hearing basic arguments against excessive police funding.
- The discussion of a Harvard study that called for the largest expansion of policing in modern world history, despite being framed as progressive.
- The point that police misconduct is not a mistake, but the purpose of the police to repress social advocacy groups.
- The discussion of the role of police PR divisions in manufacturing moral panics to influence political events.
About Channel:
based on the hit tv show
With Briahna Joy Gray