One of Cenk’s longest-term collaborators on the show is Ana Kasparian, who is an excellent reporter who also has important political insights. Before the untimely death of Michael Brooks who was a co-host with Sam Seder of The Majority Report, Ana partnered with him for a weekly podcast for the democratic-socialist journal Jacobin, which has been generally close with the positions of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) though so far as I know there is no formal connection. (1)
Ana was and still is good at providing a critical-minded left perspective while insisting on accuracy in reporting facts accurately. But in the last couple of years, she’s taken a disturbing turn when it comes to reporting on crime and homelessness. I’ve commented on the TYT website that she sometimes sounds like the Joe Biden circa 1993 when he was promoting the Clinton crime bill, one of his and Clinton’s most dubious achievements.
Now I’ve gotten to the point where I just no longer trust her reporting on crime issues. There has been a story in the news recently from Aurora, Colorado, sensationally reported as a Venezuelan gang taking over an apartment building. (2) The rightwing jumped on it because Crime! Foreigners! Illegal border crossings!
The Republican Presidential candidate says of Aurora, “Venezuelan gangs are taking over the whole town. They’re taking over buildings, the whole town.” (3) In a speech, he said that Venezuelan gangs were taking over “whole sections” of the state.
In other words, exactly the kind of story for which we need responsible journalism to understand what happened and to contextualize it properly, especially with FOX News hyping it. Even accurate crime stories can be exploited by bad actors. (4) Some of the residents protested against the reporting, claiming it was exaggerated. Legitimate questions were raised about whether police were adequately responsive to complaints from residents in the low-income area of the apartments in question. One report I heard raised an issue about whether the Republican mayor of the city may be sympathetic clearing out the low-income apartments for more expensive and upscale housing. And also whether the city was lax about enforcing regulations on the property owner.
In other words, this is a classic example of why we need good quality local journalism.
There has been a podcast flap about Ana’s reporting on this story in particular. From The Vanguard: (5)
From Daily Dose of HasanAbi, from over two years ago: (6)
Ana may be right in the impression she’s leaving that the Venezuelan-gang-takeover story as Republican xenophobes are presenting it is more-or-less accurate. I’m guessing there’s a good chance they are exaggerating. But again, this is why we need solid news reporting from podcasts on which we rely for such reporting and news analysis.
Even Sam Seder explicitly criticized TYT (Ana's) coverage of that particular story on his Majority Report episode yesterday. (7)
The Brennan Center for Justice has a collection of articles on the topic “Myths and Facts About Crime and Justice Reform.” In a recent one, Michael Waldman reminds us that Donald Trump always love to hype crime, predicting that in this year’s election, “Donald Trump will likely claim, as he has before, that ‘crime is so out of control in our country . . . you can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot. You get mugged. You get raped.’” (8)
Discussing how crimes rates in the US have been falling, he notes:
All of which makes recent political trends so worrying. Yes, crime spiked during the pandemic, but violent crime is falling again. Dramatically so in many areas, and for many categories of offense. Homicides dropped by roughly 20 percent in Baltimore and Philadelphia between 2022 and 2023 and by 11 percent in New York City. But the politicians who once again seized upon crime as a wedge issue during the pandemic are still howling. Violence is falling, but demagoguery is on the rise. It’s a good moment to take stock, to sort the myths from the truth. [my emphasis]But that’s a particular challenge in statewide and especially national campaigns. The fact that crime is down nationwide does not mean that it is down in every neighborhood in every city in every state. But voters who don’t want to be conned about crime trends have to pay close attention to the claims being made.
Oddly enough, yesterday on their September 9 show, she and Cenk reported on a bogus claim promoted by J.D. Vance that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are doing something that there is no evidence they are doing, according to the TYT report. (The claim is so frivolous I don’t even want to repeat the content here.) But they show at least one person there who said that he’s hearing the claim from people. If we applied the approach they took to the Aurora story, we would have to say Cenk and Ana are being frivolous lefties for dismissing those nice folks making the claim. [Corrected: the false claim name Springfield, not Columbus.]
In the process, she referred to the argument that immigrants drive down wages to say that scare-talk about “migrants” is valid. The reality is, that argument is misleading (to put it generously), because both documented and undocumented immigrants mostly take jobs that Americans (on the low-wage end) or for which they are not qualified. During much of the last couple of years, the unemployment rate in the US was actually below the official “full employment” definition of only 4% of the labor force being unemployed. If “migrants” are taking jobs and/or driving down wages for American citizens, it’s remarkably obscure in the statistics. But I guess there’s always the possibility that leftie fanatics at the Bureau of Labor Statistics are secretly falsifying the numbers ...
Notes:
(1) For what it’s worth, Jacob Crosse at the sectarian, Trotskyist World Socialist Web Site calls Jacobin “the unofficial press organ of the DSA” in an article sneeringly hostile to the DSA and The Squad, including AOC and Jamaal Bowman: “New York Democratic Socialists of America endorses Ocasio-Cortez, Jacobin calls for ‘left’ support for Jamaal Bowman.” <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/03/15/nlmp-m15.html> (Accessed: 2024-09-09). Trotskyist sects are famous for their claims to purity, in line with the saying that they are in favor of revolution everywhere, except for anywhere one is actually going on.
(2) Harris, Kyle (2024): Aurora police chief says there's no evidence that Venezuelan gang took over apartment. NPR 09/06/2024. <https://www.npr.org/2024/09/06/nx-s1-5100765/aurora-police-chief-says-theres-no-evidence-that-venezuelan-gang-took-over-apartment> (Accessed: 2024-09-09).
(3) Venezuelan Gangs OCCUPYING Aurora, Colorado?! Rising Examines THE FACTS. The Hill YouTube channel 09/09/2024, 2:25 ff. <https://youtu.be/7XhM_35iRyo?si=h3VdO4weFglG749W> (Accessed: 2024-09-09).
(4) Brown, Jennifer (2024): Is racism fueling claims about a Venezuelan gang “takeover” of apartment buildings in Aurora? Colorado Sun 09/06/2024. <https://coloradosun.com/2024/09/06/venezuelan-gangs-aurora/> (Accessed: 2024-09-09).
(5) Ana Kasparian ATTACKS Hasan Piker AGAIN… The Vanguard YouTube channel 09/09/2024. <https://youtu.be/KwNs3MtT4IU?si=zCZPlgbpmLphB-Jn> (Accessed: 2024-09-09). YoiuTube channel 03/24/2022.
(6) Hasanabi DRAMA with Ana Kasparian. Hasanabi Productions 03/24/2022. <https://youtu.be/sjyT3h2EW0w?si=w46YZtpAUH6nj83z> (Accessed: 2024-09-09).
(7) MR FUN 9/9/24. The Majority Report YouTube channel 09/09/2024. (In the Fun Half second hour about 29 minutes into the segment.) <https://www.youtube.com/live/5Nz-YisbM5U?si=eFF8Bmg8cyzzLNMK> (Accessed: 2024-09-09).
(8) Waldman, Michael (2024): How Politicians Should Think About Crime. Brennan Center 09/04/2024. <https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-politicians-should-think-about-crime> (Accessed: 2024-09-09).
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