
‘Survival and science’—our fight against climate silence
In 2019, in an effort to combat climate silence, CJR and The Nation, in partnership with The Guardian, founded Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaborative aimed at strengthening coverage of the climate emergency. Two years later, Covering Climate Now partners publish coverage of the climate crisis to 2 billion readers. On this week’s Kicker, Mark Hertsgaard, the executive director of Covering Climate Now and the environment correspondent for The Nation, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, ...
30 Huhti 202125min

‘Violence bait’ —the narrative the Twin Cities tried to build in the mainstream press
In the wake of the Derek Chauvin verdict, Mel Reeves, the editor of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, and a 30-year member of the community where George Floyd was murdered, tells Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, how he watched police and city authorities depict his home as inherently violent for the national press.
26 Huhti 202126min

Jelani Cobb on the murder of Daunte Wright, the Derek Chauvin trial, and how to tell the whole story
Reporters were in Minneapolis covering the trial of Derek Chauvin when news broke about the police shooting of Daunte Wright. On this week’s Kicker, Jelani Cobb, a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of “The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress,” joins Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss his work in Minneapolis over the past week, the ways reporters can contextualize so many deaths, and how he will approach next week’s expected verdict.
16 Huhti 202116min

“They forget about you:” The media advice Parkland parents give to mass shooting survivors
Joaquin Oliver was murdered in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. His parents, Manuel and Patricia Oliver, recognize a pattern, both in how the US media covers mass shootings by rote, and in how Americans are able to look away once the news cycle ends.On this week’s Kicker, the Olivers, who founded Change The Ref, a nonprofit that works to raise awareness about mass shootings through reducing the influence of the NRA at the federal level, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of...
2 Huhti 202126min

America does not know what a mass shooting looks like
In August 2019, days after 32 people died in the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings, our host Kyle Pope spoke with John Temple. Temple was the editor of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News when the Columbine massacre changed America’s perception of safety forever. Temple told us about the photos he decided not to run that day in 1999, and the one he did, which confirmed a child’s death before police spoke with the mother. In the wake of the horror in El Paso and Dayton, Temple’s thoughts were on the ...
25 Maalis 202123min

Racism, Atlanta, and the race for a narrative
In the wake of the shootings in Atlanta this week, the media has focused on the killer’s story and struggled to explain why the attacks were racist. The process has dehumanized the victims.On this week’s Kicker, Diana Lu, who writes about Asian American culture and coverage, and Kent Ono, a scholar of Media and Asian American Studies at the University of Utah, where he studies racial representation and Asian Americans in the media, join Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR. They discuss the...
19 Maalis 202133min

Pandemic: Why is it so hard to say there’s hope?
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, most media coverage has focused on the ongoing physical health disaster and the need to convince readers and elected officials to take action. But the coverage is also a chronic source of trauma. Now that there is some good news interspersed with the tragedy, we struggle to find a balance.Dr. Alison Holman is a health psychologist and professor at the University of California Irvine’s Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing, whose work focuses on e...
15 Maalis 202122min

Toxic: A break in the Cuomo fever dream
Refusing to learn female reporters’ names, to speak on the record, to refrain from embarrassing comments. The Andrew Cuomo that political reporters know is entirely different from the pandemic persona during the worst moments of the coronavirus crisis.On this week’s Kicker, Josefa Velásquez, the Albany reporter for THE CITY, who has covered Cuomo for a decade, and Michael Powell, a New York Times national reporter who covered the collapse of both Rudy Giuliani and Elliot Spitzer, join Kyle Po...
5 Maalis 202128min





















