Breaking down CNN's Reddit fiasco

There is a long tradition of imperial denial in the United States. After all, Americans fought the British Empire and have always thought of themselves as different from European colonialists. They are Empire Slayers — why else would “Star Wars” and its fight against the Galactic Empire have such a hold on the popular imagination? In this episode, two scholars explain how, from the nation’s birth, imperial expansion — first westward into Indian Country and later, overseas —was a defining ch...

13 Aug 202158min

Whiteness in America isn’t just the neutral norm against which racial minorities, particularly Black people, are measured. Whiteness in America means having the privilege and power that go along with being part of that supposed norm. And becoming white – not in terms of pigment but of social status – is a choice that nearly every immigrant or refugee group in America has had to embrace or reject. We talk with two scholars in the field of Whiteness Studies about how understanding the construct...

3 Aug 202156min

The issue of police violence and racism is a familiar one. It’s been present in the United States since the Republic's beginnings. And the stories of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice and others cannot be understood if we do not know and comprehend that history. In this episode, we discuss race, crime, criminal justice, violence and the kind of cyclical dynamic that we have seen repeatedly over the decades with Harvard historian Dr. Khalil Muhammad. The conversation gives greater cont...

3 Aug 202146min

How We Got Here is a podcast for journalists about how history and identity shape narrative. As journalists, we like to say we’re writing the first draft of history. But if we don’t know our own history, we run the risk of misinterpreting what we see and what we hear. Of failing to connect the dots. George Floyd’s murder, the Black Lives Matter movement, the election, the attempted coup - they’ve all brought America to a reckoning with its national character. Six professors from the Columbi...

3 Aug 20212min

When Samuel Getachew was a sixth grader in the Oakland public school system, Akintunde Ahmad was a “hometown hero,” headed to Yale. On this week’s Kicker, Ahmad, now a CJR contributor and Ida B. Wells fellow, and Getachew, a rising first year at Yale, discuss the media’s misuse of successful Black students.

16 Juli 202125min

How do we report and contextualize the January 6 insurrection, or the largest efforts to suppress the vote since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, or the way political power is wielded in the US without understanding the racial history of our country? On this week’s Kicker, Hannah-Jones, the new Knight chair in race and reporting at Howard University, and a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the New York Times Magazine, joins Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to talk about her ...

12 Juli 202127min

The pandemic’s limits on primary candidates and the journalists who cover them; a drastically shorter campaign season; and all but absent public polling thanks to the new ranked choice voting. This has been a New York City primary season like no other.On this week’s Kicker, Errol Louis, who is the anchor of NY1’s “Inside City Hall,” the host of the podcast “You Decide with Errol Louis,” and a professor of urban reporting at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, joins Kyle Pope, ...

25 Juni 202113min

At the start of the pandemic, the UK government’s suppression of data prompted Carole Cadwalladr and her colleagues at All the Citizens to found Independent SAGE, a group of scientists who shadow official government scientists. Now, as the UK hurtles towards a June 21 reopening that now looks unlikely to happen, the group’s findings are more concerning than ever. On this week’s Kicker, Cadwalladr, a feature writer for The Observer, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss what US j...

14 Juni 202126min