Show Notes
Ralph speaks to independent investigative journalist Lylla Younes to discuss her reporting on Israel's assault on southern Lebanon. Then, Ralph and media studies professor Robin Andersen discuss her new book "The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of the Genocide in Gaza." Lylla Younes is a Beirut-based journalist. She is an editor at The Public Source, and a frequent contributor to Drop Site News. What we’ve seen in the past several days is really an escalation of what’s been happening since March 2nd (when the US-Israeli assault on Iran took off) and then obviously the ceasefire… What we see is a campaign of ethnic cleansing from the Israeli military in Lebanon. And that has looked like the Gaza playbook sped up, you could say, in southern Lebanon. It’s looked like invading and bulldozing homes; tearing up roads; destroying, booby-trapping, and detonating entire villages and cultural sites. It’s looked like targeting medical personnel—killing, at this point, over 100 since March 2nd (this is in addition to the 130 or so who were killed in the last round of fighting in 2024). In addition to that, the targeting and killing of journalists who are reporting near the border. I think it’s important to note there’s practically no one left in the border region. Having a press vest on and a microphone and a camera is basically like having a target on your back at this point. Lylla Younes
The pager attack was, I think it’s fair to say, one of the darker days of Lebanese history. I think regardless of people’s feelings about Hezbollah, the fact that you are setting men alight literally in the streets in cities all across the country, killing children, maiming children—the mark of the pager attack was that these pagers that Hezbollah members were carrying exploded in their faces and blinded them. So you have thousands of blinded people, people missing fingers. And again, some of these are relatives of Hezbollah members. It was a massive event that overwhelmed hospitals across the country. And it also marked the beginning of that 66 day [period] of escalated fighting. And it showed how deeply infiltrated Hezbollah was in an intelligence capacity. This was quite a feat by the Israeli Mossad. Lylla Younes
Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. She serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. She is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media. Her latest book is The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. In my book, I look at the directives of the New York Times and CNN, and then I compare it to media coverage. And I found that, in fact, these were the ways [the directives that were passed down] in which the media was presenting the genocide in Gaza…But in terms of the Israeli directives, CNN was putting their copy through their Jerusalem bureau and the IDF was looking at it. The New York Times was simply going along with Israeli talking points. So we did find that. And the real telling part was when they finally did say that Israel dropped the bomb, it was only when Israel had admitted—or put their propaganda to the next level, which was to claim that they had killed a Hamas commander or a fighter or somebody involved in Hamas. And we found that also in the BBC. So those were direct things that came from Israel. And abandoning their journalistic mission, the US media was basically following the dictates of a foreign government. Robin Andersen
Their form of censorship was basically murder. They knew that as the genocide wore on (and Israel controlled the narrative for a very long time, and then it started to collapse) as over time we saw on the internet, we saw on our handheld devices the documentation of what was happening [they’d lose
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Ralph speaks to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa for an update on the death toll in Gaza as well as the new documentary film “American Doctor.” Then Ralph and economic William Lazonick discuss Nvidia’s planned $235 billion stock buyback. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a general, trauma, and critical care surgeon in California. He is also a humanitarian surgeon who has worked in Palestine, Ukraine, Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso. He most recently volunteered at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Gaza. He was blocked from entering Gaza by Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service in November 2025. His work in Gaza is featured in the new documentary film American Doctor. If I’m remembering the exact time right, March of 2016 was the deadliest month for children that [Airwars] had ever studied anywhere—so that’s the 31 days of March of 2016. In the first 25 days of the US-Israeli assault on Gaza, the rate of killing of children was 71 to 142 times higher than in the deadliest month they had ever studied for children anywhere else. And just to put these numbers in a little bit of perspective…If you look at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine versus Israel’s invasion of Gaza, Russian forces killed the same percentage of children in Ukraine in 10 months as the US and Israel kill in Gaza every 18 to 37 hours. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa
Ralph welcomes Mary Berry the daughter of the late American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer, Wendell Berry. Ms. Berry runs the non-profit Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky, which serves as a repository for the study of small farm agriculture and preserves the legacy of her family’s work. Then, with the midterms on the horizon, Ralph and the team talk about how to be a smart voter. Plus, Ralph has some choice words for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s so-called “Free Enterprise Express.” Leave a comment about how you are a smart voter. We will collect these and discuss them on our next program. Click the button below to get Professor Laura Nader’s book Controlling Processes.
Ralph welcomes “New York Times” reporter Natasha Singer to discuss her new book, “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools.” Then, Ralph talks about Donald Trump’s midterm convention speeches and the latest impeachment drive with Constitutional law expert Bruce Fein. Natasha Singer is a New York Times reporter covering the intersection of technology, business and education. She has covered tech industry influence in schools for the New York Times for more than a decade, and her school tech reporting helped prompt California to enact a landmark student online data protection law. In 2019, she was part of a Times team whose tech coverage won a George Polk Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for National Reporting. She is also the author of the book Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools. It’s not about the companies immediately making money off schools. It’s about influencing kids, getting customers early and for life. But I think more importantly, it’s about imprinting Silicon Valley worldviews and values on young people. So that you get docile consumers who maybe aren’t worried about wholesale surveillance and data gathering, and docile employees who are not going to push back against being surveilled by their employer or using AI tools or having AI replace them. And so I think this story about tech companies capturing the classroom is not just about how they’re shaping learning. It’s about how some of the most powerful, wealthiest corporations on the planet are able to influence school systems. Natasha Singer