The Spinning Head

Hidden in those shadows are the bodies of millions the US has killed in its single-minded pursuit of revenge. It remains shocking to me that not a single Western journalist or publication of note has, in the last twenty years, produced a significant body of work on the lives of the millions living in the…

Around 1991, just before the launch of Operation Desert Storm (aka the Persian Gulf War, First Gulf War, Kuwait War, First Iraq War, or Iraq War), which began in January of 1991, the US military seduced the US media into a Faustian bargain: It would give them access to its frontline troops, senior commanders, facilities,…

Few things have characterised the post-9/11 American world more than our worshipful embrace of our generals. They’ve become our heroes, our sports stars, and our celebrities all rolled into one. – William J. Astore It was a pivotal moment in the history of US media and changed it forever. But it has been relegated to…

The trinity of doctrines is the basis of journalistic claims to objectivity. This claim acts as a strategy of silencing and erasure, particularly of non-White bodies. It is Western journalism’s most fantastic conceit and vehemently defended myth. It emanates from a normative view of the world created by “a separation of the reporter’s views from…

Capitalism is Western journalism’s best-kept secret. There are vivid and explicit connections between global trade, human-made global warming, global capitalism, social and gang violence, so-called “climate refugees,” population displacement and more. It is today more than evident that we cannot amputate environmental consequences from trade and economic policies, the question of displacement and refugees from…

American journalists remain deeply committed to US exceptionalism and imperialism. When the US murders and kills, when it funds others who support its imperial interests, mainstream journalists work hard to recast this violence as necessary, benign, and liberal. Or erase it. There is a conviction in the USA’s “achievable perfection” that informs the work of…

Settler moves to innocence are those strategies or positionings that attempt to relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility without giving up land or power or privilege, without having to change much at all…Settler moves to innocence are hollow, they only serve the settler E. Tuck & K.W. Yang This theft of the…

An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all. – Judith Butler Journalists, when reporting from the wastelands of US imperialism, have become adept at deploying what Eve Tuck called “moves to innocence”: the act of disappearing the role…

We have not researched, reflected, analyzed, or thought enough about the long-term consequences of the military embed program. Today, it is barely mentioned and considered a thing of the past, but it changed the nature of journalism. After 2003, the walls between political, military, and intelligence power and the “check and balance” press disappeared as…

Since 2003, journalists have only deepened their relationship and dependency on the military, intelligence, and political Establishment. The conflation of military experience as journalistic experience, the desire for “access” to the corridors of power, and the willingness to stenographically print what is fed to them by the intelligence, military, and political Establishment is now called…