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Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
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Jan 16,, 4 tweets, 1 min read
It is a deliberate choice by the New York Times to cover the Bronx fire that killed 17 human beings as some sort of vague tragedy and to publish an article that does not mention the safety and fire code violations or the name of the rich landlords. nytimes.com/2022/01/16/nyr…
Compare the lack of blame, lack of accountability, and pathological inability to discuss the causes of the harm to how the New York Times regularly covers "crime" by the poor.
You can read more about the rampant health and safety violations caused by the wealthy slumlords here: theintercept.com/2022/01/11/bro…
And here:

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More from @equalityAlec

Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jan 18,
THREAD. A new scandal is brewing at the New York Times. I try my best below to document the paper's corporate and police union copaganda, and to share actual evidence and research that the NYT ignores. The stakes are huge.
Last year, I wrote about a NYT writer who didn't disclose he had worked for CIA, Palantir, and police or that he currently ran a consulting company that relies on "law enforcement" contracts. It was a shocking, unethical episode.
Well, today, NYT had different reporter write basically same story and send it to entire NYT email list. Who was his main data source? **The same CIA/Palantir/Police analyst.** Again, the NYT calls that guy a "crime analyst" without reporting any of his conflicts of interest.
Read 25 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jan 16,
In this viral thread, a “journalist” takes us back to the late 19th century good-old-days of media propaganda for a *railroad monopoly.* He even throws in a little science-denying innuendo that more human caging would make it all better. A few thoughts:
First, there is not a single shred of evidence that more prosecution and caging would reduce any supposed theft. This is the most studied and settled question in all of criminology. Just ludicrous, irresponsible propaganda to suggest otherwise.
Second, take a look at how similar this media panic is to the fabrication of low level crime hysteria in victorian England as soon as reform became popular. It’s both profitable to people who own things and a cultural pathology in media. daily.jstor.org/how-crime-stor…
Read 10 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jan 14,
Something alarming is happening. I've been tracking this around the country, and I have never seen a judge in modern U.S. history responsible for more people in jail. Judge Ramona Franklin just hit 500 people in jail at the same time solely because they can't pay cash.
Also striking is Judge Kelli Johnson. She has the 6th highest number of people in jail because they lack cash, but records suggest that Johnson has a reduced docket because she is the admin judge. Alarming that her numbers are so high. This was her case:
None of these people are convicted. Given the comprehensive research on how jail kills people, these judges' recent decisions are now likely responsible for thousands of years of human life lost. @TexasCJE @OrganizeTexas
Read 5 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jan 13,
THREAD: It's a lot of work to catalog the new copaganda unleashed each day by the New York Times. However, today's piece glorifying authoritarian violence in San Francisco is scary. Some of it is subtle, but it's worth unpacking a few key points. nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opi…
First, NYT lets a corporate/police backed politician criticize all of her opponents who want less poverty/more housing/more healthcare/more investment in community and less investment in for-profit surveillance and state violence as "white." She says: “They are not Black people."
This trope of glorifying elites engaging in state violence and using their racial identity to insulate them from criticism is propaganda. It's especially jarring when many of the core intellectual and strategic leaders of the movement against cop/prisons are Black women.
Read 12 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jan 12,
What if local news media reported on safety code violations by landlords in the same way they report on low-level crimes that police send them in press releases? What if they reported on local pollution and wage theft violations that local governments document each day?
It's vital to see that editors choose which stories to cover, and they are typically the stories that police and corporations want covered. It shapes our assessments of what is urgent, and focuses us on things that cause minuscule relative harm. A thread:
This single fire killed almost double the number of people as all murders in NYC combined in a typical week. As this great journalism by @akela_lacy demonstrates, no local news had found it important enough to report on the fire code violations.
Read 4 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jan 11,
THREAD: This story is about a 68-year-old unhoused military veteran who just spent 382 days in jail because he lacked cash. His story is important. How he was treated by prosecutors, judges, and his own defense lawyer is chilling.
The man was arrested on Christmas Day 2020. He was accused of stealing a bottle of wine from a CVS and threatening to hit someone with the bottle of wine. He wasn't even brought to court for his own bail hearing, where the judge required him to pay $30,000.
A few days later, a judge reduced the cash bail amount to $5,000. Because only the U.S. and the Philippines have for-profit commercial bail industries, this meant that he could have paid $500 or less to a private company to be free. He couldn't pay.
Read 10 tweets

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