THREAD. I noticed something fascinating: around the same time in recent days, each major corporate news source began talking about a new crime hysteria: a supposed crisis of theft from the railroad industry. But if you look deeper, something very scary is happening.
For context, recall I outlined an incredible coordination between corporate/police PR departments and corporate media reporters around retail theft. Here's a thread I wrote about how the same words, sources, and phrases began appearing everywhere at once:
For the railroad story, I'll start with the New York Times story because it is in arguably the most reputable news source and because it is one of the most dangerous and irresponsible articles. Here's the story: nytimes.com/2022/01/19/us/…
As I’ve shown time and again with the New York Times, if you just go through their stories and list the sources relied on, it becomes obvious who is influencing the news and how it is framed. This is a list of the stories’ sources in chronological order, and it’s astonishing:
-“Authorities”
-LAPD Captain
-“The police”
-LAPD Captain (twice more)
-Railroad corporation (twice)
-Railroad corp. spokesperson
-Association of American Railroads
-LAPD Captain
-Asst. prof. of "marketing"
-Railroad corp.
-Railroad spokesperson
-DA
-LAPD Captain (5 more times)
Imagine being a reporter at the most influential, prestigious news org in the U.S. and writing a major story at a time of rising fascism and just repeating police and corporate talking points about needing more punishment without seeking a single other perspective. Incredible.
In typical NYT fashion, cops make wild claims with no evidence or scrutiny. It all leads up to big moment: the last 5 paragraphs of the piece, all given to LAPD, give away the game: this is about more $$$ for cops: “They are really trying, but we are all understaffed,” he said.
What does New York Times omit? That LAPD already has an astonishing $3 billion budget, most of it spent on low-level traffic, drugs, homelessness, mental illness related stuff AND that LAPD is in midst of big budget fight trying to get a 12% increase.
The NYT also omits one of the most crucial facts you need to know. The LAPD and LA Sheriff together have 67 full-time employees working on PR and propaganda. People don't realize that they spend a lot of money and time to plant these stories:
But I digress. This story began with letter from railroad monopoly lobbyist complaining about not enough human caging by "progressive" LA prosecutor. Almost immediately, and we don't yet know how, a pro-cop CBS reporter took a viral video of tracks that corporate/police boosted.
A lot of actually thinking people like @dennisjromero@JessPish@RottenInDenmark immediately noticed some suspicious things about the "organized train robbery" story, including some potential vendettas and corporate insurance games.
If you look at all these stories, you'll see a lot of the same turns of phrase, sources, and claims. As always, it’s quickly seized on by pro-fascist groups and corporate democrats to argue for more money for police, more profitable surveillance, prosecution, and human caging.
The corporate media portray the railroad monopoly Union Pacific as some kind of hapless victim overrun by "organized" groups of "homeless" thieves. Union Pacific has more revenue ($19.5 billion) than the entire City of Los Angeles.
The corporate/police PR campaign worked almost immediately though. The Governor of California was soon seen literally picking up trash by the railroad tracks and announcing more investment in a “statewide coordination as law enforcement and prosecutors.” fox40.com/news/californi…
Alarmingly, with no evidence, Newsom compared the train thefts to the retail thefts and said “the train thieves are equally organized and need to be prosecuted as such.” Then, a “group of Republican Senators” sent a letter urging massive national federal crackdown on train theft.
And so we saw, in a few days and in real time, how cops, corporations, and media combine to concoct a narrative of *panic* around a truly minor problem compared to ecological collapse, rising fascism, lack of healthcare/housing, etc. which leads to repressive policy.
Finally, this brings me to one of the most important threads I’ve ever written. It’s about how corporate media, police, and wealthy elites work hard to shape what problems we think are urgent and what aren’t. Read it and think about it:
And see also this great reporting on profits and layoffs. Among the many huge questions NYT and other corporate media weren't asking about whether any of this is real and about what easy solutions there might be that aren't "more money for cops and cages."
Update: And here is the CBS journalist who started it all with a viral video boosting cops and a railroad monopoly. As predicted, the story is really different after a little more reporting and evidence! But cops/railroad already got what they wanted.
THREAD. As I visit London next week for the UK launch of my book Copaganda, I have to say publicly how outrageous the mainstream British media’s crime coverage is. It’s like they’ve studied the worst aspects of U.S. news culture while taking performance-enhancing drugs.
This may seem comical to U.S. news consumers who lived through the fake “retail theft” panic, but British press has worked itself into a frenzy in 2025 using the same playbook. Some of it is funny, but the effects will be devastating for British society. Look at BBC:
Here are some other recent examples from a smorgasbord of UK copaganda about low-level theft: “Broken Britain.” “Industrial-scale crime.” “Shoplifting crime wave."
THREAD. The New York Times editorial on the New York City Mayor race is shameful. A lot of people have criticized its cowardice for refusing to endorse, but I want to highlight something deeper and more disturbing.
One main theme of faux-intellectual neoliberal propaganda in recent years is that we tried progressive policies, and those policies failed. As I discuss in my Copaganda book with lots of funny/disturbing examples, this NYT lie is one of the most pernicious lies in modern media:
The story goes: lefty policies to make society more equal, free, and ecologically sustainable are naive. Now that we've tried them with terrible results, we have no choice but to boost repression to manage inequality we cannot solve and to help oligarchs make society less equal.
THREAD: The assassinations in Minnesota highlight a dirty secret hardly ever mentioned in the news: U.S. has 1.1 million private police officers. There is an unprecedented footprint of privately organized violence that is doing all sorts of things most people have no idea about.
Many journalists and "experts" quoted in the news go out of their way in new stories to conceal the reach of the private security/policing industries, what interests are behind it, and what it means for the possibility of a democratic life.
In my Copaganda book, I tell the story of how pro-police scholars and journalists have worked to conceal from the public estimates of private police--from forces at universities like Harvard, to much of downtown Detroit, to DC metro, to smaller stuff like this shooter.
Few stories better capture modern policing than this one about a conspiracy of private corporate interests paying off-duty state troopers as part of a "shadow force" to cleanse downtown Nashville of homeless people using metal chains, cages, and violence.
It's great to see local news covering issues like this by reporter @JFinleyreports because it helps to expose the vast bulk of what police do: only 4% of their time is spent on "violent" crime, and much of it is done to make people money: wsmv.com/2025/05/29/sha…
But it's vital to understand this is not some egregious "bad apple" conspiracy particular to Tennessee or Nashville. It's important to understand that local policing looks like this in every large U.S. city, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are in control.
THREAD. A lot of attention is rightly going to Medicaid cuts and other very bad things in Trump's bill passed in the House, but there's something that isn't getting attention, that is difficult to find in any news coverage, but that will fundamentally alter life for all of us.
The bill provides $160 billion in border/immigration funding in next 4.5 years. It's hard to describe the unprecedented scope of this, but I'll try: tens of thousands of armed agents in every corner of society are going to be nearly immune from state prosecution or civil suits.
This article describes it more, but I want to focus on a few things. First, when you build infrastructure like this and create new jobs/pensions for right-wing unions, it's hard to ever remove them. A new gestapo could become a permanent feature of life. wola.org/analysis/160-b…
See if you can spot the difference between the New York Times headline and the article's own description of what actually happened, which will be read by far fewer people.
One of the standard media tropes is the "clash," which leaves casual news consumers with the vague sense that opposing sides were each violent, even though what's often happening is that an unaccountable violent repressive force is brutalizing people complaining about injustice.
It's also worth noting the shameful conduct of university administrators. If you think about what they mean by the word "safety" here the implications are dark and Orwellian for our society.