Journalist and filmmaker Eleanor Goldfield returns to the program to address several topics in media and world events, including the ongoing scandal of Julian Assange’s imprisonment, the folly of the US and NATO threatening Russia, and the shallowness of commercial media. Then media scholar Nolan Higdon revisits the program to explain how tech giants are infiltrating the classroom by sponsoring carefully-tailored “media-literacy” course materials. The discussion delves into the differences between critical, critical, and corporate media literacy. Both guests weigh in on the latest flap between Joe Rogan, Neil Young, and Spotify with a focus on the problem of big tech deplatforming, censorship, and free speech issues.
Eleanor Goldfield is a creative radical, journalist, artist, and organizer. She is co-host of the Common Censored podcast with Lee Camp. She also produced a documentary, Hard Road of Hope, about West Virginia communities confronting pollution from fracking. The Craig Murray article she mentions (about Julian Assange) can be found here.
Nolan Higdon is a lecturer in education at the University of California Santa Cruz campus, he teaches media studies and history. He’s also the author of the book “The Anatomy of Fake News;” co-author of “Podcaster’s Dilemma” with Nicholas Baham III; and co-author with Mickey Huff of “Let’s Agree to Disagree,” a critical thinking textbook out from Routledge in early 2022. His recent article (co-written with media scholar Allison Butler) is titled “Time to Put Your Marketing Cap On.” It appears in the Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies journal.
Notes:
Music-break information:
1) “The Resistance” by 2 Cellos
2) “Rockin’ in the Free World” by Neil Young
3) “Money” by Pink Floyd