Synopsis: With the need for reliable information at an all-time high, journalists are faced with a daunting challenge: navigating the treacherous waters of corporate interests, fascist ideologies, and social media noise to deliver news that truly matters. Description: Journalism is at an inflection point, so where does that leave journalists? Dean Obeidallah and Joy Reid join Laura Flanders to discuss the money media’s dangerous denials and obfuscations, the problem with bothsidesism in a time of fascism, and the coverage of Renee Good’s killing in Minneapolis. Join us for this rich conversation on resistance, reporting, and survival. Guests: • Dean Obeidallah: Host of SiriusXM radio's The Dean Obeidallah Show • Joy Reid: Host of The Joy Reid Show Watch the episode released on YouTube; PBS World Channel 11:30am ET Sundays and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode). Listen: Episode airing on community radio (check here to see if your station airs the show) & available as a podcast January 28th, 2026. Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. Music Credit: 'Thrum of Soil' by Bluedot Sessions, 'Steppin' by Podington Bear, and original sound design by Jeannie Hopper Support Laura Flanders and Friends by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/c/lauraflandersandfriends
Synopsis: Join a thought-provoking conversation with Laura, Dean Obeidallah, and Joy Reid as they dissect the media landscape's seismic shifts and explore how journalists can reclaim their role in serving the people.
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Description: Journalism is at an inflection point. Under a hail of lawsuits, firings, new hires, and mercenary mergers, the business of media is in shambles even as the need for reliable, truthful information to reach voters is greater than ever. Where does that leave journalists? In this episode, Laura and her guests discuss the money media’s dangerous denials and obfuscations, the problem with bothsidesism in a time of fascism, and the coverage of Renee Good’s killing in Minneapolis. Dean Obeidallah is a lawyer, writer, award-winning comedian and host of SiriusXM radio’s national daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show”. Joy Reid, formerly host of the award-winning ReidOut on MSNBC, is a best-selling author, and host of the Joy Reid Show on YouTube. The decline of legacy media isn’t all bad news — especially for those, like Palestinians and others, who were always shut out of it — and the rise of independent platforms, savvy media consumers and new mechanisms for collaboration just might usher in a new age of great journalism, just when we need it. Join Dean, Joy and Laura for this rich conversation on resistance, reporting, and survival.
“What I would like corporate media to understand, their job is not to make money for shareholders and executives to get bonuses, but serve the people, make them smarter, even if it means losing access. I know that's a lot to ask, but that's what I would like because an educated, informed electorate is the key to saving this republic.” - Dean Obeidallah
“It is a crime against journalism for the editorial director of a news network to say our job is not to deliver the news, but to go viral. That's crazy.”- Joy Reid
Guests:
• Dean Obeidallah: Host of SiriusXM radio's The Dean Obeidallah Show
• Joy Reid: Host of The Joy Reid Show
Watch the episode released on YouTube; PBS World Channel 11:30am ET Sundays and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode). Listen: Episode airing on community radio (check here to see if your station airs the show) & available as a podcast January 28th, 2026.
Full Episode Notes are located HERE.
Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation.
Music Credit: 'Thrum of Soil' by Bluedot Sessions, 'Steppin' by Podington Bear, and original sound design by Jeannie Hopper
Support Laura Flanders and Friends by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/c/lauraflandersandfriends
RESOURCES:
*Recommended book:
“Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America” by Joy-Ann Reid: *Get the Book
(*Bookshop is an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores. The LF Show is an affiliate of bookshop.org and will receive a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.)
Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:
• Doxed, Stalked & Swatted: When the Far Right Goes After Journalists: Watch / Listen: Full Uncut Conversation and Episode Cut
• Maysoon Zayid: Comedy of Resistance, Disability, Difference & Palestine: Watch / Listen: Full Uncut Conversation and Episode Cut
• Patrick & Claud Cockburn: A Legacy of Guerilla Journalism Against Media Complacency: Watch / Listen: Full Uncut Conversation and Episode Cut
• Masha Gessen & Jason Stanley: Is it Doomsday for U.S. Democracy?: Watch / Listen: Full Uncut Conversation and Episode Cut
Related Articles and Resources:
• ‘There was no warning’: Joy Reid is speaking out about how she was fired from MSNBC, by Madeleine Marr, June 26, 2025, Miami Herald
• Dean Obeidallah - Substack
• ‘We Need to Be the News’: Inside Bari Weiss’s Bumpy Revamp at CBS, by Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin, January 13, 2026, New York Times
• What would Edward R. Murrow think of CBS parent company caving in to Donald Trump? By Kevin Cullen, July 3, 2025, The Boston Globe
• Nattering nabobs of news criticism: 50 years ago today, Spiro Agnew laid out a blueprint for attacking the press, by Thomas Alan Schwartz, November 13, 2019, NiemanLab
• 1964 Pulitzer Prize Winners - Journalism - Editorial Writing: Hazel Brannon Smith of Lexington, The Pulitzer Prices
• MeidasTouch News - a pro-democracy news network.
• Six Prosecutors Quit Over Push to Investigate ICE Shooting Victim’s Widow, by Ernesto Londono, January 13, 2026, New York Times
CHAPTERS:
123.
While our weekly.
Shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio.
We offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation.
These audio exclusives are made possible.
Thanks to our member supporters.
"And the award for most editing goes to CBS News?
Yes, CBS News America's newest place to CBS News.
Journalism is at an inflection point." [Nikki Glaser Golden Globe's monologue]
What you just saw was Nikki Glaser's monologue at this year's Golden Globes literally calling CBS a purveyor of excrement.
After that network shelved a 60 Minutes report on torture in ICE detention at the behest of its new editor in chief, CBS is now an official laughingstock.
And that's just one example.
Under a hail of lawsuits, firings, new hires and mercenary mergers, so-called mainstream media is in shambles.
And then there's the morass that is the social media world.
So where does all of this leave journalists if democracy continues to depend on voters being able to know what's going on and tell truth from flat out lies?
The journalists job is as important as ever, but massively changed.
So how?
How different, how hard, how bizarre Today, two guests who embody both the doggedness and often the delight in doing journalism differently in this wildly chaotic, deadly, dangerous time.
Dean Obeidallah is a writer, lawyer, award-winning comedian and host of SiriusXM Radio's national daily program, The Dean Obeidallah Show.
Joy Reid is a best selling American author, journalist and host of The Joy Reid Show, Formerly national correspondent for MSNBC now, Miss Now and host of the Emmy nominated 2 time NAACP award-winning nightly program, The Readout.
Whoo that is all a huge mouthful because of how much change is all the time.
But Joy and Dean thank you for joining me friends here on Laura Flanders and Friends.
I understand you 2 are friends.
How did you meet each other, Joy?
Well, first of all, Laura, it is such a pleasure to be on with you.
I'm such a big fan, long time fan, first time caller, as they say in radio.
And the way that I met Dean was by booking him on my show.
He was a OG member of my weekend show AM Joy.
And so we met the way I've met so many of my friends in media by me hearing his, what he did in radio and being like, oh, that guy would be great on the show.
He came on and we've been fast friends.
Absolutely, Dean.
I think you and I met that way kind of too.
How did you, how did you and I first connect?
You even remember.
I think it was Grit TV, you were reminding me before we started here, but it was something in I remember going to some office somewhere, it's kind of sketchy and that you interviewed me and I think John Fugelsang may have been there.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think you're right, I think.
You're there together because I know, John, for decades and the same thing.
So I remember meeting you and you were one of the first independent journalists I met, to be honest.
Everyone else I knew was in the corporate media world.
And there you were doing I'm like, what is this independent journalism?
What happened to her?
Now it's the place to be, to be honest.
Well, it's very interesting and you know, it is true that I am happy to welcome you all to the world of independent media.
It is an exciting and transforming place.
And we've all lived enough to see a lot of changes in this field that we call media.
Luckily, it's a plural noun, covers A world of sins and good stuff.
And as we begin, there's a lot of dreadful as well as somewhat cheering perhaps stuff happening in our world.
So just to bring us into this moment, I would start with, you know, what's on the top of your mind and your heart as we begin this conversation.
Dean.
It has to do with the ICE officer killing Renee.
Good and and there was response of this administration is unlike anything I've seen Lord.
There was not even any hint of compassion that an American had been killed.
They began calling her a terrorist within hours, something that you would expect to see maybe in a Middle East regime when they're killing protesters, calling them terrorists or foreign agitators.
What's happening in America 0 compassion, 0 empathy.
Christy Gnome out there saying she's a domestic terrorist and then doubling down.
JD Vance having a press conference saying it was an attack on America and we've not seen that.
And now what's the response to Trump administration to send more troops like the Iraq war surge.
Now they're surging in Minnesota because on some level, and I've been saying this for over a year and my show, we're at war.
It's a war Trump has declared on us.
It's only certain Democrats that don't get it.
But MAGA knows they're at war.
Trump doesn't want to govern.
He wants to rule us.
And this is a manifestation of this where we are.
So my heart is heavy for her family for the fact that they won't investigate the killer, but they want to prosecute the widow, Something out of like Joseph Stalin's playbook.
That's what we're living through right now.
So that is weighing me down a little bit.
And.
What about you, Joy?
What about you?
Yeah, I mean, much this same.
I mean, if everything that's happening in the United States was happening, let's say, in my father's country in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we would be reporting it as the regime is sending paramilitary troops into cities.
They killed a mom of three, shot her in the face without any due process.
They are arresting people without warrants.
We would be reporting this if it were happening in Iran, in Turkey, in Russia, in any other country.
We would be reporting it as effectively either the essentially the cities been the countries been taken over by martial law.
We will be using terms like martial law.
We would be saying that this represented A regime that has essentially done a coup against democracy.
Think about the terminology we would use if this were a foreign country.
And yet the media, the mainstream media, as much as it has somewhat progressed toward calling what Donald Trump and his regime are doing by the real true words that the dictionary would, it would imply they're getting there, but they're still not able to see this as an fundamentally undemocratic regime.
The thing that I will note is that the killing of Renee Good represents an escalation that I think is significant in that she is a white woman.
And had this been a black woman, a Muslim, had it been an Afghan refugee or something of that nature, I'm not sure that the reaction would be the same.
I think people would still be outraged.
But I think for white Americans, seeing this woman murdered in broad daylight in a suburban neighborhood in front of her neighbors, including a doctor, it changes the stakes, I think, for white America.
In the same way that the George Floyd murder not far from that Minneapolis neighborhood changed the stakes on Black Lives Matter for everyone, where people were forced to reckon with what police could really do.
And now I'm interested in watching what white America is doing with the information that white women are now also on the table and open to being victimized by the state as well and by state violence.
I think that it's game changing.
She is the George Floyd of this Stop ICE movement, even though she's not demographically what the targets of ICE really look.
Like, oh, I'm so interested to go further into into your comments there.
I will just say that I think it was also important, although in some ways regrettable, that the first story that most mainstream America got of what had happened there was of this blonde, beautiful white woman.
We didn't know yet that she was a lesbian or an activist or any of those things.
There are so many layers, so many, what our friend Kim Crenshaw would call intersections in all of this.
In the context of this, I talked about journalists at the top.
What do you perceive your role to be in these times?
Reporter, commentator, opinion maker, activist.
What joy.
And, and I will say that I've always been an opinion journalist ever since I got out of local news.
I worked in local news and did the whole, you know, local news is, by the way, it's a hellish job because you really have no agency and you're literally just sort of at the really behest of the corporate media in, in a very and I've quit media because of it, because I was so opposed to the Iraq war.
I actually exited journalism and never thought I'd come back because I wrote an editorial for the Miami Herald opposing the Iraq War, almost got fired for it and wound up leaving because the way that the media was covering the run up to the Iraq war and the invasion, I found distasteful.
And I thought I'm done with media.
So when I came back into media, I came back in as an opinion journalist.
So as I had a column, I came back in as effectively A columnist, but a columnist based on journalism.
So I'm a I'm a I'm a journalist slash columnist.
But I do do it on TV or on broadcast.
And you show up now.
And I see my role now as as an advocate, because I do believe that when you're facing autocracy and authoritarianism, the role of the media is to be part of the resistance.
And I know that that that makes a lot of journalists cringe because they don't want to be in conflict with the administration.
But to me, we are not in normal times.
This is not politics, it's autocracy.
And so I see myself as a fellow truth teller, trying to illuminate what the regime is doing so that people can see what's happening to them and.
Understand it in very real and stark terms.
And what about you, Dean?
What's been your kind of trajectory into the work you're doing now?
Well, I was a lawyer then.
That was a comedian.
I worked at Senator Live for eight seasons and then I'm here like, I don't know how it happened either.
I mean, that's the kind of remarkable thing with all of my work through the years of comedy for 20 years has been as an activist.
You know, I was doing comedy to make people laugh but try to breakdown stereotypes about Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.
I'm still producing.
It's our 23rd year of the New York Arab American Comedy Festival this fall.
We're still breaking down the stereotypes.
So my journalism work, if you want to call that, is opinion based, but the same idea trying to effectuate change, trying to be an activist.
I am delusional I believe.
I believe I can change the world.
I think we all are delusional like that or we wouldn't be doing this.
And can we really change it?
A lot maybe, but little bits.
I really believe each of us can play a role and that's why I feel like I I fit in trying to push things a little bit and bring others along who agree with my opinions and our views.
Yeah, well, just fill in my back story.
I got into this partly because I started as a journalist in Northern Ireland and almost immediately got myself on the non official side of the story.
The side being fired at not desired, the side doing the firing.
There's live bullets at that moment too.
And realized how can you be objective in a situation like that?
What is objectivity?
That's insane.
So okay, okay, none of us aspire to objectivity.
Besides, we're none of us the kind of white male journalists that are ever called objective in any case.
So starting from that, I would love your sense of what do you think is the most grievous thing that mainstream so-called corporate money media are doing or failing to do?
You've alluded to some of it.
And then I want to talk about some of the freedom perhaps that that you and we have being outside of those structures.
Joy, what do you think?
If you would have, you've named a few things, but what do you think's the fundamental biggest thing you'd like to fix right now?
Well, I think that going back to when Trump first came in, the media would not use the word lie.
And there was a big struggle.
I was working in corporate media at the time.
There was a big internal struggle about whether you could call an untruth A misstatement, but you could just say it was a lie.
That was a stupid fight, right?
And there have been a lot of those kinds of stupid fights where the media has been so reluctant to be in conflict with the with any administration, not just Trump, with Bush, with Obama.
They didn't care because that was the Democrat.
They don't mind being in conflict.
But when it's a Republican, because the media is so, so afraid of what Roger Ailes did, which is to present this notion that the media is biased against white conservatives, they've taken that in as corporate media.
I do a whole lecture on this when I talk to students.
That objectivity became this sort of lie, this ruse to say that if you're not giving the right a lot of latitude, then you're not a fair and you're not balanced.
And this notion of Fair and balanced is really letting the right get away with things.
That has really been seeped into a lot of the consciousness of the media.
So I think their biggest mistake, and this goes back to George W Bush, was being willing to be lied to and allow that regime to lie to us to get us into a war, to allow the Reagan administration to lie us into believing black women were stealing welfare.
And the the media has for a very long time, not just Trump, been willing to allow conservative administrations who the owners of those companies benefit from in terms of taxes and deregulation.
They've allowed that and the right frightening them into saying if you're not objective, you're not legitimate into letting lies live on the table.
And so I think that's been the biggest mistake.
And with Trump, it's gone so far that despite the New York Times reporting he did what 34,000 lies, you know, in one administration, one interview, one interview, they're still afraid to really confront what he is.
And now they've committed an even further crime, which is to become Co opted by the same oligarchs who directly benefit from the regime.
They've now bought up most of the administration, including CBS.
I just want to read this very quick thing to you.
The Times is reporting that Barry Weiss, who is the podcaster or sub stacker, who for whatever reason is now in charge of the Tiffany Network, CBS News, she sent a note to her staff before Tony Dukopel's launch as anchor of the CBS Evening News, which a job he got because he called TA Nehisi Coates a terrorist.
And that angered Zionist, pro Zionist people.
And so his reward for calling TA Nehisi Coates, the brilliant writer, a terrorist was to get the Evening News.
I believe that's my opinion.
I'm an opinion journalist.
She said that let's make sure every single night has something with viral potential.
The goal for this roadshow of Tony Jacopo's is not to deliver the news so much as it is to drive the news.
We need to be the news for these ten days.
It is a crime against journalism for the editorial director of a news network to say our job is not to deliver the news, but to go viral.
That's crazy.
That's the commercial interest, the commercial motive playing itself out and saying the quiet stuff out loud.
Again, Dean, if you had to change one thing, what would it be?
Of the corporate media, I think it's impossible.
One thing, Laura, there's there's too much.
I will say this, I think we are all more journalists in the realm and in the form of Edward R Murrow than they are because Edward R Murrow famously said there are not two sides to every issue.
Like there are not.
They're not two sides to the clan.
I remember a cable news network and I won't say which one.
It is said to me during Trump's first term they wanted me on to talk about Trump's anti Muslim bigotry and I said okay.
And they said we just need someone from the other side.
I go someone who's pro anti Muslim bigotry and the producer just like stop talk.
He's like, we'll get back and then they just kill the segue because they couldn't in their mind do a segment where it wasn't two sides.
There are not two sides and we know this.
They're not two sides to a lie.
There's not two sides to Trump's fascism.
I would go and Joy's show and me and Joy would say fascism and Mediasan say and all the other people there.
What are you doing?
How outlandish.
And I would get the definition for why it lines up.
I'm I'm saying I'm not saying this Dino Bidala saying academically what we're living through is a fascist regime.
You should use the correct terms.
And so, I mean, we're at the point where I'm literally quoting Hana Arrant and Banality of Evil to explain to people what ICE is doing.
And that's not over the top.
I am not even close to over the top.
And So what I would like corporate media to understand their job is not to make money for shareholders and executives to get bonuses, but serve the people, make them smarter even it means losing access.
I know that's a lot to ask, but that's what I would like because an educated, informed electorate is the key to saving this Republic.
A lot of the problems that you've both just described go back so far.
I mean, really to sort of spiral Agnew managing to create this bugaboo of the quote UN quote liberal media that put all of media organizations on the back foot, bending over as far backwards as any Yogi could possibly manage.
And then everything that we've seen since in terms of commercialization of even the news.
So I guess suffice to say, you know, the other thing is so-called legacy media is never going to get our real true tears because it never really liked people like us blacks and Arabs and queer lefties and comics.
Heaven forbid that means, sure, the crisis so-called in legacy media is real, but it has opened up some incredible opportunities and you both have seized them as if I talk about the sort of pros and cons of this moment, Dean.
Well, I think, look, if there was ever a time for corporate media to implode, thankfully it's now on the ascendancy of independent media because years ago, if they still controlled all the ways to get information out, we'd be dead.
I mean, like they would be just all gatekeeping and just doing pro Trump, pro regime propaganda and we would not be able to get our message out there.
So look, I mean, technically I work at SiriusXM, which is a big corporation, but I don't think they even know I'm there.
Like it's really like there's no exactly can't even talk.
No, I do meet with an executive, but it's never about the content and stuff.
It's like, do your thing unless I get a complaint about something and it's rare.
We're just doing our thing.
So we have the freedom of of independent journalism.
Also, I write for Sub Stack where it truly is independent.
I don't have to pitch anymore to editors who I liked and they were great and wait for a day and then change it in the dilute what I wanted to say.
I think we have more freedom.
We're also building allies in the independent media world that weren't there.
Laura, you were the first independent media person I met.
I'm not kidding you and probably Amy Goodman, right?
So now there's so many, there's too many.
There's all these young guys have a million followers on TikTok.
How do they get that?
They're like 26.
But the point is, like, there's so many more of us, I'm more confident the future is brighter, that we can get our message out.
Well, but what about that Joanne?
I mean, there is a huge morass out there.
How do you keep your head above water?
Get your head above the parapet, as it were.
Yeah, and I think it's that consumers of news have got to be a lot more savvy.
Luckily, a lot of younger people are already attention delimited, right?
They're very, they have very short attention spans.
And so they're able to consume lots of different information simultaneously.
And you have to become your own curator.
It's kind of like Netflix, right?
You're just, you've got all of these things to watch and you need to figure out what's worth your time.
And so I think people are having to become a lot more discerning.
There are people who are out there with a million followers on TikTok saying things that are complete bullshit.
And so you have to be careful about what you're consuming and not get down rabbit holes of disinformation, which is very, it's frightening in the sense that it is a wild, Wild West out there.
But I think those of us, and I would count you among them, Laura, who've been in this journalism game a long time.
And I would count Dean among because I have to be honest with you, Stan, comedians have been telling more truth than journalists for like decades.
OK, being honest, there's been more truth coming on those comedy stages than out of some of these news networks even before we had this crisis and this nadir.
And so I, I go back to two things.
I'll give 2 examples.
I wrote this book about Medgar Evers and Myrlie Evers Williams.
You know, Medgar Evers.
One of the jobs he had was he was a journalist.
He actually started a newspaper because they couldn't get real news out of Mississippi into rural communities where they were just being lied to about civil rights, lied to about the N double ACP.
So he and a white woman who risked her her standing in society got shunned from society by allowing Medgar Evers and his team to use her printing press to distribute this Mississippi Free Press.
And so that is the kind of underground radical advocacy journalism.
That was needed to fight Mississippi fascism.
And if you go to Russia, I think of Alexei Navalny, who was also using outside of the very closed system of Russian media to get information to younger people through the Internet and through all these alternative means.
Unfortunately, he died for, but that is true activism and true heroism.
So I think that the great thing about this moment and not being having to answer to a corporate sort of overseer is that we can get on the ground.
We can get on the ground like Medgar.
We can get on the ground and try to fight this fascism that's overrunning our country at a rapid rate.
They had a plan, Project 2025.
We didn't have a plan, but we have huge community.
We have the midases of the Midas, touches of the world.
We have, you know, all of these independent journalists and we're banding together.
We have Lev Parnas for God's sakes out there getting us information and we work together.
We're not in conflict.
Me, Don, Lemon, all of us, We work together.
We band together.
And that's been the Jim Acosta and Don and I do a thing whenever there's breaking news.
We get together, we get Dean on, we get everyone, we're going to get you on.
We work together.
We work as a system.
We're like an amoeba, you know, So we're, it's harder to stop us because there's so many of us and we're working in tandem.
Well, I'm excited about that possibility.
So many efforts for independent media to work together have been scuttled or or just failed over the last years because of our dependence on philanthropy, which tends to put organizations at each other's throats.
Thanks to the Philanthropist to support this program.
But nonetheless, structurally, that's been a huge problem and I hope that we can solve it in our lifetimes.
This show is made possible by our viewers and listeners, not corporations or advertisers.
So join our member supporter on a roll by going to lauraflanders.org/donate to contribute.
That's lauraflanders.org/donate.
Thank you, Dean.
I will say, you know, not only were you one of the first out there giving, you know, comedians telling news that we weren't hearing elsewhere, you have brought caring about people in Palestine to our airwaves and to our pages long before there was much.
Just putting it mildly.
Have you seen that story change in its coverage?
And are you seeing connections made?
Because, Gee, when I saw that shooting in Minnesota, in Minneapolis of Renee Goode, I had just seen the incredibly extraordinary independent film The Voice of Hindra Job.
And I'm thinking, when are we going to see the film about Nicole Goode?
That's going to be the next one we see about an intentional killing.
I think things have changed.
I remember going on Joy show years ago, Joe, and you might not remember saying this was like in our morning show and I talked about Palestine issues.
Thanks for coming on.
Because few people want to come on and talk about being Palestinian or the Palestinian experience or what's going on or advocating for Palestinians.
I'm half Palestinian.
It's I just, it's part of my life.
It wasn't a political choice.
It was a real life choice.
My family lives in the West Bank.
I will say, Lori, years ago there were a handful of voices out there in the media talking about like Rule of Jibril, our good friend, and a few others.
There's some, there's some others were really, really good.
Now we have more allies than ever and the use of entertainment media to tell the story in terms of like MO Omar had a great show on Netflix for choosing the last season was so much about being Palestinian.
You know, Rami Youssef was an executive producer of that on his show Rami.
I know both of them.
It touched on it a little bit.
You have the the movie you talked about another movie my friend Shereen Davis made, which the Jordan's Oscar submission about an intergenerational Palestinian family and the trauma from pre Nakba 1930s through today.
These are the so we're finally getting out there and years ago I talked to Shereen because I've known her for years.
This dream that we she had to tell our stories through the arts like other communities had been gestating.
It took years for her to get sex success, like an Emmy nomination for directing Only Murders in the Building and this other stuff where she was able to do this.
So I think things have changed.
I think younger people are amazingly interested.
I think the horrific genocide in Gaza woke people up to something they had never seen before.
There's some allies that make me uncomfortable.
I'm glad they're saying the right thing.
I don't agree with them on anything else, but it's it's become a humanitarian and concern and I wish my late father was here to see all the support for Palestine because he never saw in his life in America.
Was that film all that Remains?
Is that the film?
Yeah.
Encourage people to check it out.
Joy coming back to you for a second.
And you talked beautifully a minute ago about people taking risks.
One of the things we hear from people in so-called mainstream media is they're afraid to lose their access.
And I always think about who was it that brought us those civil rights stories?
It was people who had no access, but they had access to the movement.
If you remember the white woman's name, I'd love to shout it out.
But more broadly, talking to people right now in networks as you once were, you can probably imagine what many of them are going through in the way of kind of oversight and, you know, review processes and threats and fears.
And do you have a message to them or do you have any conclusions from your experience there about when or when isn't it good to stay?
Well, I mean, I think that people should, not people.
I've always said that you have to do within your comfort level what you feel called to do in this moment.
You don't want to look back and say you did nothing, right.
But people have various comfort levels in terms of their risk tolerance.
You know, I had a very high risk tolerance, you know, having Dean on there wouldn't there I, I, I just have somebody who has, you know, as a kid was very pro Palestinian.
Just coming up.
My mom was.
So this is something I narrated for my parents that we would pay attention to the story because my father lived in South Africa, which was very aligned with the Palestinian movements.
Otherwise, I didn't get along with my father and I agreed on that, right.
And we've just always looked with sympathy and sort of with shock.
I used to watch Bibi Netanyahu when he was on Nightline.
He was just this mean evil guy.
I'm like, boy, and then he became Prime Minister.
I'm like that guy, the commentator from Nightline or used to shade Palestinians and get shredded by Hadana Shrari.
That guy is Prime Minister.
And so I just had this empathy.
But when I would have Dean on, there was no, there were hardly any Palestinians even.
You ever saw Aim and Moy Hadin was one and Dean was kind of the other one.
Rula, we used to get pushed back.
We would put her on and we would, you know, the, I don't think that MMS, the the artist formerly known as MSNBC was super comfortable with Rula because we would get sort of pushed back about her.
And so the idea that we have this group of people, this huge group of people that cannot speak that are essentially muted while they're being, you know, bereft of their land, having their land just taken.
And then we're just supposed to buy it because we're Christians and Christianity says this is OK.
Since when?
Like, why is that OK?
And we're not allowed to question it?
We're not even allowed to ask the question.
Is it OK to just take these people's land?
These farmers have a farm, and then these guys can just come from the United States or Europe and just take it?
I'm sorry.
Why about the settlers?
We don't even ask why this settlement, why these settle settlers are allowed to do this and why this is legal and why we shouldn't question it.
So to me, I would say to your level of comfort, you should support, you should try to speak out, but do it.
Don't if you're if you've got a mortgage and four kids and you got to pay for it, don't throw yourself out.
I was willing to take the risk.
I'm confident.
I'm a writer, you know, my husband and I have a production company.
I'm like, I'm going to land on my feet.
I'm going to take the risk.
I'm going to book ruler.
I'm going to book people who can speak about pals.
I'm going to do it even though people's like, please don't get fired.
Please don't do it.
But I'm like, no, but it what's the point of having.
It's something Tallahassee Coats said to me at a party.
We were at a party, We were having this conversation about the risks that each of us were taking, talking about about Palestine.
We were like, but then what's the point of having a platform?
There's no Palestinians except for Eamonn Moyo.
Dino had shows and they and you know, so it's like, I think if you have the privilege and you have the platform, you should do it.
But you should do it to your level of tolerance.
And the woman that I was shouting out that helped Meg, her Evers, her name was Hazel Brandon Smith.
You should Google her.
She was pretty amazing.
She actually was an award-winning journalist and she had a Press of her own, but she decided to lend the press to Medgar Evers to her level of comfort.
She was shunned by white society.
She was disinvited from the white community.
And what she did in response, she had all the blacks over fatigue.
She said, all right, y'all come on, let's I got nobody to have tea and hang with me.
Y'all come on to my house and let's do this.
She made some new friends and made some important history.
I'm always trying to emphasize there is joy on the other side, and here we actually have joy right here on this side.
Dean, coming to you.
We interviewed journalists not so long ago on this program who were investigative reporters who were covering the rise of the right and experiencing extraordinary personal attack.
They were all super brave and said that they were doing what they were doing was important enough to make take the risks that they were taking.
They took sort of regular measures to defend themselves and encouraged others to do that too.
But what should journalists and and especially citizen type journalists who don't have huge institutions behind them know about the law as a lawyer about their First Amendment rights that their rights and and their potential protections?
Look, I mean, if someone's being threatened, you should contact.
I would say the FBI, but not now.
I would say, hey, police.
I don't really trust Cash Patel's FBI.
I trust FBI agents, some of them who didn't get hired by Cash Patel.
You have to go to the police.
I mean, I have a circumstance where in 2017, I wrote an op-ed for The Daily Beast before Charlottesville, saying Donald Trump needs to denounce white supremacist terrorism in that language.
The result is the guy who runs a Daily Stormer, Daley Stormer, which is Der Stormer, named after Hitler's favorite publication.
Andrew England smeared me.
They fabricated tweets in my name saying I was well involved in terrorism because I'm Muslim, because they're really clever and they should go after Dean.
And I got a lot of death threats.
And what did I do?
I got some great lawyers in New York who volunteered and we sued them.
And I got a judgement of $4 million, which I don't have their money because they didn't have money.
But the point was they're not going to silence us.
And you've got to step up.
You have to be comfortable with it.
Being half Sicilian probably gives me more the idea of like, we're going to take the fight too more than Palestinian side.
People don't get it.
My Palestinian side is it tempers, my Sicilian side, God.
All you need is a little Irish and you'd really have it made.
Right.
That was 100% Sicilian.
There'd be a lot of baseball bats and arrest warrants in my life.
OK, the Palestinian side goes be strategic.
And even the Joyce Ponte used to go on her show, and they were OK with what I said because I had to be aware of what I was saying.
I knew that if I go too far and say too many conclusory terms, terms, then it can mean you're not getting on again.
So my whole approach all the time was don't use the conclusion.
Don't say apartheid, let's say, say what the real life is for my family.
Let people draw their own conclusion.
Others will go on and give the conclusion and then the people and then, you know, executive suites like, no, we don't want that person back on.
I think it's actually more powerful to tell people real life what's going on.
Anyone's saying except for genocide that, you know, that's an academic definition and has to be used.
But so I was very aware on Joy show of working on the edge and being aware of what I was saying very, very carefully so that I could go back on, so the Palestinian voice could still remain in the media.
That was very important to me.
I think questions are always helpful too.
Provoking questions and and you.
You kind of concluded, but you kind of provoked joy when you said, you know, that Nicole Good, Renee, Nicole Good is the, you know, George Floyd of this movement, this moment.
I thought, I bet she gets pushback from some people about that.
And I wondered whether you were able to have a conversation in your space with your audience that was more complex than you might have been able to have on MSNBC.
Because on MSNBC, I would imagine you would have needed to be, you know, still policing the barriers of sameness in a white supremacist kind of society.
Everything isn't just George Floyd, if you know what I mean.
No, absolutely.
And I was able to #1 thank God for Sub Stack.
I was able to really tease this out.
I talked about on the Jury Read show.
We did a segment about it and I walked through, we did like 40 minutes where I really went through the history and was able to explain it in a way I wouldn't have had time.
The entire hour on the artist formerly known as MSNBC, It's literally 40 minutes, right?
So I did a whole show's worth of extra, you know, sort of exposition.
But then I wrote a written piece as well for Sub Stack.
And we do love the fact that Sub Stack exists and doesn't censor us and lets us speak.
And the point I was making about Renee Goode is not really a racialized point because she is not the demographic of people who are normally targeted by ICE.
It is Latinos overwhelmingly and black immigrants secondarily, but mainly Latinos were being targeted.
She is white.
She is not targeted.
But the thing that I think makes her a George Floyd type figure is that movements are built on stories, as both of you know, and George Floyd, while people were home, stuck at home staying away from their grandparents during COVID, everyone is watching this man die for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, be killed in public with cameras rolling and with an officer who felt impunity to kill him with three other officers standing and helping him.
That was the narrative of George Floyd that said that had white people going, oh wait, black people are not being over the top when they say the cops are just killing them without Willy nilly, without a second thought.
With their hands in their pockets.
Their hands in their pockets.
But what's happened with Renee Good is that, no, she's not the demographic, but she shows the impunity.
And the impunity is at a level where even white Christian moms are not eliminated from the possibility of being killed this way.
And I think because of that, her story, her kids, her wife sobbing by the side of the road, the fact that you hear her last words, I'm not mad at you, man.
That's her last words.
The fact that she's dancing in her car, joyfully trying to stand up for black and brown people.
She is very much like the woman who was killed at Charlottesville, who unfortunately, the the, the democratic side, the small D democracy side and did not lift up her story in that way.
Everybody told Renee, yeah, they do.
But they know Renee Good's name.
Everyone knows her name.
And if the if the pro democracy side is smart, they will make her the George Floyd of this movement because stories and narrative of faith, that iconic picture of her, much like the Trayvon Martin photo, which became the iconic picture.
This beautiful boy with his hoodie, the black and white photo that his parents had to like trademark so people wouldn't steal it because it was so beautiful and so iconic.
We got a photo of of her and we need to wrap our arms around this woman who is the the absolute visual image of ICE impunity that even will not respect the people that ICE was supposed to be designed to protect, white Christian moms.
So we have a media environment that enables the quick take, the fast take, the hot take, quick stuff to be flying around coupled with the in depth, not just more than not 40 minutes, but not broken up by ads, not, you know, not having to be on the same story that all the other networks are on.
I think it's a very Zen situation we find ourselves in of both and the least and the most.
And how do they relate?
And I'm really excited to hear you talking about possible collaborations and networks and the structures perhaps allowing a certain kind of collaboration we didn't see before.
But I will ask you two questions.
One, the question we ask all our guests at the end of these episodes, which is what do you think is a story?
Talk about story that the future will tell of.
Now, you can think about that for a second.
But first, you know, what are you reading and listening to?
What are you consuming in terms of media?
Because I know that's a question I get all the time and I follow all of you and we all follow each other.
But aside from that, what do you recommend people do in this sort of menu of choices?
Madness, joy go first, I'll.
Go first.
So you know what I do when I wake up in the morning and I start my news, a diet consumption, I actually go to The Associated Press.
I go right to them.
They've been stalwart in naming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico.
They have stood up for their journalistic integrity.
And before I read places where the Associated Press's stories are going to be, the Miami Herald, whatever other stories are picking them up, I go right to them.
And I think the AP is such a valuable resource in this moment for objective news.
So I go to them.
I do love the BBC as well.
I am.
I'm a big fan of Al Jazeera.
I'm a big fan of Haaretz.
I'm a subscriber to Haaretz.
When I want to read about what's happening in the Middle East, I will peruse the Jerusalem Post, but I believe Haaretz and so I read that.
I think you've got to read in international news as well.
The Guardian is a big source that I love to read.
Then when I come back on this side of the aisle, I do love my Daily Beast because they give me my tea and they give me my.
Fight.
I don't just get the straight news, I get a little spice on it, which I do love.
So I do like reading The Daily Beast shouts out to them as well.
And then I hit YouTube and then I just start going through and I start listening to and and watching what's going on in the world.
And those live streams are great because you can get the news conferences straight.
I watched mom Donnies news conference just live on YouTube.
YouTube is a huge and really great resource as its sub stack.
What about Eugene?
Joy does too much.
That's too much.
How do you have any time to work now?
I'm stop watching things to me.
Look, I get up and I, I like The New York Times a great deal.
I respect them.
I still read the BBC, yes, sometimes Al Jazeera, international publication like the Guardian.
I trust them far more than most of the media journalists in America, to be honest with you.
I read aggregators of news.
It could be like Google News and go through the the 4U section like that's for me.
So I have to read that kind of stuff.
So it's a lot of that.
I also like reading books a great deal because even articles give you something and you know, magazine articles give you a little bit more, but books give you a deeper understanding.
I'm reading various books.
I don't remember the titles.
One I just finished was on the book 1929, which is the best seller, but about the crash there.
But also I'm reading a book on the Gilded Age and Reconstruction after the Civil War.
And you see these parallels to where we're living through right now.
So I think you've got it.
The biggest thing Laura's people have to trust the medium they're reading or trust the journalist.
And that's where independent media comes in for all of us.
That's why I think it's so important to keep my credibility.
And I tell listeners to my show, I'm not going to tell you something just because it's going to make you happy.
I'm going to make the truth.
And especially about legal issues, I'm going to always tell you the law.
We're going to make the best argument we can around it, but we can't be the right.
We can't manufacture stuff.
It can't be the reverse of manufacturing consent, but in a bad way.
Or we're doing it on our side.
And I have liberals e-mail me things.
They go, this is like your aunt wrote this, like you can't just it's got to be a source.
I'm like, what's the?
Source.
I don't don't want to diss your aunt.
It's not my aunt.
I'm saying critical thinking skills are important, but even us on the left are those in the center.
And I think our credibility is important.
So I think the bottom line, Joy, we both read true lore too, Outlets that we feel are credible, that are giving us the truth.
And from there, we make our own decisions and our own informed choices.
I think what I'm going to do is create a sub stack newsletter.
I mean I've created it, but make a newsletter.
Posting that is about recommendations like these.
So I encourage people to check that out.
I will say that on this program, we have platformed a lot of independent media, especially black and brown owned media outlets, including the very good Sahan Journal, which is based in Minnesota, in Minneapolis and has been doing wonderful coverage, especially of the immigrant population, the Somali population there.
So to your mix of that you've all mentioned, I would also depending on where the story's taking place, take a look at the local reporting there, especially that not coming from a commercial network daily.
And can I shout out Wired as well?
I forgot to mention Wired is fantastic.
There's so much great information on what is happening in the regime coming out of Wired and there's I'm going to forget the name of it.
I think it's called 447 Dean, you might know it.
There's a, there's a small media outlet.
I won't even.
I don't.
Know in the Middle East.
Yeah, and they do a lot of it.
I know the number.
It's not 44.
That's not the number, yeah.
I've been noted in my post for those who subscribe, and that's a free subscription by the way.
So let's get to that final question.
The story, you're both storytellers.
The story that you think the future will tell of now.
I don't know, 25 years comes to seem both far and long, but I mean far and close.
Take your pick, 2550, a hundred years.
What do you think is the story the future will tell of now?
Joy.
I would say that sadly, if people look back on this country 50 years from now, they'll say that they an experiment that began as a slave colony and lasted for 250 years, struggling to become a multiracial democracy, chose to dismantle itself over an election.
The election of 2024 is definitely the end of the American empire.
That is done.
I think that the idea of the pox, Americana, Donald Trump has ended that as well.
I'm not sure what the future of NATO or alliances are, but I do know you cannot unring the bell that Trump and Project 2025 have rung.
Donald Trump may not have meant to, but he has ended the American empire.
The only question now is, will he end our democracy as well?
Interesting.
I think the story in 20 years, looking back will be President Barron Trump's in his fourth term as president of the United States of America, as Donald Trump junior is somehow like, you know, vice president viceroy or something.
It's I don't my concern is depends who controls everything in 20 years.
But you know, and if it's the side of fascism, they will write about this being the glory days.
This is a day where America became great again.
And the same way if you know, the Nazis would have survived and written 20 or 30 years later.
But I think this is the real moment for us to us living in to think about that.
And is it going to be on our watch that we've lost this Democratic Republic?
Is it so many people to sacrifice for us to have these freedoms that we take for granted?
Are people going to step up and you know, before generations before had to go over the ocean to fight fascists?
All we have to do is stay engaged here.
We don't even have to risk our lives, although some have, like Renee Goode.
So it's up to us.
I'm fearful of what it might be in 20 years, but I'm worried about November of this election.
I mean, so like I think so much this this November, Laura, you can quote me, is our Battle of Gettysburg.
I think I've said this to to joy before.
It's our battle of the Gettysburg.
If we lose this election in the midterm, the Confederate states are back in control of this nation.
If we win, it's the beginning of pushing the battle down and hopefully regaining our democracy.
Well, no matter what the story is, 25 or 50 years from now it will include that there were dissenters and there were brave folks telling an independent story and doing their best to fire up resistance, and you 2 are definitely part of it.
I'd like to believe the story ends up with a cheerier ending, but I'll leave your thoughts where they are.
It's really been a pleasure being on with you.
I wish you both the absolute best luck in your work and in your, and let's convene again sometime.
Thanks, Laura.
Great.
Thank you, Laura.
Thank you.
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