18 June 2014

Where I Get Real News

Talia Whyte Media Al Jazeera America, CNN International, Democracy Now, Foreign Policy Magazine, Global Voices, The Economist, UN News Centre, Vice

I will just be blunt with you; American mainstream news sucks and it caters to the lowest common denominator. I am fed up with the nonstop coverage of Kimye, the missing plane, and Hillary Watch. American cable news doesn’t actually do news anymore; it bloviates – all the time.

I am sick of the so-called “pundits” arguing over issues that don’t really matter. I’ve given up on American mainstream news. In recent years, I have been gravitating away from traditional American news outlets and more towards the ones that actually cover real news. Below is a partial list of news outlets I check out on a regular basis. Since my career floats between journalism and international development, many of these news outlets are from a global perspective.

Democracy Now – I start my mornings everyday with the “War and Peace Report” from one of my journalism heroes Amy Goodman. Democracy Now does in-depth reporting on issues that don’t normally make the cut in most American journalism. When another journalism hero William Worthy died last month, Democracy Now promoted an excellent interview they did with Worthy a few years ago about his ground-breaking career.

Vice – I have been following Vice for sometime now. Their documentaries are amazing and thought-provoking. I actually get excited when a new video is uploaded to their YouTube channel or shown on HBO. Since Vice is not your traditional news outlet, many of their documentaries, as they say, “specialize in exploring uncomfortable truths and going to places we don’t belong.” Vice is best known recently for traveling to North Korea with Dennis Rodman last year, but they also do other fascinating stories about air pollution in China and transsexual sex workers in Brazil. I am a big fan of their web series Fashion Week Internationale and Last Chance High.

Al Jazeera America – Another fine news outlet – great reporting and analysis. It is a shame that it has a really bad public relations problem in the United States. Nonetheless, I can learn more from watching an hour of AJAM than from watching CNN all day. I also tune to this channel to get the alternative perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Global Voices – If you really want to get your news unfiltered, you should turn to this news aggregator of hundreds of bloggers reporting from all corners of the world. Whether its chatter about the Arab Spring, or discussions about Indonesian fashions, stories and news tips that appear on Global Voices first usually turn into big international news items eventually. This is also a good place to get firsthand accounts of breaking news. When the shootings in Nairobi’s Westgate Mall happened last year, I turned to Global Voices to see what Kenyan and other African bloggers on the ground were saying about it.

Foreign Policy Magazine – This is a must-read for all foreign policy junkies. Everyday FP’s website has very engaging articles on many of the hot button international topics today. Being a web designer, I also appreciate the fabulous responsive design of their new website.

The Economist – I mostly go here for my fix of international business news, but sometimes I buy a book because of a review I read here. Some of their irreverent pieces are also good reads.

UN News Centre – This news service is not only good for news on General Assembly during UN Week, but this is also a great resource for year round reports on international development topics.

CNN International – American CNN is garbage. If you are lucky to access the international version, you will see more actual news reporting, and less punditry.

BBC World – Straight, international news – no bias or punditry – every hour, on the hour. During the weekends the network also shows great documentaries.

Other outlets I check out on a regular basis:

IPS News

France24

All Africa

Are there other outlets I should be checking out? Let me know in the comments below or email.

13 June 2014

Prison Is The New Mental Illness

Talia Whyte Media Crazy Eyes, criminal justice, incarceration, mental health, Orange Is The New Black, Uzo Aduba

I am a big fan of Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black. I spent last weekend watching season two in my house instead of enjoying the beautiful summer weather. It’s entertaining and captivating, but what I really like about the show is its social commentary on many serious issues related to the criminal justice system, namely mental health.

One of the breakout stars of OITNB is the ever talented Uzo Aduba (above), who plays Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren. It hasn’t been revealed yet why she is in jail, but it is clear that Crazy Eyes is mentally unstable. She is first introduced to the audience at the beginning of season one when she decided to make Piper Chapman (played by Taylor Schilling) her prison wife.

As the season progressed, it becomes more apparent that she is unpredictable. One day she is reciting Shakespeare; the next day she is urinating on the floor after being rejected by Piper. In season two we learn that Crazy Eyes was adopted by a loving, but pushy white family that made her do things she was afraid to do. Some of her violent tendencies and disdain for her white mother give the impression that she had a major mental breakdown that led to her imprisonment.

Another unstable Litchfield inmate, Lorna Morello, is revealed to be an obsessive stalker in season two who was imprisoned for trying to kill a man she dated once. She even breaks into his house during her driving duties.

This led me to want to learn more about how real mentally ill prisoners are handled. According to the National Alliance on Mental Health, more than half of prison inmates have a history of mental illness. “An estimated 31 percent of women and 14.5 percent of men in jails have a serious mental illness. Seventy percent of youth in the juvenile justice system have a mental health condition.” Most mentally ill inmates are not violent criminals. Most of them leave prison with very limited access to resources and treatment, and, thus, have a higher recidivism rate.

Up until recently, severely mentally ill people were treated in mental hospitals. However, there was a movement to remove the stigma around mental illness by deinstitutionalizing mentally ill people. As a result of not getting the proper care they needed in psychiatric hospitals, mentally ill people are more likely to come into contact with the criminal justice system.

According to a 2006 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, over one million mentally ill people are incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails. The high numbers are creating a strain on prison resources. It costs taxpayers up to US$400 a day per prisoner to just take care of mentally ill inmates simply because extra supervision and medication are needed. Mentally ill inmates are also more likely to be preyed upon in jail, injured in a fight and get into trouble for not following rules.

Even corrections officials are fed up.

“We’ve systematically shut down all the mental health facilities, so the mentally ill have nowhere else to go,” said Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart in a New York Times interview. “We’ve become the de facto mental health hospital.”

While Orange Is The New Black is fictional entertainment, mental illness in our society is a very real problem. The growing number of mass shootings in America that are mostly committed by mentally ill people puts a solid spotlight on the issue. Eventually, we will have to start the larger conversation about how to effectively deal with this problem in a structured, but humane way.