The Deepest Fake News: Establishment Media and the Erasure of the Colonial Present
An original news analysis series from Weave News Editorial Director John Collins
Based on original research conducted under the auspices of the Piskor Faculty Lectureship at St. Lawrence University, this series explores the absence of settler colonialism as an explanatory framework in the coverage provided by three establishment media outlets: the New York Times, CNN, and National Public Radio. The series includes case studies of stories from four sites of ongoing settler colonial projects: Australia, Hawai’i, Palestine, and Canada. (Cover image © Diego López Calvin)
Concepts and Methods
While there are numerous concepts and conceptual frameworks that could be employed usefully in a project such as this one, I have chosen to ground my analysis in a set of four concepts: settler colonialism, myth, ex-nomination, and establishment media.
Case 2: Mauna Kea
The exnomination of settler colonialism here is significant as it leaves an explanatory vacuum which is then filled in a way that is most comfortable for US establishment journalists: with a binary frame, either “protesters” vs. “authorities,” “sacred space” vs. “economic development,” or, even more tendentiously, “science” vs. “culture.”