News That Deserves More Mainstream Media Attention; California’s Big Plastic Bag Fail: Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Feb. 12, 2024

Indy Digest: Feb. 12, 2024

Mainstream news sources have been giving short shrift to some pretty gosh-darned important stories—so I am going to give some pixels to those stories today.

The first involves the shocking number of civilian casualties in Gaza. Here’s a tweet from The Associated Press today. It says: “BREAKING: Health officials say more than 12,300 Palestinian minors have been killed in Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza.”

I am very, very glad the AP is covering this; The Associated Press has been one of the better media sources at covering the hell that’s taking in place in Gaza due to Israel’s military actions. However … when you click on the actual story, the headline is: “Israeli forces rescue 2 hostages in dramatic Gaza raid that killed at least 67 Palestinians.”

Here are that story’s first three paragraphs as of now:

Israeli forces rescued two hostages early Monday, storming a heavily guarded apartment in a densely packed town in the Gaza Strip as airstrikes carried out to cover the raid killed more than 60 Palestinians, including women and children.

The rescue in Rafah briefly lifted the spirits of Israelis shaken by the plight of the dozens of hostages held by Hamas. The nation is still reeling from the militant group’s cross-border raid last year that started the war.

The overnight bombardment brought devastation in Rafah, which is packed with some 1.4 million people, most of whom fled their homes elsewhere in Gaza to escape fighting. Associated Press footage showed a large area of flattened houses, tattered tents and lines of bloodied bodies brought into nearby hospitals.

OK. The next two paragraphs:

More than 12,300 Palestinian children and young teens have been killed in the conflict, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Monday. About 8,400 women were also among those killed. That means children and young teens make up about 43% of the dead, and women and minors together make up three quarters.

The ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, provided the breakdown at the request of the AP. Israel claims to have killed about 10,000 Hamas fighters but has not provided evidence.

The AP is clearly making some judgements regarding what it is emphasizing. It leads with the rescue of two hostages before mentioning the deaths of “more than 60 Palestinians, including women and children,” and then—a few paragraphs later—finally gets to the part mentioned in that tweet, that the Gaza Health Ministry says 12,300 Palestinian children and young teens have been killed in the conflict.

Did you know that nearly 30,000 Palestinians living in Gaza have been killed since the start of the war, with more than 12,000 of those “kids and young teens”? And another 67,000 have been injured? You probably didn’t.

The second downplayed story involves an absolutely shocking thing former President Donald Trump said over the weekend. Here’s a piece from the Mississippi Free Press:

Former President Donald Trump would encourage Russia to attack U.S. allies whom he claims do not contribute enough to NATO defense costs, he told a crowd of supporters to cheers at a South Carolina rally on Saturday.

“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want,” the Republican frontrunner for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination said.

Dismantling the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has long been a goal of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who orchestrated efforts in 2016 to help Trump and hurt Clinton’s electoral prospects. Members of NATO—which includes the U.S., Canada and 29 European countries—pledge to defend any other nation that gets attacked.

I’m linking to the Mississippi Free Press here for a reason. While most bigger mainstream media sources did report on Trump’s remarks, some did so belatedly, or downplayed the story below other topics. This downplay caused some smaller media sources, like the Mississippi Free Press, to feel like they had to step in and fill the gap.

Today, there have been a fair number of news stories about Europe’s alarm over Trump’s remarks, because they certainly got people’s attention over there … even they didn’t get the attention of, say, The New York Times’ front page the day after Trump said them, The New York Times did catch up and give the piece front-page ink one day later—but only after a whole lot of much-deserved criticism.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• California’s effort to decrease plastic-bag waste has not worked out so well. The Los Angeles Times reports: “It was a decade ago when California became the first state in the nation to ban single-use plastic bags, ushering in a wave of anti-plastic legislation from coast to coast. But in the years after California seemingly kicked its plastic grocery sack habit, material recovery facilities and environmental activists noticed a peculiar trend: Plastic bag waste by weight was increasing to unprecedented levels. … Even accounting for an increase in population, the number rose from 4.08 tons per 1,000 people in 2014 to 5.89 tons per 1,000 people in 2022. The problem, it turns out, was a section of the law that allowed grocery stores and large retailers to provide thicker, heavier-weight plastic bags to customers for the price of a dime. … ‘Basically what happened is that plastic bag companies invented these thicker plastic bags that technically meet that definition of reusable but are clearly not being reused and don’t look like reusable bags and which just circumvent the law’s intent,’ said Jenn Engstrom, CALPIRG’S state director.” Lawmakers have proposed legislation to update the law and eliminate that loophole.

• Yet another glitch with the federal financial-aid application for college students is blocking students who are U.S. citizens, but whose parents are not citizens, from completing the application. Our partners at CalMatters report on why this is especially troublesome in California: “For many of these college applicants, it’s a crisis not only preventing them from applying for federal grants and loans, but also from applying for free tuition at the University of California and California State University or partial tuition waivers at private colleges in the state. The deadline for that state aid is April 2 for new students, a date set by California law that only the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom can change. … When parents without Social Security numbers try to fill out the application on behalf of their children, they get an error message that blocks them from continuing. Without the parental information, students cannot complete the FAFSA. California State University’s director of financial aid, Noelia Gonzalez, wrote in an email that U.S. Department of Education officials told the university that they ‘expect to have a fix prior to April 2.‘”

• Well, here’s a concerning headline from Capital and Main: “More Than Half of Californians Skip or Delay Medical Care Due to Cost.” Some details: “For most California residents, and the vast majority of the state’s lower income workers, the cost of health insurance has been running away from them for years. That’s hardly news to anyone who has actually used their health policy in the recent past. But the health care squeeze is largely incremental. … A new report from the UC Berkeley Labor Center puts those costs in context, and the result is breathtaking. In short, Californians have been absolutely hammered by insurers and providers over the past 20 years. As a result, many of the state’s residents either don’t use their health coverage even though they need it, or they go into debt trying to pay for the insurance and the medical costs their plans don’t cover. ‘I think we know that health care is unaffordable, but to see how much that problem has gotten worse in 20 years is really something,’ said Miranda Dietz, a policy research specialist at the center and co-author of the report. ‘The costs are taking up more and more of a family’s budget.’”

• Today’s recall news involves … refrigerators! USA Today reports: “More than 383,000 Frigidaire Branded Side by Side Refrigerators with Slim Ice Buckets have been recalled following reports of plastic in the ice bucket. The recalled appliances have an ice bucket assembly component that could break and cause plastic pieces to fall into the ice bucket. That poses ‘choking and laceration hazards to consumers if the pieces are dispensed out of the ice bucket,’ the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said in an announcement on Thursday. Electrolux, Frigidaire’s parent company, received 343 reports of plastic breaking off into the ice buckets. There have been two reports of consumers being cut or hurt by the plastic after it was dispensed.” Click here to learn more specifics.

• If you’ve ever wanted to read a deep dive into data explaining why Republicans are more likely to suffer from hearing loss—yes, really—The Washington Post has you covered. In all seriousness, this article is filled with all sorts of I-did-not-see-that-coming moments, all backed up by stats from a huge study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Here’s a tidbit: “(Hearing loss) is more common in areas with lower population density and smaller minority populations, which … feels right given that White Americans are more than twice as likely to lose at least some hearing as their Black and Hispanic friends. Given those associations, we weren’t surprised to see that areas with higher hearing loss tend to have higher rates of Republican support. … So, OK, hearing loss appears to be yet another manifestation of the urban-rural divide. At most, we figured these trends merited perhaps a brief mention in one of the Department’s voluminous reports on other fresher topics. But then we read the paper again and noticed a line we hadn’t clocked before: ‘those living in rural areas experience higher rates of (hearing loss), perhaps due to potential noise exposure from outdoor work and recreation such as forestry, all-terrain vehicles, and recreational firearms.’”

• And finally … have you ever been caught texting when you should have been paying attention? If you’re nodding “yes” right now, you have something in common with a now-former Oklahoma judge. The Associated Press reports: “An Oklahoma judge agreed to step down Friday after she was caught sending hundreds of texts from the bench while overseeing a murder trial in the killing of a 2-year-old boy, including messages that mocked prosecutors and were sprinkled with emojis. District Judge Traci Soderstrom also agreed to not seek judicial office again in Oklahoma under a proposed settlement agreement filed with the Oklahoma Court on the Judiciary. She had faced removal from the bench over accusations that included gross neglect of duty, oppression in office, lack of proper temperament and failure to supervise her office. Soderstrom had been scheduled to go on trial in a special court starting Monday.”

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