LEVER WEEKLY: Shadowbanning An Inconvenient Truth

Friends:

This is Lever Weekly, a recap of our work from the past week. If you only read one email from us all week, this should be it.

Below you will find a breakdown of our reporting, podcasts, videos, and live events — a feature open to all subscribers. Following that, we are providing paid subscribers with an original column, written by a member of The Lever, connecting the dots on our coverage to deliver important takeaways.

In this week’s column, exclusively for paid subscribers, David Sirota explores how corporate media is finally covering the Ohio derailment disaster — but leaving out the essential context about how we got here.

(Scroll to the bottom to read the column.)

Stuff The Lever Reported This Week:

• Buttigieg Pressured Into Promising To Do His Job — After pretending to be powerless, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is now talking tough and promising new railroad safety rules.

• Enviros Threaten Legal Action If Buttigieg Doesn’t Act — Organizations demand the Transportation Secretary revisit a repealed brake safety rule, or else they “will consider taking legal action.”

• After Norfolk Southern Support, DeWine Says No Disaster In East Palestine — Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s track record and rail company links raise questions about his ability to hold the rail giant accountable for the derailment disaster.

• Private Equity’s Senator Gets Big Payout — Retiring Sen. Pat Toomey is joining Apollo Global Management after helping enrich the private equity industry during his time in Congress.

• The Left Bank’s Warning About Wall Street — An obscure rare book scandal offers a cautionary tale about public pensions’ growing reliance on private equity.

Stuff To Watch & Listen To:

• LEVER TIME: How The Lever Forced Buttigieg To Do His Job — Producer Frank sits down with Julia Rock, Rebecca Burns, and Matthew Cunningham-Cook for an in-depth conversation about their groundbreaking reporting on the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

• MVC: Triangle of Sadness (w/ Carla Marie Davis) — On this week’s MVC, the group discusses the 2022 Palme d'Or winner, Triangle of Sadness.

• LEVER TIME PREMIUM: On The Ground In East Palestine (w/ John Russell) — Producer Frank speaks with independent journalist John Russell, who has been on the ground in East Palestine speaking with residents, railroad workers, and rail union leaders.

• LEVER LIVE: Rep. Chris Deluzio On The East Palestine Train Derailment — A live interview with U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.), who is demanding accountability from Norfolk Southern.

Our Latest Media Appearances:

• Stay Free with Russell Brand: Julia Rock & Dan Cohen (Ohio & The New Fauci)

• The Katie Halper Show: Biden's Crushing Of Strike Caused Ohio Train Derailment

• The Stream (on Al Jazeera): How Can The US Avoid A Repeat Of The Ohio Rail Disaster?

• Here & Now (on WBUR): Buttigieg Calls On Rail Companies To Improve Safety, But Industry Has Resisted

• The Big Story: Inside The Toxic Train Derailment In Ohio

• The Dan LeBatard Show: David Sirota On East Palestine

• On Point (on WBUR): What The Ohio Train Derailment Tells Us About Rail Safety In The U.S.

• Flashpoints Daily (on KPFA): Flashpoints – February 21, 2023

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Lever Leaders provide us with our highest level of support and score additional perks in return.  Each week, we highlight folks who’ve taken that step, and the reasons they say they’ve done so.

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• Steve Dumond: “Go get them guys. Make them sweat!”

• Christopher L: “The level of investigative journalism that The Lever provides is incredibly important for the labor movement and ensuring the powerful are held accountable (ex. Ohio Train derailment & train worker rights).”

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• Roy Lehman: “With both political teams and mainstream media corrupted by money in politics, an independent voice led by modern day muckraker David Sirota in the image of Lincoln Steffens is required reading.”

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Shadowbanning An Inconvenient Truth

By David Sirota

When The Lever’s rail safety reporting suddenly dominated the national news cycle, I thought we had found an elusive glitch in the matrix — a story so powerful, so rooted in indisputable evidence, and so widely amplified that its most important facts could not be manipulated or suppressed.

This, I imagined, could be a rare moment in which politicians, corporate media, and people of all political persuasions would have to fess up to all the truths that we reported — the inconvenient truths exposing both political parties’ complicity in the deregulation of America’s railroads.

Two weeks later, I’m gratified that our reporting has successfully shamed and forced regulators into finally promising to improve policy. It will take more pressure to compel them to follow through, but this is a huge achievement — and proof that our subscribers’ support of our work is making a real impact.

However, even after our team landed a full-page New York Times op-ed and our work was featured on major media platforms, my dream of an inflection point of honesty has proven to be wishful thinking.

The partisan ghost still haunts the media machine, compelling it to tell only liberals’ preferred Donald Trump story, and avoid the Barack Obama cautionary tale — one that is just as significant, but might offend liberal audiences conditioned to reward only pro-Democrat, anti-Republican content.