S6: Responding To Week Of Smear Attacks Against Rania

Unauthorized Disclosure

In a special episode, hosts Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola stand up to a slew of smear attacks against Rania for speaking out on the attempted coup in Venezuela. Particularly, journalists like Michael Weiss of The Daily Beast, Yashar Ali of Huffington Post, and Casey Michel of Think Progress attacked members of Congress who interacted with her tweets on Venezuela. They labeled her a "Russian propagandist" to further isolate and make them denounce her. Rania's Wikipedia page was defaced around January 28. It was brought to editors' attention. A slanderous sentence was removed from the top of her page and then re-inserted further down. It was then locked making it difficult for anyone to remove what was added. She had to wait for nearly a half of a day before it was deleted altogether, and her page still going through maintenance so it conforms with Wikipedia's standards and does not attack her reputation. This has lasted for about a week. In the words of Kevin, this sustained campaign of attacks are an effort to silence a strong and effective woman journalist who is unapologetic in her anti-imperial views. She agitated for members of Congress to come out against President Donald Trump's support for a coup in Venezuela, and it worked because multiple representatives responded to her favorably. That deeply upset those in media who despise her. We spend nearly an hour going through several of the attacks. Most importantly, we give Rania space to deal with what she has endured. Nobody is going to shut Rania down on "Unauthorized Disclosure."