News Brief: How Corporate Media Laid the Groundwork for a Rightwing Incitement Campaign in Minnesota
Citations Needed
Citations Needed
4.8 • 4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this News Brief, we detail how CBS, Fox, WSJ, and NYT promoted an essentialized, overblown narrative on the "Somali Minnesota fraud" story, teeing up a full blown rightwing incitement campaign against Minneapolis's immigrant communities.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to a citations needed news brief. I am Nima Shirazi. I'm Adam Johnson. We do these news briefs in between our regularly scheduled episodes of citations needed. And let me just start by saying, happy new year to everyone. We are still on our little break from our full-length episodes, but they will be coming at you later this month. |
| 0:23.1 | But in the meantime, we are doing some news briefs. |
| 0:25.7 | So to kick off the new year, we are joined by Matthew Cunningham Cook, writer, researcher, and reporter. |
| 0:31.6 | His work can be found in an outlet such as the American prospect, the intercept, Rolling Stone, and the nation. |
| 0:35.9 | He is currently an investigative journalist at the |
| 0:38.0 | Center for Media and Democracy, and he joins us today from Costa Rica. He recently wrote an article |
| 0:43.6 | that was published in partnership with the American Prospect and the Center for Media and Democracy |
| 0:47.2 | came out on December 29th, 2025 last week, and it was headlined, corporate media advances |
| 0:53.9 | conservative narrative about |
| 0:55.3 | Minnesota fraud. And so this story that we want to talk about today and that we're so |
| 1:01.5 | grateful that Matthew is joining us really brings together a lot of threads about racist incitement |
| 1:07.0 | from YouTube influencers that makes its way, kind of influenced by and goaded by the Trump |
| 1:13.1 | administration, obviously, but then creating this kind of loop where then policy follows outrageous |
| 1:19.2 | claims made by certain influencers, such as Chris Rufo or Nick Shirley. |
| 1:24.8 | And we can get into that, but really about racist incitement, specifically |
| 1:28.9 | in this story, about Somali communities in Minnesota. So let's set the table a little bit |
| 1:34.4 | before we get into the conversation with Matthew. In recent months, corporate media from the |
| 1:40.4 | Ellison-owned CBS channels to Murdoch-owned media like Fox News, New York Post, |
| 1:45.3 | The Wall Street Journal, all the way to the New York Times. |
| 1:48.1 | Media have been paying heightened attention to a years-long investigation, years-long allegations, |
| 1:53.4 | and even convictions of fraudulent activity among nonprofits and other organizations |
| 1:59.3 | in the state of Minnesota. |
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