Copaganda and the Crisis of Truth: Davey D in Conversation with Alec Karakatsanis

KPFA - Hard Knock Radio

In this powerful and timely episode of Hard Knock Radio, host Davey D sits down with civil rights attorney, writer, and abolitionist Alec Karakatsanis for an unflinching conversation about his groundbreaking new book, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News. Karakatsanis, founder of Civil Rights Corps and a long-time advocate against mass incarceration and structural injustice, joins us to pull back the curtain on how law enforcement agencies use media to shape public perception, distract from systemic abuses, and distort our understanding of crime, safety, and justice.

Drawing on years of legal advocacy and investigative work, Karakatsanis details how the police strategically push narratives that center individual crimes—often out of context or exaggerated—while obscuring the routine violence, constitutional violations, and economic exploitation that are part of the everyday machinery of policing in the U.S. He discusses how journalists, sometimes unwittingly and other times through cultivated relationships with police PR teams, amplify these stories without asking the critical questions that might reveal the deeper structural forces at play.

Davey D and Karakatsanis explore real-world examples of how “copaganda” plays out in newsrooms and headlines—from viral “feel-good” videos of officers doing charity work to fear-mongering coverage of so-called crime waves. They also break down the impact this media manipulation has on public policy, jury decisions, election outcomes, and marginalized communities—particularly Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income populations.

The conversation dives into the broader implications of media complicity in upholding carceral logic and offers strategies for both journalists and consumers of news to resist and challenge these narratives. Karakatsanis also speaks to the urgency of building alternative systems of safety and care, and why interrogating the stories we’re told about crime is crucial to building a just society.

Whether you’re a journalist, organizer, policymaker, or someone trying to make sense of what justice really looks like, this episode is a vital listen. Tune in for an honest, eye-opening dialogue that unpacks one of the most insidious tools of modern policing—and what we can do to dismantle it.

Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson.

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