On the Media (WNYC Studios)

Episode: Big Tech is Silencing the ICE Watchers. Plus, Why a Scholar of Antifa Fled the Country.
Aired: October 17, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of On the Media explores two urgent, intertwined threats to free speech and government transparency in the US: the efforts by government and major tech platforms to silence community documentation of ICE enforcement, and the escalation of harassment campaigns against scholars of antifascism. Through in-depth reporting and first-person accounts, hosts Brooke Gladstone and Michael Olinger dissect the hidden and overt mechanisms of information control, the challenges faced by those who document and resist state power, and the cultural consequences of media narratives around crime and dissent.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Government & Big Tech Crackdown on ICE Monitoring Apps

With Joseph Cox (404 Media) [00:08–15:16]

• Community efforts to document ICE:
  Apps like Eyesup and Red Dot aggregate user-shot videos and news reports showing ICE activity. Their aim is to create a public, verified record of law enforcement abuses, not to provide live tracking of officers (contrary to what authorities allege).

  • "Eyes up provided a simple map interface where users could just find those videos." — Joseph Cox [02:20]

• Tech platforms as gatekeepers:
  Under DOJ pressure, Apple and Google have begun removing these apps. Apple frames the removals as protecting "targeted groups" (here, ICE officials), which Joseph Cox notes blurs the line between vulnerable populations and state actors. Google and Facebook follow suit after Apple.

  • "Apple said that this app violates its guidelines...including 'other targeted groups,' which in this case appears to be a reference to ICE officials." — Joseph Cox [04:00]
  • "So Apple's basically saying by our terms of service, ICE is like a protected group. That's what it is." — Michael Olinger [04:30]

• From documentation to historical record:
  The impact of these apps is less about immediate accountability and more about archiving evidence for the future, given the persistent lack of consequences for abusive ICE agents.

  • "The whole point of Eyes Up is...to create and preserve a historical record of evidence. So in the future, maybe there can be accountability." — Joseph Cox [10:48]

• First Amendment implications:
  Despite the critical public interest, tech company actions are shaped more by informal government pressure than by clear legal precedent, raising significant free speech concerns.

  • "All this is doing is [Attorney General] Pam Bondi is demanding or else. And to be fair, Apple and Google remove apps for violating various terms...It's just that usually that's not in response to direct pressure from DOJ." — Joseph Cox [09:00]

• Counter-narratives by DHS:
  As grassroots videos circulate, DHS/ICE counter by posting their own action-packed, stylized raid footage on official accounts, controlling the narrative to attract recruits and justify their actions.

  • "They control the music, the pacing, the edit, the narrative that goes around it..." — Joseph Cox [13:23]

Memorable Moments:

• Portland protest: A person in a giraffe suit is arrested for singing an anti-ICE song [05:35]; videos like this highlight both protest creativity and the risks people face for recording public law enforcement.
• "If you hate brown people and you are a Nazi, come on ICE leave." — Protester in Portland (song) [05:57]

2. Harassment of Antifa Researchers Amid Political Manipulation

With Mark Bray (Rutgers University) [16:50–32:46]

• The political manufactured threat of antifa: Following Trump’s declaration of antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, right-wing activists and media create a climate of fear and suspicion, targeting leftwing academics — notably Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.

  • "Shortly after Fox News published a very critical article about me, then the death threats started." — Mark Bray [19:36]

• Personal fallout and state surveillance:
  Bray and his family receive doxxing threats; when attempting to leave the US, their airline reservation is mysteriously canceled and Bray is detained and questioned by federal agents.

  • "We were at Newark Airport...when United Airlines personnel basically said that someone had canceled...the reservation for me, my wife, and our two children." — Mark Bray [20:22]
  • "I was searched and interrogated by Federal Customs agents for an hour, despite not being accused of any crimes by any law enforcement agency." — Mark Bray [20:42]

• The evolution and misrepresentation of antifa:
  Bray distinguishes between antifa as a broad historic tradition and the militant antifascism espoused by particular groups, emphasizing that the US right’s portrayal serves political, not factual, ends.

  • "Antifascism is like an umbrella term for all different forms of resistance to fascism..." — Mark Bray [22:42]

• Extremist tactics, media complicity, academic freedom:
  The episode examines how far-right campaigns use manufactured crises to launch attacks on academic freedom, and how mainstream liberals sometimes unwittingly aid the erasure of antifascist work by dismissing its reality.

  • "We're stuck between two extremes. On the one hand, Trump is saying that it's basically like a Fortune 500 company with its own private army...On the other end, there are pundits who...say it doesn't exist. There are actually antifa groups." — Mark Bray [28:44]

• The hazards of going public:
  Bray describes the impossible choice between retreating for personal safety or "going loud"—increasing public attention to deter attacks and assert agency.

  • "You can obviously try to kind of just get out of the spotlight and disappear, or if you go loud, you're gonna basically bring thousands more eyeballs...And so I went that way...because I was angry and I wanted to fight back in the way that I know how to fight back." — Mark Bray [31:08]

Memorable Moment:

• Bray’s children sense the danger and comfort him, highlighting the emotional toll:
  "My youngest gave me this little toy monkey and said, here, Daddy, this will make you feel safe. He didn't know what was happening, but he knew something was wrong." — Mark Bray [32:03]

3. True Crime’s Narrative Power—and Its Cost

With John J. Lennon (incarcerated writer) [34:17–52:26]

• Personal experience with true crime media:
  John J. Lennon, serving 28 years to life, recounts being the subject of a CNN true crime episode that "flattened" his reality, emphasizing media’s tendency to exploit both victims and perpetrators for spectacle.

  • "You have this idea...of how the interview went. And then watching the show...it would cut to these reenactments of somebody playing me killing my friend...It was quite different from the context of the conversation I had, which was a vulnerable one." — John J. Lennon [36:35]

• True crime as cultural anesthetic:
  Lennon argues that mass consumption of true crime stories conditions the public to support harsh punishment and "forget the humanity beneath the violence."

  • "Many of these people going to sleep to murder, they wake up grateful for all the prisons." — John J. Lennon [38:46]

• An inside view:
  Lennon profiles fellow prisoners in his book The Tragedy of True: Four Guilty Men and the Stories that Define Us, showing the complexity and self-reflection often absent in mainstream portrayals. He details their backgrounds, struggles, and attempts at accountability.

  • "I use my own crime to do that. Only illuminating the stark spots that most writers and most storytellers can't go." — John J. Lennon [43:17]
  • "Milton held the hands of Ray, the younger brother of one of the priests that he killed, and his wife, and looked into their eyes and apologized for what he did." — John J. Lennon [44:13]

• The narrative iron cage:
  Lennon discusses how media caricature can become a second sentence—how people with pasts are repeatedly defined and confined by sensational coverage:

  • "What does it mean to live a life with the media telling you who you are?" — John J. Lennon [46:09]

• Writing as reckoning and resistance:
  Lennon details his work mentoring and editing other men in prison, promoting honest self-examination and challenging the transactional nature of both media and the justice system.

  • "One of the prerequisites is coming to terms with what you did on the page. Readers are not going to want to read what you have to say about prison if you don't level it." — John J. Lennon [49:58]
  • "The story starts within you." — John J. Lennon [52:16]

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On tech companies and ICE:
  "Apple said that this app violates its guidelines...including 'other targeted groups'...which appears to be...ICE officials." — Joseph Cox [04:00–04:30]

• On documenting for posterity:
  "It is not trying to provide immediate accountability, it's trying to create and preserve a historical record of evidence. So in the future, maybe there can be accountability." — Joseph Cox [10:48]

• On anti-fascist activism and narrative warfare:
  "Authoritarian and fascist leaders always look for a crisis or an emergency to take advantage of. And if there is no real one, they'll try to make it up themselves." — Mark Bray [26:49]

• On being defined by true crime:
  "What does it mean to live a life with the media telling you who you are?" — John J. Lennon [46:09] "True crime is the antithesis of the notion that we're more than our crimes..." — Brooke Gladstone quoting Lennon's book [38:53]

• On facing one’s own culpability through writing:
  "Readers are not going to want to read what you have to say about prison if you don't level it." — John J. Lennon [49:58] "The story starts within you." — John J. Lennon [52:16]

Flow of the Episode

1. [00:08–15:16] Joseph Cox details the attack on ICE documentation apps and the chilling implications for transparency and local activism.
2. [16:50–32:46] Mark Bray describes the lived experience of academic harassment, state–media disinformation campaigns around antifa, and the broader battle over dissent and narrative in the US.
3. [34:17–52:26] John J. Lennon explores how true crime storytelling distorts lives inside and outside of prison, with stories from his new book and his own journey from subject to author and mentor.

Conclusion

This episode threads together the consequences—personal, societal, and democratic—of who gets to tell the story, and who controls the media through which it is told. It spotlights a landscape where grassroots resistance is hobbled not by law but by the collusion of state and platform, and where both the surveilled and the chroniclers become targets in a narrative war waged on all sides.

For further reading and authors' works, see:

• Joseph Cox (404 Media)
• Mark Bray, Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook
• John J. Lennon, The Tragedy of True: Four Guilty Men and the Stories that Define Us