The Anger Industrial Complex – the interconnected relationship between economics, business and online vitriol – has plagued the United States since the 2016 presidential election (and arguably even before), driving our societal fault lines deeper, post after post on social media. Jessica Buchleitner joins multi-award-winning journalist and documentarian Michele Mitchell to discuss its origins and how economic pressures facing journalism today are contributing to its amplification. Packed with decades of media experience and knowledge, they delve into how the shift from traditional news to infotainment, and then to social media has affected public discourse since the mid 1990s while emphasizing the importance of mobilizing community coalitions as an antidote to paralyzing cynicism, frustration, and outright online rage complaining.
About Michele Mitchell
Michele Mitchell’s award-winning career as a human rights filmmaker includes Haiti: Where Did the Money Go? (airing on PBS over 1,100 times) and the feature documentary The Uncondemned, which had a US theatrical release in 40 cities, has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, is translated into six languages, and has continuously toured the world since 2017. She is the recipient of the National Edward R. Murrow for Best Television Documentary, Gracie Award for Best Investigative Documentary, CINE Golden Eagle and CINE Special Jury Award for Best Investigative Documentary, Gracie Award for Best Investigative Feature, Brizzolara Family Foundation Award for Peace & Resolution, Rabinowitz Award for Social Justice, among others. As an investigative correspondent for Bill Moyers on “NOW” (PBS), her critically acclaimed work spanned political corruption, economic issues and modern-day indentured servitude. As political anchor at CNN Headline News, she focused on US elections and post-9/11 legislative issues regarding terrorism and corruption. An Ochberg Fellow at Columbia University’s Dart Center for Trauma in Journalism, Michele’s human rights work includes an investigative stint with the USC Shoah Foundation to gather evidentiary testimonials from Rohingya survivors fleeing Myanmar. Her podcast The Cocktail Conversations is focused on unraveling the “anger industrial complex” in the United States (with a little help from wine!). She is the author of three books and began her career on Capitol Hill. Currently in production on her new nonfiction feature OG* (*Right Side of History, Wrong Side of the Law), she is strongly against the Oxford comma and her new favorite word to drop in conversation is “kakistocracy.”