Citations Needed

Citations Needed is a podcast about the intersection of media, PR, and power, hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson.

Episode 200 - The Rise of the War on Drugs 2.0: This Time It's Different, We Promise 03/27/2024

Episode 199: The Golden Age of Crybullyism 03/20/2024

Episode 198: How The Atlantic Magazine Helps Sell Austerity and War to Middlebrow Liberals 03/13/2024

News Brief: Media, Billionaires' Attacks on Homeless People May Pay Off Big at Supreme Court 03/06/2024

Beg-A-Thon Live Show 1-30-24: The Grim Popularity of Rise-And-Grind TikTok #Influencers 02/28/2024

News Brief: How US Media Obscures the Violence of the Generic, Sterile-Sounding "Border Deal" 02/21/2024

Episode 197: The "Human Shields" Canard as Catch-All Colonial Absolution 02/07/2024

Episode 196: Benevolent Billionaire Despotism and US Media’s Softball Treatment of ‘Effective Altruism’ 01/31/2024

News Brief: The ICJ Ruling and the Essentialness of Squishy Western Liberal Support for Genocide 01/26/2024

Episode 195: David Leonhardt and the Elite Consensus Manufacturing Machine 01/24/2024

Beg-A-Thon Announcement Jan 30: The Worst Rise-And-Grind TikTok #Influencers 01/24/2024

News Brief: Quantifying the Media's Selective Humanity in Gaza 01/19/2024

News Brief: 5 Ways US Media Helps Put a 'Humanitarian' Spin on Gaza Ethnic Cleansing 12/14/2023

Episode 194: The "Graying Population" Panic and the 90-Year War on Social Security 12/06/2023

News Brief: Media Adopts Israel's Simplistic 'Hunt for Hamas' Narrative, Providing Cover For Ethnic Cleansing 11/21/2023

Episode 193: How Military Jargon and Cliches Make Mass Death Seem Sterile (Part II) 11/15/2023

Episode 192: How Military Jargon and Cliches Make Mass Death Seem Sterile (Part I) 11/08/2023

Episode 192: How Military Jargon and Cliches Make Mass Death Seem Sterile (Part I) “Israel Called Them ‘Precision’ Strikes. But Civilian Homes Were Hit, Too.,” The New York Times equivocated back in May 2023. “US Military Footprint in Australia Expands to Counter China,” Bloomberg announced in July 2023. “NATO to launch biggest military exercise since Cold War,” the Financial Times reported in September 2023. Far too often, media accept and parrot the terminology of the Pentagon, never pausing to consider how deceptive and pernicious this language may be. War reportage is regularly littered with euphemisms, metaphors, jargon, and esoteric acronyms that obscure the enormity of the warfare and war crimes waged and backed by the US, warping public perceptions of the violence happening throughout the world in service of US empire. Some major news outlets, such as the New York Times, have adopted policies not to use terms like “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a Bush-era phrase used to sanitize the committing, sanctioning and outsourcing of literal torture by the US government. More recently, the BBC has said it will no longer use the term “terrorist,” as it is “a loaded word, which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally.” But, troublingly, many loaded, euphemistic words and phrases remain in the vocabulary of leading news media, painting a woefully inaccurate and incomplete picture of both the past and the current state of US-led and US-backed violence around the world. On this episode, Part I of a two-part series on the language of war, we’ll examine five of the 10 most insidious terms that US media and government officials use to sanitize military aggression worldwide, discussing how journalists, writers, and others in media can use terms that are clearer and more representative of the human stakes of war. Next week, we’ll complete the list of 10 with Part II. Our guests are Maha Hilal and David Vine. /episode/index/show/citationsneeded/id/28558205

Ep 191: How Media's Use of 'The Economy' Flattens Class Conflict 11/01/2023

Live Show 10/30/23: 4 Arguments Against a Gaza Ceasefire and Why They're Bullshit 11/01/2023

Live Show 10/16: Gaza Siege and the Liberal Handwringing Industrial Complex 10/18/2023

News Brief: US Media, Washington Rush Head First into 9/11 2.0 10/11/2023

Ep 190: Why Media Insists the US is "Forced" to Commit Human Rights Abuses 10/04/2023

Ep 190: Why Media Insists the US is "Forced" to Commit Human Rights Abuses "Realities have forced us to remain on diplomatic terms with several dictators," the Pampa Daily News stated in 1958. "U.S. ambassador to the U.N Samantha Power has been forced to look the other way as Saudi Arabia does as it pleases in Yemen," Politico told us in 2016. Biden is being forced to accept the flaws of America's friends," claimed The New York Times earlier this year, 2023. For decades, we've heard the same excuse regarding US foreign policy: 'Our leaders might not agree with the world’s dictatorial, reactionary governments, but they’re forced –– by some unknown geopolitical dark matter of realpolitik –– to support them for some broader, more noble goal.' Strengthening ties with the governments of Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt, Israel, The Philippines, and other countries under right-wing, human-rights-abusing governance might be a bit unpleasant, but it’s the pragmatic thing to do and, therefore, the morally acceptable thing to do. But countries that are not the United States or its allies are never said to be "forced" into carrying out human rights abuses or supporting those that do. They back bombings, ethnic cleansings, the oppression of women for the sport, because they are existentially evil. No outside mysterious entity ever "forces" them to have to make compromises on the altar of "reality." But there is nothing, of course, "forcing" these decisions on our own Western leaders, and in nearly every case, they're simply extensions of preexisting geopolitical relationships, imperialist policies, and arbitrary might-makes-right governance. On this episode, we discuss the media narrative that the U.S. is "forced" to maintain long-beneficial alliances with right-wing regimes, looking at how this suggestion falsely presents the U.S. as an unwilling, but ultimately helpless, participant in repression of human rights around the world. Our guest is author and NYU professor James Peck. /episode/index/show/citationsneeded/id/28223732

Ep 189: PragerU, the 'Product Of His Time' Defense and the White Guilt Amelioration Industrial Complex 09/27/2023

Ep 189: PragerU, the 'Product Of His Time' Defense and the White Guilt Amelioration Industrial Complex "Hitler was a product of his time," historian Kent Gardner told us in 1975, just thirty years after the end of World War II. "Was Frank Rizzo racist, or just a product of his time?" The Philadelphia Inquirer pondered in 2017 about the city's notoriously racist former police commissioner and mayor just 26 years after his death. "Christopher Columbus, no saint, was product of his time," explained a 2013 commentary in the Staten Island Advance. We often hear this sentiment in reference to historical atrocities. Slaveowners, colonizers, genocidal tyrants, and right-wing bigots from decades or centuries past didn't know any better. They were simply responding to the time and place in which they lived — a different time, marked by different social mores, moral standards, and laws. While it's perhaps fair to cite this cliche to explain, rather than justify, awkward song lyrics or offensive language and stereotypes used in movies from decades ago. But it's an entirely different issue with respect to how we venerate and remember the past. Especially since, in the most popular cases, famous people’s bad actions were roundly criticized, at the time. Long popular as a catch-all to hand-wave away the misdeeds of slaveowners, colonizers and war mongers, Increasingly educational movements on the American right––from Ron DeSantis trying to remake history education to conservative propaganda targeting kids like PragerU — this "product of its time" cliché and its close cousin "don't judge the past by the standards of today" is making a bit of comeback, if it ever went away at all. The defensive, superficially appealing cliche is a popular go-to for those who think we shouldn't criticize the supposedly sacrosanct secular deities of our past — from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. But the whole concept operates under a glaring double standard: how can we take pride in and venerate the supposedly good things Americans in history did but ignore and dismiss the bad things? How can we pick and choose our moral inheritance at will? How does the need for us to downplay slavery, colonization, and Jim Crow continue to be such a strong political force? And whose interests does this down-playing serve in 2023? On this episode, we dissect the notion that the reactionary forces of history have just been "products of their time." We'll explore the ways in which this and related concepts are not only inaccurate, but also convenient instruments of right-wing historical revisionism, and how the need to make people feel good about our civic mythology makes for bad history, and even worse politics. Our guest is historian and museum educator Erin Bartram. /episode/index/show/citationsneeded/id/28158917

News Brief: GOP, Corporate Media Attempt to Manufacture Conflict Between Autoworkers and Climate 09/20/2023

Episode 188: How Capital Repackages Substandard Products for the Poor as "Increasing Access" 09/13/2023

News Brief: Attack of the Salt of the Earth Republican Country Music Stars 08/17/2023

Episode 187: Undercover Boss, Uber-Driving CEOs, and the "Empathetic Executive" Schtick 08/02/2023

Episode 186: Nativism in Media (Part III) - IMF, NAFTA and Global Inequality By Design 07/26/2023

Episode 186: Nativism in Media (Part III) - IMF, NAFTA and Global Inequality By Design "The World Bank and its president have been doing an important, constructive job the past five years," announced The Southern Illinoisan in 1973. "IMF assistance [has] put Jamaica well on the road to recovery," reported The Winnipeg Sun in 1982. The Trans-Pacific Partnership “could be a legacy-making achievement” for Barack Obama, The New York Times suggested in 2015. These are the dominant narratives surrounding so-called "development" initiatives, whether structural adjustment loans or "free trade" deals. Agreements like these, we're often told, have been and continue to be essential to the economic maturation and societal improvement of poor countries. Countries that shift from nationalized to privatized industry and land, so called liberalize trade policies, and institute a host of other free-market reforms are destined for greater efficiency, reduced poverty, and that much-coveted "Seat At The Table" in the global economy. But, all too often, this isn't the effect of these initiatives. What we don’t tend to hear about is how economic development "agreements" engineered by wealthy countries like the US — e.g., IMF loans, NAFTA, or the TPP — don't promote, but rather reverse, the development of exploited countries. Media minimize not only these initiatives' destructive effects on economies, labor, and social programs in service of U.S. corporations, but also their relationship to the punitive U.S. immigration system, and their extensive role in mass global displacement. This episode – the last installment of our three-part series on media narratives about immigration (listen to Part I here and Part II here!) – explores the displacing effects of "development" and "free trade" deals, as well as their connection to an increasingly militarized immigration "deterrence" machine, asking why capital is allowed to move freely, but people aren't. Our guest is Dylan Sullivan. /episode/index/show/citationsneeded/id/27572169

Episode 185: Nativism in Media (Part II) - The Artificial Cold War Distinction Between 'Migrants' and 'Refugees' 07/19/2023

Episode 185: Nativism in Media (Part II) - The Artificial Cold War Distinction Between 'Migrants' and 'Refugees' Immigration law should "stop punishing innocent young people brought to the country through no fault of their own by their parents," the Obama White House stated in 2013. "Migrant Caravan Continues North, Defying Mexico and U.S.," The New York Times warned in 2018. "Biden Administration Invites Ordinary Americans to Help Settle Refugees," NPR announced in early 2023. For over a century, U.S. policy and media have distinguished between supposedly different types of immigrants. There are refugees, who are fleeing political persecution, and migrants, who are crossing a border for reasons that aren’t necessarily so noble. There are deserving immigrants, who are upwardly mobile and law-abiding. And there are undeserving immigrants, who are tax-dodging gang members. It may be easy to take this hierarchy of displaced people for granted, as it’s become so commonplace in U.S. immigration discourse. But there’s nothing natural or organic about it. These distinctions––between, for example, "refugee" and "migrant" –– are historically informed by racism, gendered notions of labor and a superficial, ideological distinction between negative and positive rights. The plight of certain immigrants is instrumentalized and prioritized over others, depending on their proximity to contemporary notions of whiteness, their ability to create cheap labor, and their utility to combating the spread of dangerous leftwing ideologies like anarchism and socialism. This episode – Part 2 of our three-part series on media narratives about immigration (listen to Part I here!) – examines the U.S. government's pattern of arbitrarily categorizing displaced people as some version of "good" or "bad." We'll look at how these distinctions are informed by, and often obfuscate, the U.S.'s global relations and imperialist expansion, and how the policies behind these categories turn people seeking safety and stability into geopolitical pawns. Our guest is writer, historian and professor, Dr. Rachel Ida Buff. /episode/index/show/citationsneeded/id/27510666

Episode 184: Nativism in Media (Part I) — How Dehumanization and Militarization Manufactured a “Border Crisis” 07/12/2023

Episode 184: Nativism in Media (Part I) — How Dehumanization and Militarization Manufactured a “Border Crisis” "What one photo from the border tells us about the evolving migrant crisis," The Washington Post reveals. "The U.S. immigration crisis through the eyes of a border town mayor," reports Boston's NPR station. "Everyone can now agree – the US has a border crisis," proclaims CNN. There's a seemingly endless stream of warnings in news media that the US is being met with a "crisis" at the US-Mexico border. This crisis, according to the press—whether it’s called a "border crisis," "migrant crisis," "immigration crisis," or some variant thereof—is the movement of people away from countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and elsewhere, toward the United States. This phenomenon will supposedly distort, strain, and burden the US labor market, social services, housing, and economy in general. But, contrary to media framings, the movement of people isn't per se a "crisis." Nothing is inherently harmful about the movement of human beings from one place to another. The "crisis," instead, is the militarized and inhumane response to the movement of surplus and unwanted populations; it's US policy toward the people, especially from the Global South, who seek refuge here. It's the history of imperialist violence, the existence and enforcement of the border, and the deflection of responsibility away from the US, and onto the dehumanized and demonized asylum seekers. On this episode, part one of a three-part episode on immigration, we explore media's World War Z-conjuring "border crisis" narrative, looking at how it obscures the US’s role in creating the conditions so many people have no choice but to flee; how it reinforces false notions about immigrants and asylum seekers; and how it retcons the wealthiest, most powerful country in world history into an innocent victim, too fragile to support the people in dire need of escaping the wanton violence that very country helped unleash. Our guest is Boston University assistant professor Dr. Heba Gowayed. /episode/index/show/citationsneeded/id/27444678

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