Citations Needed is a podcast about the intersection of media, PR, and power, hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson.
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Ep 227: The Importance of 'Seriousness,' or Why Palestinians Can't Be Witness to Their Own Genocide (Part II)
"Exclusive Look at Life in War-Ravaged Gaza," reads the title for a CNN interview with correspondent Clarissa Ward. "'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid," report Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg for Ha'aretz. "I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It," argues Omer Bartov in The New York Times. These stories have something in common: they’re vital pieces of journalism about Gaza, or Palestine more broadly, published in Western and Western-aligned outlets. This is, obviously, important. Reporting like this keeps Western audiences informed about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, fortifies sympathetic Westerners’ solidarity with Palestine, and serves as an essential counter to the pro-Israel PR machine powering so much other Western media coverage. But while these pieces have made a splash among their audiences, in many cases, they’re building upon points that Palestinian journalists, writers, and activists had been making weeks, months, even years before. So why is the reporting of Palestinian journalists–especially their reporting on what’s happening within their own country and cities–so often ignored, only to be heeded after it gets the Western stamp of approval? On this episode — our Season 8 finale and also the second part of our two-part series on “The Importance of Seriousness, or Why Palestinians Can’t Be Witness to Their Own Genocide” — we explore the discrepancies in the alleged credibility between Western and Israeli journalists and Palestinian and other Arab journalists, especially when it comes to reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza. We’ll look at how, by Western standards, journalists don’t build legitimacy by being correct, so much as by being in close proximity to the political and media establishments. Our guest is writer and organizer Kaleem Hawa.
Ep 226: The Importance of 'Seriousness,' or Why Palestinians Can't Be Witness to Their Own Genocide (Part I)
“12 UN Relief Works Agency staff members are accused of involvement in Hamas' attack against Israel,” reports NPR. “Details Emerge on U.N. Workers Accused of Aiding Hamas Raid,” announces The New York Times. “Hamas Military Compound Found Beneath U.N. Agency Headquarters in Gaza,” claims The Wall Street Journal. In January 2024—literally on the same day the International Court of Justice deemed Israel was committing “plausible genocide”—a number of sensationalistic headlines broke across U.S. media, namely The Wall Street Journal and New York Times, telling us in 40-point font that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the single most important supplier of food and medical aid in Palestine, was in fact a front for "Hamas." Western audiences were told that, based on “Israeli intelligence”, 12 workers at the agency may have been involved in the attacks on October 7, 2023, and, in another blockbuster claim, that “Around 10% of Palestinian aid agency’s 12,000 staff in Gaza have links to militants, according to intelligence dossier.” Given this history, the logic went, who knows how else the agency might be operating at the behest of Hamas? It would have been a major revelation if there were any evidence to support it. But there wasn’t and the story was later dropped, walked back or ignored by the media. But the damage was done: President Biden quickly defunded UNRWA and Israel criminalized it, helping fast track mass starvation in Gaza. So why did media outlets publish so many breathless and lurid headlines about Israel’s claims without an ounce of independent confirmation? To what extent, if any, have outlets acknowledged their journalistic and moral recklessness? And how has this contributed to the mass starvation, immiseration, and wholesale murder of the population of Gaza? On this episode, Part I of our two-part season finale on “The Importance of Seriousness, or Why Palestinians Can’t Be Witness to Their Own Genocide,” we examine the role of legacy news media in inciting the starvation of millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the racist double standard of what sources and experts can be trusted and the broader incitement campaign against the UN Relief and Works Agency which directly caused today’s mass starvation in Gaza. Our guest is Moureen Kaki, Head of Mission at Glia.
Ep 225: How US Media Frames Democracy that Actually Helps People as 'Buying Votes'
"Student loan forgiveness is a bribe for young voters," shouted Newsweek in 2022. "Harris's call for price controls on groceries is more pandering than policy," declared The Hill in 2024. "Free for all: Democratic socialist’s policy pitches face tough fiscal reality in New York," warned Politico this year. Every time an elected official or political candidate proposes a policy with even the slightest hint of actual populism, U.S. pundits, analysts and alleged experts line up to tell us that it’s just a scheme to "buy votes." Offering student-debt relief is just cheating. Lowering grocery costs is simply pandering. Eliminating public-transit fares is merely bribing voters. These initiatives aren't developed in good faith in order to improve the lives of the public; they're cynical ploys to help a given politician get ahead. We know that some policymakers make promises that they'll never fulfill, or chisel away at robust and universal proposals, or backtrack on bold and transformative ideas. This happens all the time. But all too often, media’s default position is to assert that even the most modest of economically populist proposals are mere strategies to buy votes, revealing grim truths about what our media class seems to think the responsibilities of lawmakers and governments are. On this episode, we examine the media tendency to assume that anything remotely close to populism is somehow cheating, playing the game on "god mode" or "democracy game genie," and ought to be discouraged by Serious People, putting a sinister spin on what is simply Doing Things People Want. Our guest is FAIR's Janine Jackson.
Episode 224: Corporate Self-Regulation and the Fine Art of 'Preempting" Public Outrage
In this episode, we detail the classic PR gambit of corporations anticipating regulation, offering to "self-police," implementing token or superficial reforms, waiting for the outrage to blow over, then going back to business a usual. With guest Timi Iwayemi of Revolving Door Project.
News Brief: ADL, Corporate Media, Dem Elites Manufature "Antisemitism" Scandal to Discipline Mamdani
In this News Brief, we break down recent bad faith attacks on Zohran Mamdani, the ADL's DO YOU CONDEMN extortion racket, and the broader "antisemitism scandal" playbook to derail moderate social democratic policies and any meaningful criticism of Israel.
News Brief: Natural Disaster-izing the Deliberate US-Israeli Starvation Campaign in Gaza
In this News Brief, we are joined by Ashley Bohrer and Ben Teller of Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago to discuss media indifference to the US and Israel-imposed starvation of Palestinians, how sectarianism is central to the ADL's strategy, and why six JVP activists have decided to hunger strike to draw more attention to the Israeli and US-made famine in Gaza.
News Brief: Pundits Speed-Run 15 Months of Iraq War Propaganda for Iran in Five Day
In this News Brief, we break down the insta-talking points to sell war with Iran––from Ticking Time Bomb '24' plots to cherry-picked, dubious anecdotes of Iranians supposedly begging for Israeli bombs.
News Brief: US Media, Top Dems Assist Trump and Israel's Unprovoked Attack on Iran
In this public News Brief, we detail how the NYT, Washington Post, and CNN reinforce every faulty premise of Israel's attack and how top Democrats in Congress and former Harris aides either ignore Trump and Israel's massive escalation or openly support it, showing once again the scope of debate in our politics and media ranges all the way from A to B.
Ep. 223: The Empire Strikes First, Part II — ‘Abundance’ Pablum as Counter to Left Populism
“Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?,” wonders Samuel Moyn in the New York Times. “The Democrats Are Finally Landing on a New Buzzword. It’s Actually Compelling,” argues Slate staff writer Henry Grabar. “Do Democrats Need to Learn How to Build?,” asks Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker. For the past few months, news and editorial rooms have been abuzz with talk about a new, grand vision for the Democratic Party: abundance. Abundance, according to its media promoters—chiefly NYT’s Ezra Klein and The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson—is a political agenda that espouses the creation of more of everything we need: housing, education, jobs, and energy, to name a few examples. To accomplish this, we are told, we must aim to eliminate bureaucratic red tape that has for so long bogged down production, innovation, and capital’s innate capacity and desire to provide a better, more abundant life. It’s an alluring promise—if suspiciously vague and devoid of class politics: obviously, doing more good things is better than doing fewer good things, right? Who can argue with this generic premise? Who wouldn’t want to support an agenda that’s effectively the Do Good Things Agenda? Scratch the surface, however, and what one finds it isn’t just a folky, common sense treatise against red tape, but something more sinister and dishonest, something more slick and shallow. What one gets is a standard entryist strategy that begins with a so-vague-it’s-incontestable hook—illogical or corrupt regulations are bad—the quickly pivots into a Silicon Valley flattering, and often Silicon Valley funded, political agenda, a narrative designed to blame inequality and our objectively broken political system on too much regulation and “bureaucracy” rather than there being too much power in the hands of an elite few. What one gets, in other words, is a counter to left populism. What one gets is the latest attempt to reheat neoliberalism as something fresh, innovative and able to excite the voting base. Last week, in Part I of a two-part series we’re calling “The Empire Strikes First,” we discussed the Democrats’ post-2024 apologia, propped up by scapegoats ranging from trans people to “economic headwinds” to Harris actually being too far left. On this episode, Part II of the series, we explore what comes next: the 2028 Democratic strategy and the so-called abundance agenda that is increasingly shaping it. We’ll examine how Democratic media influencers and policymakers use lofty, seemingly progressive rhetoric to rehabilitate and re-sell the same old neoliberal deregulation, privatization, and austerity narrative that got us here in the first place, and ensure that no left-wing movement—that could, god forbid, require a meaningful change in the party—get in their way. Our guests are the Revolving Door Project's Kenny Stancil and Henry Burke.
Ep 222 - The Empire Strikes First Part I: Party Elites Who Lost to Trump (Twice) Blame Everyone But Themselves
In Ep. 222, "The Empire Strikes First Part I: Party Elites Who Lost to Trump (Twice) Blame Everyone But Themselves," we detail how our media allows the same party flacks who got the Dems into this mess, control over the narrative of how to get them out. With guest UC-Berkeley professor Jake Grumbach.
Episode 221: Anti-Science Mugging on the Right and the Ascent of American Anti-Intellectualism
In this episode we detail demagogues' favorite faux populist schtick of taking scientific studies out of context and mocking them, often with help from mainstream media. with guest Brenda Ekwurzel, director of climate science for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
News Brief: NPR Asks Starving Palestinian Living On Rubble to Denounce Hamas, Co-Sign His Own Ethnic Cleansing
In this News Brief, we we break down an object lesson in racist US-Israeli national security state toadyism, double standards, and runaway condescension.
News Brief: Baltimore Uprising 10 Years on: PR Co-option vs Genuine Reform
In this News Brief we are joined by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis of The Real News Network to discuss their new documentary, "Freddie Gray: A Decade of Struggle" about the lessons, pitfalls and genuine reforms stemming from the 2015 Baltimore Uprisings. You can watch the documentary here: therealnews.com/freddie-gray-the-…ng-10-years-later
Episode 220: The Power of Thought-Terminating Bad Guy Labels
"American Extremists Aiding Radicals Across Border," trumpeted the Detroit Free Press in 1919. "707 Illegal Aliens Arrested in Checkpoint Crackdown," reported the Los Angeles Times in 1987. "87 Bronx gang members responsible for nine years of murders and drug-dealing charged in largest takedown in NYC history," announced the New York Daily News in 2016. "'Top secret' Hamas documents show that terrorists intentionally targeted elementary schools and a youth center," claimed NBC News in 2023. Each of these headlines includes a label for a certain type of Bad Guy. Whether it’s the "Extremist," the "Illegal Alien," the "Gang Member," or the "Terrorist," these terms—and their cousins—seek to exceptionalize the alleged transgressions of their targets, separate them from both the law and history and dehumanize them, all while priming media audiences for crueler laws, harsher policing, longer incarceration and sometimes even extrajudicial punishment. The terms, of course, don’t have clear, universally accepted definitions—nor are they supposed to—their use is often heavily racialized and, by their very nature, subject to the whims and ideologies of the Security State and the media doing its bidding. What effects, then, do these Bad Guy Labels have on public perceptions? How do they serve to foreclose critical thinking about who is deemed inside the bounds of due process and humanization and who is categorically an other in urgent need of disappearing and punishment? On this episode, we examine four thought-terminating Bad Guy labels, analyze their origins, why they rose to prominence and explain how they are selectively evoked in order to turn off people’s brains and open up space for quick and cruel state violence. Our guest is attorney and author Alec Karakatsanis.
Ep 219: How Elites Concern Troll 'Waste' to Gut Social Welfare and Divide the Working Class
"Poverty plan hit for fraud, waste," reported the Associated Press in 1966. "Study says government waste is unbelievable,” insisted United Press International in 1983. "Beneath Trump’s Chaotic Spending Freeze: An Idea That Crosses Party Lines," announced The New York Times in January of this year. It’s an argument that dates back decades, even centuries: Government is bloated, spending wastefully, and enabling widespread fraud and abuse. The only solution to this waste, fraud, and abuse is to root it out. Cutting salaries, personnel, or entire programs or agencies, it follows, will streamline government bodies, saving millions to billions of dollars. But who gets to decide what’s “wasteful” in the first place? How are these concepts routinely racialized? What effect does it have on a public dependent on social programs and essential government services like safety inspections? And why should governments be expected to “save” money, when their job—at least in theory— isn’t to make money in the first place, but—again in theory—improve the welfare of its citizens? On this episode, we detail the past and present of the “waste, fraud, and abuse” framing, looking at how it’s long been used to justify the degradation of essential social programs; mischaracterize governments as businesses; and weaken protections for workers, renters, and everyone else who isn’t a capital-owning member of the elite. Our guest is Death Panel's Beatrice Adler-Bolton.