Citations Needed is a podcast about the intersection of media, PR, and power, hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson.
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News Brief: The Casual Soft Eugenics of Self-Help "Friendscaping" Content
In this public News Brief, we discuss a recent advice column in the New York Times advocating upwardly mobile professionals dump their fat and depressed friends and how it's part of a much broader trend of pop sociology repackaging cruelty and soft eugenics as "science-driven" self improvement.
Episode 138: Thought-Terminating Enemy Epithets (Part II)
"Oligarch". "Hardliner". "Regime". All common terms seen in Anglo-American media when describing politicians and power structures in official villain states; yet - mysteriously absent when talking about ourselves or our allies. This Part II of our Citations Needed countdown of the Top 10 "Enemy Epithets," derisive descriptors that are deployed to smear enemies without any symmetrical usage for U.S. officials, policy or imperial partners. Designed to conjure up nasty images of despotism and oppression, often pandering to Orientalized prejudice, these epithets demand people shut off their brains and have the label do the thinking for them. We are joined again by FAIR's Janine Jackson and Jim Naureckas.
Episode 137: Thought-Terminating Enemy Epithets (Part I)
"Hand-picked successor", "firebrand", "proxy" — In Anglo-American media, there are certain Enemy Epithets that are reserved only for Official Enemy States of United States and their leaders, which are rarely, if ever, used to refer to the United States itself or its allies, despite these countries featuring many of the same qualities being described. Over two years ago, in a two-part episode entitled "Laundering Imperial Violence Through Anodyne Foreign Policy-Speak" (Episodes 70 and 71), we explored the euphemistic way American media discusses manifestly violent or coercive US policy and military action. Words like “engagement”, “surgical strikes”, “muscular foreign policy”, “crippling sanctions” obscure the damage being unleashed by our military and economic extortion regime. Just as pleasant sounding, sanitized foreign policy speak masks the violence of US empire, highly loaded pejorative labels are used to describe otherwise banal doings of government or are employed selectively to make enemies seem uniquely sinister, while American allies who exhibit similar features are given a far more pleasant descriptor. This and next week, we're going to lay out the Top 10 Enemies Epithets — derisive descriptors that are inconsistently applied to smear enemies without any symmetrical usage stateside, designed to conjure up nasty images of despotism and oppression, often pandering to racialized and Oriental prejudice and, above all, asking people to shut off our brains and have the label do the thinking for them.
News Brief: "Organized Crime" "Shoplifting Epidemic" Panic Hits San Francisco Media
In this public News Brief, we take a critical look at a recent wave of sensationalist "organized crime" "shoplifting epidemic" stories in national and Bay Area media and how they fit into a resurgent "Tough on Crime" narrative. We are joined by Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, Director of Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco.
Episode 136: The 'Ungrateful Athlete': Anti-Black, Anti-Labor Currents in Sports Media
"A good, hard working kid." "A 4.0 student." "He's asking for too much money." "They get paid to play a child’s game." "He shows up and does his work and never complains." Despite the fact that the concept of paying college athletes has gained some mainstream support in recent years, much of the ideological scaffolding that exists to justify their lack of fair compensation is still very popular and widespread in sports punditry and writing, AM radio and play-by-play broadcasts. Scrutinizing GPAs and work ethic, talking about how "kids" are "becoming men," racialized claims of lazy or ungrateful players, and wildly different double standards for players and owners for when they attempt to maximize their economic interests all prop up a system that, despite liberal hand-wringing and box checking concern for not paying players at the highest levels, still relies on withholding compensation from college athletes for their labor. The stakes go beyond just sports. This conservative cultural contempt for athletes as a whole mirrors and informs that of other workers as well. Whenever, say, nurses organize for better pay and safer working conditions or, in the era of COVID, teachers unions seek to continue virtual rather than in-person classes for the sake of public health, they’re dismissed as self-interested and domineering. On this episode, we parse the racist, anti-labor characterization of athletes in media, how they are both scary threatening men and tiny children whose should be paid and breakdown how this topic has cultural implications to other labor struggles, by informing and reinforcing anti-union tropes across the board Our guest is Penn State professor Amira Rose Davis, co-host of Burn It All Down.
News Brief: Debunking the 5 Most Common Anti-Palestinian Talking Points
In this public News Brief, we breakdown the most common anti-Palestinian tropes and why they're based on sophistry, ignorance, racism, or some combination of all three.
News Brief: How US Media Helped Trump and USAID Weaponize "Aid" During 2019 Venezuela Coup Attempt
In this public News Brief, we recap a recent internal USAID report that details the group's role in Trump's 2019 Venezuela coup attempt, American media cheering on the obvious PR op like trained seals, and break down how Biden's weaponization of "aid" will likely not be very different. With guest Alexander Main of CEPR.
News Brief: On Palestine, It's Time for Progressives to Stop Reading From the Same Outrage Script & Support BDS
In this News Brief, we breakdown the entirely predictable cycle of media coverage, liberal handwringing, vague "progressive" outrage, and why the most recent "clashes" should compel nominal progressive leaders like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to formally support BDS.
News Brief: On Biden's TRIPS Waiver Support, Substance Matters More than Headlines
In this public News Brief, we dissect recent news that the Biden admin backs a TRIPS waiver at the WTO and why the ultimate terms of the agreement matter more than splashy headlines.
News Brief: #VaxLive is a PR Scam So Those Causing Vaccine Inequity Can Pose as Saviors of Global Poor
In this News Brief, we breakdown the anti-TRIPS waiver corporate and ideological forces behind the seemingly good-hearted #VaxLive concert on May 8th. Namely, the Gates Foundation, Johnson and Johnson and a who's who of global leaders working to prevent the production of cheap generic vaccines for the global south.
Episode 135: The “Labor Shortage” Ruse: How Capital Invents Staffing Crises to Bust Unions and Depress Wages
"Trucking Shortage: Drivers Aren't Always In It For The Long Haul," NPR tells us. "The U.S. Is Running Out of Nurses," reports The Atlantic. "There's A Nationwide STEM Teacher Shortage. Will It Cost Us The Next Einstein?" Forbes laments. '"'The Future Depends on Teachers,' PSA launched targeting teachers amid shortage," notes a local FOX affiliate. Every few weeks, we hear about an essential industry suffering from a critical "labor shortage" –– nurses, truck drivers, software engineers, teachers, construction. According to corporate trade groups and their media mouthpieces, these industries simply can’t find trained workers to fill their ranks. But a closer examination of "worker shortage" claims reveals that there’s very rarely an actual worker shortage –– what there is, time and again, is more accurately described as a "pay shortage": industries not wanting to provide adequate compensation or safe work conditions for the available labor market that is perfectly willing and ready to work. Instead of a "worker shortage," there's a “"not hyper liquidity in the labor market" problem for capital –– the perfectly capable and trained workers industries do have are not easily replaceable, potentially or already unionized, and making demands of capital those industries simply don't like. In an effort to increase recruiting of new potential employees, promote legislation that loosens licensing or health and safety standards, and reinforce media-ready memes that American workers are lazy and greedy, industry lobbying groups constantly whine about "labor shortages," knowing the media will mindlessly repeat these claims without any skepticism or curiosity as to why they're reporting on the exact same "labor shortages" every year for 40 years. Our guest is CEPR's Kevin Cashman.
Episode 134: The 80-Year PR Campaign that Killed Universal Healthcare
Almost every wealthy country in the world has some type of universal healthcare system--except for the United States. With over 170 million of its citizens left to fend for themselves in a sprawling and complex maze of Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, tax credits, child care subsidies, co-pays, deductibles and cost-sharing, the U.S. has not only the largest uninsured population, but also the most expensive system on Earth per capita. Why America doesn’t have a universal healthcare system has historically been explained away with a reductionist mix of pathologizing and circular reasoning. "America hates big government," "we love choice," "Americans distrust anything that reeks of socialism." And while this is true in some limited sense, it avoids the bigger question of why has American so-called "democracy" rejected the numerous proposals to enact a single payer or other forms of universal healthcare? While there may be some innate Protestant work ethic or rugged individual mentality at work here, there’s also been a decades-long multimillion dollar campaign funded by big business, doctor, pharmaceutical and hospital industry interests, and the insurance industry to convince the public to reject universal public healthcare. Indeed, if Americans were somehow intractably opposed to the notion––if they were hardwired to reject socialized medicine––these forces would never have had to spend so much money in the first place. On this episode, we explore the 80-year long campaign by capital to convince you to not support universal health programs, how these campaigns have historically fear-mongered against Communists, immigrants and African Americans, who benefits from a precarious, employer-controlled healthcare insurance system, and how this propaganda war on the American mind is anything but over. Our guest is Ben Palmquist, Director of the Health Care and Economic Democracy Program at Partners for Dignity and Rights.
Episode 133: The Art of Fake-Ending Wars
"Yemen war: Joe Biden ends support for operations in foreign policy reset," reports the BBC. "Trump: US will be out of Afghanistan by Christmas 2020," cheered Military Times. "Trump Orders Withdrawal of U.S. Troops From Northern Syria," the New York Times told us. For decades, the United States has very often appeared to have "ended" wars that do not, in fact, end at all. Open-ended jargon like "residual counter terror forces," "Vietnamization," "military advisors," along with deliberately ambiguous timetables, process criticisms––all are used to confuse the average media consumer. America's politicians know the American public broadly dislikes war and empire––and thus wants to see it restrained––but these same politicians don't really want to end wars so they have a frequent PR problem: How do you make it look like you’re ending a war or occupation without really doing so? To solve this conundrum, American political leaders have perfected the art of fake-ending a war. Which is to say, announcing a war is going to end, typically around election time, only to––once the headlines make a big splash––backtrack, obfuscate, claim the "situation on the ground has changed" or the military involvement will only be in a "limited" or "defensive" capacity, shuffle troops around or find other thin pretexts to continue the war or occupation. In this episode, we discuss the United States' history of fake-ending wars, who these pronouncements are meant to please, why troops levels are often impossible to know, and why so many of our so-called "wars" are not really wars at all, but military occupations that are never really meant to end. Our guest is Shireen Al-Adeimi, assistant professor at Michigan State University.
News Brief: Big Pharma, Bill Gates Spin Against Generic Vaccines for Global South as Biden a No Show
In this public News Brief, we break down the PR campaign against activists who want intellectual property rules suspended so that poor countries can manufacture their own generic vaccines. With guest Peter Maybarduk of Public Citizen.
News Brief: Austin Activists Combat Anti-Homeless Stigma in 'Prop B' Media Fight
In this public News Brief, we catch up with Austin activists Seneca Savoie and Chris Harris as they fight far right demagoguery, rich liberal NIMBY fence-sitting, and stigmatizing local media coverage of Travis County's unhoused population.