Citations Needed

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**Citations Needed**

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

Latest Episodes:

Episode 56: How The Media Learned to Worry About War Without Ever Opposing It Nov 07, 2018

Show notes

"Bush didn't send enough Troops."

"Trump needs authorization from Congress before launching a war."

"Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories are not helpful."

We hear these liberal objections to war and occupation all the time. On the surface, they sound opposed to injustice—and maybe sometimes are—but what if, more often than not, they nitpick process, protocol, and procedure without ever offering substantive, existential critiques of American war-making and military destruction. Their function, primarily, is to give the appearance of dissent where none really exists.

In spycraft, the term "limited hangout" is defined as a "public relations or propaganda technique that involves the release of previously hidden information in order to prevent a greater exposure of more important details." Just the same, this limited opposition to war, or pseudo-opposition, serves as a way of superficially opposing war or imperialism or military occupation without the mess of actually taking a stand against it.

From the invasion of Iraq to the Israeli occupation of Palestine to the boundary-less and boundless perma-war on terror, this pseudo-opposition has taken many forms over the years. In this episode, we discuss the sophisticated nature of this technique, how one can differentiate between good faith nuance and concern-trolling, and how discrediting pseudo-opposition can open space for real conversations about the true consequences of empire.

We are joined by Nora Barrows-Friedman, associate editor at The Electronic Intifada.

Episode 55: Jake Tapper and the Art of Faux-Adversarialism Oct 31, 2018

Show notes

Jake Tapper's career trajectory is an object lesson in how to succeed in corporate media. The formula generally goes like this: go after the fringes of the left and the right––but mostly the left. Never offend any traditional centers of power. Mug. Constantly mug for the camera. Hitch your brand to "The Troops" And-always, always––attack from the neoconservative right. As previously discussed in our John McCain News Brief, the issue with John McCain was less so about the man himself but what he represented: posturing National Security state jingoism at the heart of America's civic religion; a phony notion of self-importance that animates US militarism. Just the same, this week's episode is less about Tapper and more about what he represents: the dead center of American corporate media; hollow, faux-adversarialism marked by military worship; less interested in original reporting than serving as a bouncer for Club Acceptable Opinion. We are joined on this week's episode by journalist Natasha Lennard.

Episode 54: Local 'Crime' Reporting as Police Stenography Oct 17, 2018

Show notes

"The suspect fled on foot, police said. Call this number if you have any information." "The incident took place at the 1200 block of Grove." "Police say." "Police sources are telling us." "Suspect is thought to be armed and dangerous."

We've all heard this type of Official Copspeak before. The local press dutifully informs us about "suspects" and "gang members" and "burglars." They're infiltrating our neighborhoods, rampaging through our streets, climbing in our windows. The police, of course, are just doing their part to keep us safe. Local media and community-based message boards they pander to read like police blotters. "Dial 1-800-985-TIPS for your friendly neighborhood detective!"

But what if publishing police department press releases isn't really journalism, but rather free public relations for an already extremely powerful, routinely violent, often corrupt and deeply conflicted institution? What if the genre of so-called "crime' reporting is inherently reactionary and the whole enterprise of how we think about "crime" needs to be deconstructed and reconsidered?

On this week's episode, we discuss why local "crime" reporting widely suffers from racist tabloidism and what overworked and under-resourced journalists can do to gather information from sources that don't wear badges.

We are joined by Chicago-based activists Sharlyn Grace and Malcolm London.

Episode 53: The Increasingly Dull Edge of 'Hypocrisy' Takedowns Oct 10, 2018

Show notes

Trump says he opposed the war in Iraq, but in fact said he supported it in an obscure interview in 2004. McCain was for the tax cuts before he was against them. Republicans say they're Christians, yet support a philandering liar. Hypocrisy takedowns – which reached peak popularity during the heyday of The Daily Show – have been the bread and butter of liberal discourse for years.

Gawker founder Nick Denton famously said that "Hypocrisy was the only modern sin"––doctrine-driven ideologies had been replaced by the nihilistic ersatz ideology of not contradicting oneself. Consistency, even in the service of nothing and in defense of power, was the highest moral achievement.

But as outright lying and contradiction were not only ignored but embraced by Trumpism, this worldview began to lose any remaining purchase. And as the emptiness of this approach grew more stark, a new generation of politically engaged people sought out traditional ideologies based on first principles, on the left this broadly manifested as a resurgence of socialism, which offered an alternative to the self-contained cult of self-satisfaction.

On today's episode, we discuss the limits of hypocrisy-as-critique, when it can still be useful and why never contradicting oneself is often evidence more of cowardice than principle.

Our guest is Roqayah Chamseddine.

Episode 52: Attacks on Affirmative Action and the Commodification of Diversity Oct 03, 2018

Show notes

"Diversity" is a simultaneously important and buzzword-y term beloved by the media, corporations, real estate agents and elite universities. It's something to strive for and take pride in, a symbol of inclusion and tolerance.

While diversity is a noble feature – and something all large systems should strive for – it originally was not supposed to be an ends in-and-of-itself. Diversity, in this vein, has morphed under capitalism into a PR industry, supplanting notions of equity, decolonization and desegregation for something much more sanitized.

The term is now often used as a catch-all for making white people feel better about the schools they go to, businesses they run, neighborhoods they gentrify. It largely exists, in its current iteration, to ameliorate whiteness rather than confront it, allowing for the commodification of the idea while giving existing power structures a glossy patina of liberal race-awareness.

We are joined this week by journalist and author Jeff Chang, Vice President of Narrative, Arts, and Culture at Race Forward.

Episode 51: How 'The West Wing' Poisoned the Liberal Mind Sep 26, 2018

Show notes

Post-Cold War liberal chauvinism knew no better ideological conduit than the hit NBC series The West Wing. Foreign policy was imperial, staffers were self-satisfied, and Serious Democrats fended off radical leftists and made the Tough Choices needed to run a benevolent superpower. The West Wing, created and primarily written by Aaron Sorkin, heavily influenced the politics of dozens of high-status Obama-era liberals. By their own admission, we know it had among its superfans Obama staffers Sam Graham-Felsen and Eric Lesser, Vox founders Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias, The New Statesman's Helen Lewis, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell (who produced and wrote for the show), Democratic party hacks Meredith Shiner and Micah Lasher, and many more. Indeed, it's fair to say anyone under 40 who came up through the ranks of liberal public relations and politics during the Obama years was either directly impacted by The West Wing or, indirectly, by those under its comforting, Starbucks-color-palette worldview. On this week's episode, we discuss how this Sorkinized worldview both informed and reflected prevailing thought in the Democratic Party, promoted smugness as the highest virtue, and––more generally––how ideology is spread through seemingly benign cultural products like schlocky television dramas. We are joined by Toronto-based writer and co-host of the Michael and Us podcast Luke Savage.

Episode 50: Anti-Imperialism and MSNBC-Approved Socialism Sep 19, 2018

Show notes

With recent primary election wins by candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, James Thompson, Julia Salazar and others, the terms "socialist" and "democratic socialist" are everywhere. Media outlets across the political spectrum - from The Washington Post andBusiness Insider to NPR and MSNBC to Jacobin - have rushed to publish explainer articles, demystifying the tenets of socialism and its variations for a mass American audience.

But one thing missing from the bulk of these explainers – many of them written by high-profile Democratic Socialists themselves - is a robust account of foreign policy and the role America's massive imperial footprint would play in any future Democratic Socialist America. Instead, descriptions of socialism stick primarily to domestic issues.

Similarly, the wave of recent democratic socialist explainers are quick to distance their brand of Democratic Party-friendly socialism with the scary brand in the Global South, namely that of Venezuela. Highlighting instead the virtues of white-majority countries like Sweden and Denmark, many socialist whisperers dismiss out of hand the Bolivarian Revolution with the dreaded "authoritarian" label.

In this episode, we discuss the pros and cons of this approach and how to know the difference between good faith critiques of socialist systems in the global south and quick and cheap fetishizing of Scandinavian countries – none of which have had to grapple with the complexities of colonialism.

We are joined by two guests: Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and Shireen Al-Adeimi, assistant professor of education at Michigan State University.

Episode 49: Shifting Media Representations of Abortion (Part II) Sep 12, 2018

Show notes

In the mid-1990s there was a rhetorical and cultural shift on the issue of abortion, namely the result of anti-abortion activists successfully introducing the term "partial birth abortion" into both the media and cultural lexicon.

Major Democrats conceded the language, along with the moral high ground, to the extremist right-wing. They hammered home the message that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare" - signaling that abortion was something to be ashamed of, a barely tolerable abomination.

Eventually, avoiding the issue – largely seen as legally settled – became the preferred tactic of liberal Democrats. But what resulted was a long-term sacrificing of the moral framework surrounding reproductive rights and justice, leading to the place we are now: dozens of state laws effectively preventing access to abortion in large sections of the country and Roe v. Wade under real threat for the first time in 50 years.

This week, we speak with Cait Vaughan of Maine Family Planning.

Episode 48: Shifting Media Representations of Abortion (Part I) Sep 05, 2018

Show notes

From the shame-inducing "safe, legal and rare" framing of the 1990s to normalizing efforts like the #ShoutYourAbortion campaign and an uptick in abortion plot lines in mainstream television, dialogue surrounding abortion has shifted in recent years from one of apologism and soft-pedaling to a more frank, straightforward approach. These efforts, largely animated by Republican attacks on reproductive health since the Tea Party wave of 2010, seek to take back the moral high ground on an issue Democratic Party leaders abdicated 25 years ago.

In this two-part episode, we explore the history of how popular culture and the news have framed the issue of abortion, from the "othering" of those who have abortions to treating the issue like a shameful, seedy affair to an over-reliance in film and TV on twist endings to avoid addressing the issue head-on.

We are joined this week by Dr. Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist and researcher at the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.

News Brief: Don't Let the Media Erase McCain's Far Right Legacy Aug 26, 2018

Show notes

There must be an account for the thousands of dead Arabs and Asians McCain helped create. On this News Brief we attempt to do that.

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