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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 Transactional Dog-Whistle Politics of the Term "Taxpayer"
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On this News Brief, we discuss the ubiquitous weaponization of the term "taxpayer" in media and politics and how it deliberately smuggles right-wing, transactional and deeply racialized notions of people's relationship with their government into our cultural understanding of taxation, public spending and social services. Our guest is the Law and Po…
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Episode 131: The "Essential Worker" Racket - How 'COVID Hero' Discourse Is Used To Discipline Labor
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"Elon Musk sent a thank-you note to Tesla's workers returning to work," Business Insider squeals. Walmart teams up with UPS to air an ad "thanking essential workers." "Jeff Bezos Just Posted an Open Letter to Amazon Employees About the Coronavirus. Every Smart Business Leader Needs to Read It," insists an article in Inc. Throughout the COVID-19 pan…
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News Brief - Covid in Prisons: No One Cares Until Things Start to Burn
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In this public News Brief we discuss how American media's general indifference to the Covid pandemic ravaging prisons and jails makes "riots" inevitable. Our guest, Patrice Daniels, is an activist currently incarcerated in Illinois state prison in Joliet, IL.
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Episode 130: 'Heartland,' 'Middle America,' and US Media’s Vaguely Nostalgic, Racialized Code for White Grievance
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“We need a president whose vision was shaped by the American Heartland rather than the ineffective Washington politics,” declares presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. “AOC Kills Jobs Middle America Would Love to Have,” proclaims The Washington Examiner. Amy Klobuchar insists she’s a “voice from the heartland,” while The Washington Post’s Jennifer…
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News Brief: Finance Media's GameStop Meltdown and the Thin Moral Pretexts of Wall Street's Game Rigging
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In this News Brief we break down L'Affaire GameStop and what lessons can be gleaned from about psychological gamesmanship of the stock market and finance media's goofy, reverse-engineered moral pretext for being outraged by #GME. With guest Jacob Silverman.
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Episode 129 - Vaccine Apartheid: US Media's Uncritical Adoption of Racist "Intellectual Property" Dogma
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“The COVID-19 vaccine is ripe for the blackmarket,” warns an NBC News opinion piece. “Iran-linked hackers recently targeted coronavirus drugmaker Gilead,” reports Reuters. “Hackers ‘try to steal COVID vaccine secrets in intellectual property war,’” blares a Guardian headline. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged and pharmaceutical companies raced to deve…
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Episode 128 - The “Healing” Con: How Warm and Fuzzy Appeals for "Unity" Are Used to Protect Power
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"Biden Calls For Hope And Healing In Speech," NPR reports. "Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot calls for return to Sept. 11 unity," writes The Chicago Tribune. Following the 2014 Ferguson protests, a CNN headline read, "Obama: Now is the time for peace, healing." "Filmmaker Ken Burns aims for healing with new documentary about Vietnam War," the San Diego…
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News Brief: US Media Pathologically Incapable of Criticizing MAGA Mobs Without Evoking Racist Cliches About "Third World"
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Following today's mob violence at the U.S. capitol building, we break down how, once again, American media would rather ignore homegrown currents of white supremacist vigilantism and their buddy buddy relationship with law enforcement and focus instead on how an anomalous President Trump makes us like those horrible poor people of the Global South.…
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Episode 127: Democratic Leadership's Predictable Scapegoating of 'Defund the Police'
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"Sen. Mark Warner said progressives' calls to 'defund the police' were in part to blame for Democratic losses in the House in a cycle when the party was expected to gain seats," The Hill tells us. "How ’defund the police' sabotaged Democrats on Election Day," Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune writes."'Defund the police’ is killing our party, and…
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Episode 126: Obama-Era Media Failures We Shouldn’t Rehash Under Biden (Part II)
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This is the second installment of our scoldy, buzzkill, two-part episode on Obama-era media failures we should be on the look out for as the Biden administration takes office. On this episode, we examine five more tropes that, sadly, are already being resurrected. Our guest is Roberto Lovato, author of Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, G…
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News Brief: The ICE and Pentagon-Bloating Vagueness of the "Climate Change is a National Security Issue" Mantra
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In light of John Kerry's new "national security" climate role, we follow up on Episode 122 by reading policy papers published by John Kerry's think tank. Hint: they want more money for the Pentagon, ICE, and Border Patrol.
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Ep. 125: Obama-Era Media Failures We Shouldn't Rehash Under Biden (Part I)
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President-elect Joe Biden has promised what he calls a return to "decency" and "unity," and American media has broadly characterized his victory over Donald Trump as, in the words of New York Times columnist Charles Blow, "The Third Term of the Obama Presidency." Many of the same holdovers — Samantha Power, Antony Blinken, Michèle Flournoy, Bob McD…
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Episode 124: Mental Health During A Pandemic: How US Media Spins Societal Failures Into Personal Self-Help Journeys
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A CNN headline from this past summer read: “Mental health during coronavirus: Tips for processing your feelings.” Psychology Today gave us an article on “Coping With Loneliness During a Pandemic,” while the Washington Post presents, “A guide to taking care of yourself during the pandemic.” Everywhere we’ve turned over the past 9 months, American me…
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News Brief: It's Not a "Fall From Grace", This Has Always Been Who Giuliani Was
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In this News Brief, we talk with journalist Ashoka Jegroo about Giuliani's long history of racism, white liberal New Yorkers providing cover for his carceral sociopathy because they liked the results, and the pathetic, inevitable final chapter of the former New York mayor.
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Episode 123: How Liberal Meta-Demands for "Investigations" and "Studies" Are Used to Silence Activists
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"Joe Biden Calls For ‘Immediate, Full And Transparent Investigation’ Into Jacob Blake Shooting," Forbes reports. "Obama Fraud Task Force Takes on the Big Banks," Bloomberg News proclaims. "Democratic lawmakers call for vote on bill to study reparations," announces CNN. It seems that every time there’s a movement toward righting a historical or curr…
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News Brief - Review: Netflix's Charles Murray-Themed Hallmark Film 'Hillbilly Elegy'
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In this Sight Unseen film review, we recap the ideological currents and industry backers of J.D. Vance's white trash whisperer shtick and how it blames everyone for Appalachian poverty but corporations and Republicans.
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News Brief - Post Election Spin: Trump Blames CIA for Loss, Corporate House Dems Blame BLM
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In this post-election News Brief we discuss the various modes of cope and responsibility skirting.
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Episode 122: Climate Chaos (Part II) - The Militarization of Liberals' Climate Change Response
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Pete Buttigieg wants to create “a Senior Climate Security role in the Secretary of Defense’s office responsible for managing climate security risks.” Elizabeth Warren insists “our military can help lead the fight in combating climate change.” And the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis tells us our primary goal should be to “Co…
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Episode 121 - Climate Chaos (Part I): How the Gap Between Liberal Rhetoric & Policy Promotes Denialism
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“Climate change is real.” “Three words — science, science, and science.” “From coastal towns to rural farms to urban centers, climate change poses an existential threat.” “Now it is time to put our coalition to work and pass bold climate solutions.” These are just some of the many statements — all of them true — that the U.S. public routinely hears…
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News Brief - Hollywood and the Pentagon: A Follow Up Conversation with Oliver Stone
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In this News Brief follow up to Episode 115 on Hollywood's symbiotic relationship with the Pentagon and CIA, we spoke with director and screenwriter Oliver Stone about his experience making mainstream motion pictures about often taboo subjects like the American imperialism and war crimes.
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Episode 120: 30 Under 30 Lists and the Problem with Our Youth-Obsessed 'Success' Narratives
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Every year, a series of highly anticipated listicles of "successful" and "influential" people hailed for their accomplishments surface in corporate media. Forbes reveals the most successful 30 people under the age of 30, and Fortune hails the most successful 40 Under 40. Meanwhile, other business outlets like TechCrunch, Fast Company and CNBC seek …
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Episode 119: How the Right Shaped Pop Country Music
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By now, it's largely taken for granted that country music is a racialized signifier, interchangeable with right-wing politics. And it’s not such an unreasonable generalization: the political currents of twanged and drawled patriotic paeans like Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry Americ…
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Episode 118: The Snitch Economy: How Rating Apps and Tipping Pit Working People Against Each Other
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Waiting tables. Bartending. Hospitality, food delivery, beauty salons, rideshare driving. The service industry, as anyone who has worked in it knows all too well, is notorious for relying on tipping to undercut employee wages and deputize individual customers to determine how much money a worker should be able to take home. Amid increasing recognit…
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Episode 117: The Always 'Lagging' U.S. War Machine
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"U.S. military tactics falling behind those of adversaries, Pentagon official warns," The Guardian proclaims. "Russian Propaganda Is Pervasive, and America Is Behind the Power Curve in Countering It," reads a report from the RAND Corporation. "U.S. falling behind in new space race, says CIA's former head of science and tech," cautions CBS News. U.S…
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News Brief: Detailing the Connection Between Gentrification and Racist Police Harassment
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One point brought up in Episode 116, highlighting the connection between real estate interests and over-policing, solicited a lot of feedback from listeners. In this News Brief, we wanted to expand upon this topic by interviewing an academic source we cited in the episode: assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Denver Brende…
