Citations Needed

Citations Needed is now in its sixth season. Over the past five years, we've dropped 170 episodes and over 125 news briefs. We've been joined by hundreds of amazing guests. We've done live shows, AMAs, newsletters and special interviews. Our small team does all the research, writing, recording, editing, pre-production, production, post-production, transcription, promotion and distribution. We love doing the show and we have more great episodes on the way. But first, we're doing our first PBS-style fundraiser, tote bags and all. Since we started, we've always been listener-supported. We've never run ads or had corporate sponsors. It's the way we want it - to stay totally independent. And for that, we rely on you, our listeners, fans and supporters. So, it's finally fundraiser time. Go to patreon.com/citationsneededpodcast to support the show. Next week, new and current supporters will be in the running for official Citations Needed swag - mugs, tote bags, t-shirts and sweatshirts - and nine lucky folks will get copies of recent pod guest Brandi Collins-Dexter's new book, "Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future." But you have to be a subscriber to win stuff! Sign up to support the show by 12am on Monday, October 24 to be eligible. Thanks for all your support. We can't do this without you.

The unique threat and vileness of Donald Trump’s presidency can’t be overstated. Since he took office a year ago, he’s increased civilian deaths in Afghanistan by 50%, increased civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq (surpassing Obama’s death toll in just under 7 months), issued dozens of nuclear threats against North Korea, unraveled the Iran deal, bombed Hezbollah, Iranian and SAA positions in Syria, signed a smash and grab tax bill for billionaires, and issued order after order making life hell for immigrants and other vulnerable communities. But with this unique threat comes a rhetorical habit of "Trumpwashing" that, while perhaps tempting in the short term, will - in the long term - have disastrous effects.   The desire to revamp the image of the pre-Trump Republican party and the United States in general – a concept Ali Abunimah coined “Trumpwashing” - is a favorite rhetorical tic of Russia-obsessed democrats and centrist extremists who’s primary charge is treating the phenomenon of Donald Trump as anomalous from American history, rather than its most pure, and even logical, manifestation. This trope - in addition to denying the realities of the past hundred years of American politics and policy - carries with it pernicious long term effects. We discuss this broader narrative with The Intercept's Jon Schwarz.

According to one 2014 study, 75% of white Americans don’t have any non-white friends. Put another way, white people’s perception of African Americans and other people of color comes primarily from media representations rather than actual interactions. As such, how communities of color are portrayed in the media – from news and opinion pages to movie and TV screens – is tremendously important. Two newly-published reports reveal how these perceptions are consistently distorted to over-emphasize Black and Latinx criminality, center white people in sympathetic portrayals as either victims or heroes, and overwhelmingly lump immigration coverage in with coverage of crime and violence. In this episode, we discuss the bare statistics of how people of color, immigrants, and the poor are shown in media, why it matters, and the consequences of media makers from newsrooms to Hollywood perpetuating destructive stereotypes. We're joined by some of the people behind these reports, Lucy Odigie-Turley of The Opportunity Agenda and Nicole Rodgers of Family Story. *** The Guests Lucy Odigie-Turley is the Opinion and Media Research Coordinator with The Opportunity Agenda. An experienced communication researcher with training in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, Lucy conducts and organizes multi-methods research to assess dominant media narratives and public opinion about poverty, immigration, and criminal justice. Nicole Rodgers is the founder and executive director of Family Story, a communications and research organization that elevates stories of diverse families. A strategist with broad expertise in communications, branding, and research in the public interest, Rodgers is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Role Reboot, an online magazine dedicated to storytelling and social critique from a new generation of Americans rethinking “traditional” family, breaking through stereotypes, and bucking expectations about gender roles. *** The Reports Redefining Sanctuary: Analysis of public attitudes and media coverage of sanctuary jurisdictions and related immigration policies Lucy Odigie-Turley | December 2017 | The Opportunity Agenda A Dangerous Distortion of Our Families: Representations of Families, By Race, In News and Opinion Media Dr. Travis L. Dixon | December 2017 | Color Of Change

Previously on Citations Needed, we discussed the notion of "Lotteryism," that is, the use of the media by large corporations to obscure solidarity in favor of morality tales of "making it."  It's a scam to extract resources from local governments in hopes they can "win" corporate cash, headquarters, facilities, and, of course, the promise of "jobs". Cities around the US and the world debase themselves to compete for the "honor" of hosting the Olympic Games, the World Cup, or just a new sports team - shelling out millions, if not billions, of public funds to build arenas and stadiums that average citizens often can't even afford to set foot in. On this episode we discuss how the media helps sports owners and other corporate forces fleece the public. With guest Dave Zirin, Sports Editor at The Nation. Follow him @EdgeofSports.

In this public News Brief, we recap the ready-made talking points used to smear DNC Gaza protests, detail why they don't add up, and discuss how the best way to avoid the appearance of party infighting is for VP Harris to Simply Do The Right Thing. This News Brief is based on an article published today in In These Times. 

"Western World Observes Press Freedom Day," gloated the United Press International newswire back in 1961. "Trump v. CNN: lawsuit becomes test case on press freedom," declared The Guardian in November 2018. "The 10 Best and Worst Countries for Press Freedom," says US News and World report in 2022. For decades, elite US media and government institutions have touted the sacred notion of freedom of the press. Our media, so we’re told, have the legally enshrined latitude and responsibility to criticize, to interrogate, to expose. According to this same high-minded rhetoric, freedom of the press preserves our media’s integrity and serves as a pillar of US democracy. This all sounds well and good. After all, media’s ability to keep the public informed without constraints or compromise is intrinsically good and essential to any society - that’s kinda the whole point of this show. But there are far more limitations to US-based frameworks of freedom of the press than our media, and our government, let on. Far too often, the concept of press freedom is limited by liberal formulations of negative rights, and even those, selectively applied depending on short term US interests. As the US-backed wholesale destruction of Gaza by Israel enters its 10 month and more than 140 journalists have been killed in the assault –– many deliberately targeted by the Israeli military –– Western elite sanctimony over their alleged commitment to press freedom has been revealed as hollow, its ideological cracks and contradictions apparent for all to see. On this episode, our Season 7 Finale, we examine lofty American conceptions of freedom of the press, especially as it emerged in the middle of the 20th century, looking at how US media organizations are more willing to award rights, sympathy, and security to those journalists and institutions who help prop up the usual State Department line. Our guests are documentarian Kavitha Chekuru and journalist Hoda Osman.

In this public News Brief, we discuss a new, detailed media survey by Zach Siegel that shows how news outlets mindlessly parrot police "accidental fentanyl overdoes" misinformation.

In this public News Brief we analyze the new Democratic nominee's "shift in tone" and whether more sophisticated Empathy-Speak and continued appeals to bogus "ceasefire negotiations" signifies a meaningful break from Biden.

"Legalize and Regulate Sports Betting," NBA Commissioner Adam Silver wrote in The New York Times in 2014. "NFL Betting Promos & Bonuses | Top NFL Betting Sites & Offers for Week 9 NFL Odds & More," USA Today offered readers in 2023. "Bookmakers break down NBA, NHL playoffs, big bets," reads a June 2024 Fox Sports headline. It's not an exaggeration to state that, since its legalization in 2018, sports betting and other forms of sports gambling have all but taken over American sports media. Increasingly, over the last six years, leading sources on sports news, including ESPN, Fox Sports, CBS, and NBC, have signed multi-million and billion-dollar agreements with major players in the sports betting industry, and launched suites of gambling-themed verticals, podcasts, and series designed to urge viewers and listeners to keep placing their bets, no matter the social costs. These media platforms claim to reason that, amid a shifting media landscape where cable channels struggle to adapt to the streaming era and legacy newspapers hemorrhage advertising revenue, partnerships with sports gambling companies help keep them afloat. But what does it mean when sports media are beholden to betting companies? Given the predatory nature of the industry, and the clear conflict of interest of sports media also being gambling pushers, what are the social and political costs to shifting sports from an admittedly already very flawed entertainment business, to a widespread peddler of increasingly unsustainable and gimmicky gambling opportunities? On this episode, we examine how sports media in the U.S. have increasingly embedded themselves in the exploding online sports betting industry. We look at the corrosive effect this has on sports coverage, the glaring conflict of interest this generates, and the moral hazards of a media climate (and state and local governments) that welcomes with open arms a regressive tax pushed by a notoriously rapacious and exploitative industry. Our guest is, friend of the show, The Nation's Dave Zirin.

In this live show from July 16 2024, we are joined by Citations Needed Senior Olympics Correspondent Jules Boykoff of The Nation to discuss unrest in France over the upcoming Olympic games, increased athlete activism and unionization, and the fewer and fewer marks willing to buy the IOC's bill of goods.

"How Railroaders Are Killed; Train Crews Grow Careless," read a 1906 syndicated article. "There is a kind of personality who is accident-prone," reported the Kansas City Star in 1944. Amazon's safety programs are "designed to keep its nearly one million warehouse workers worldwide fit and limber," The Seattle Times claimed in 2021.  For well over a century, it’s been standard practice for corporations, and the media more generally– echoing these "information campaigns" – to skirt, defy, or prevent regulations by shifting the burdens of protection and wellness onto relatively powerless workers. Just as corporations have historically shifted blame onto "consumers," as we discussed last week, so too have they shifted blame, and punishment, onto their own workers, at great social cost and much private profit. Of course, workers anywhere must bear some level of personal responsibility in matters of health and safety. But, as regulations have threatened their bottom lines, industries from railroads to retail, bolstered by US media, have seized upon this notion in order to render their workers the ones who bear ultimate responsibility for whether they’re healthy or sick, safe or injured, and in the most extreme cases, whether they live or die. This is the second episode in a two-part series on what we're calling "The Great Neoliberal Burden Shift." Part I discussed how this burden shift harms consumers. On this episode, Part II, we examine this anti-regulatory PR strategy, looking at the past and present of corporate deflection of responsibility, how media enable this subtle – but effective – practice, and discuss how media campaigns and media coverage have let us internalize the pro-corporate effort to off-load responsibility for workplace health and safety from the bosses on to the workers.  This episode was produced in collaboration with Workday Magazine. Our guest is the National Employment Law Project's Anastaia Christman.

“Choose the product best suited for baby,” Nestlé urged in a 1970s baby formula ad. “What size is your carbon footprint?” wondered oil giant BP in 2003. “Texting, music listening put distracted pedestrians at risk,” USA Today announced in 2012. These headlines and ad copy all offer a glimpse into a longstanding strategy among corporations: place the burdens of safety, health, and wellbeing on individuals, in order to deflect responsibility and regulation. Whether in the areas of transportation, climate, or nutrition and food safety, individuals, namely “consumers,” are increasingly expected to assume full responsibility for their own wellbeing, and are blamed, shamed, and punished–or worse, made ill or injured–when they can’t live up to these unrealistic expectations. Sure, everyone must bear some level of personal responsibility in matters of health and safety, obviously. But corporations from Chrysler to Nestlé, in concert with a compliant US media, have taken advantage of this truism to place a disproportionate level of obligation onto the people who work in their warehouses and buy their products. At the same time, they’ve been able to fend off even the most minor of structural changes–say, using less plastic or healthier ingredients–with often dangerous, even deadly, consequences. This is Part I of a two-part series on what we’re calling “The Great Neoliberal Burden Shift,” a process in which corporations deflect blame onto the relatively powerless. On this episode, we examine how corporations have shifted the burdens of liability onto “consumers” and other individuals, examining how the auto, fossil-fuel, and food and beverage industries have orchestrated media campaigns to frame the people they harm, whether directly or indirectly, as responsible for their own misfortunes. Our guest is journalist Jessie Singer. This episode was made in partnership with Workday Magazine.

On this public News Brief, we are joined by author and historian Jeff Schuhrke to discuss labor's response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the history of union support for (and opposition to) U.S.-led war and imperialism, and his upcoming book, Blue-Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor's Global Anticommunist Crusade.

On this Citations Needed Live Show, recorded virtually on May 23, 2024, Adam and Nima discuss recent coverage of the campus protests over the ongoing genocide in Gaza, from the media's habit of pathologizing Zoomers to Biden's condescending implication they're just a foaming hate mob. We were joined by guests Layla Saliba and Jonathan Ben-Menachem.

"Susan Rice examines U.S. foreign policy strategy with The Post's David Ignatius," read the title of a 2016 Washington Post Live conversation. "Key player in war on climate change? The Pentagon," CNN insisted in 2020. "Democrats Need To Learn How To Get Excited About the Center-Left," The Messenger proclaimed in 2023.  These posts were all facilitated, sponsored, or authored by a member of a Democratic-aligned, corporate U.S. think tank. Whether the Center for American Progress, Center for a New American Security, Center for Strategic and International Studies, or any other Washington, DC-based "Center" with a capital C, center-right to center-left think tanks are ubiquitous in major American media and in Democratic policymaking. This might seem unremarkable, even beneficial. Think tanks, after all, purport to be empirical institutions, designed to craft research-based policy proposals. But, given the prevalence of corporate funding in the DC think-tank world, these claims of neutrality contradict the anti-labor and anti-regulation records of major US think tanks, as well as their function as de facto corporate lobbying groups. On this episode, Part II of our two-part series on the relationship between political party officials, media, and the corporate laundering machine, we examine the revolving door between Democratic administrations and corporate and despot-funded think tanks, looking at how those institutions effectively serve as a stomping grounds of business industry influence on everything from climate to labor, healthcare to infrastructure. Our guest is The Intercept's Akela Lacy.

“David Plouffe's advice for 2020,” Axios shared in 2019. “James Carville: 'Stupid wokeness' is a national problem for Democrats,” CNN reported in 2021. “Robert Gibbs, former White House Press Secretary under President Obama, discusses the debt ceiling deal and the latest job numbers,” MSNBC announced in 2023. On a regular basis, news media clue us into the latest prescriptions from so-called Democratic strategists: people who’ve served as advisers, cabinet members, or other high-ranking positions within Democratic presidential administrations, who’ve also gone on to make millions from corporate consultancy and PR. Whether Larry Summers, David Plouffe, or some other cable-news fixture, these figures are consistently trotted out to give a quasi-liberal, professional face to plain old pro-war, anti-Left austerity politics. It’s an obvious conflict of interest. If a presidential alum joins the board or C-suite of Uber or McDonald’s, for example, they shouldn’t be given the authority to weigh in on regulations or labor policy, especially on media platforms that claim to be somewhat left-leaning. If they work for a military contractor-funded “Strategic consultant” firm or, as is sometimes the case, directly for a weapons maker, they shouldn’t be offering talking head opinions on issues of war. But, within US media and politics, there’s a bipartisan, Gentlemen's Agreement not to acknowledge this, let alone condemn it. There’s a taboo against noting this widespread revolving door politics between the private sector, Gulf dictatorships, black box corporate consultancy firms and high institutions of government. Instead, it’s simply accepted that every White House, State Department or Senate job is an audition for a cushy board membership at Amazon, McDonalds, Raytheon, or a shady “consultancy” firm. On today’s episode, we’ll discuss the blurring of lines between Democratic and Republican politics and corporate PR, examining the revolving door between high status government jobs and the consultancy blob, as well as how cable and print news outlets give PR flacks a platform through which to treat horrible policies as just another product to sell. Our guest is the Revolving Door Project's Jeff Hauser, founder and Executive Director of the Revolving Door Project.

“Here's why creating single-payer health care in America is so hard,” explained Harold Pollack in Vox in 2016. “The benefits of climate action…are diffuse and hard to pin down,” shrugged a Foreign Affairs article in 2020. “A nuanced view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” presented Aliza Pilichowski in The Jerusalem Post in 2023. Each of the above is an example of something that can be called "Nuance Trolling": The insistence that some major beneficial development like single-payer healthcare, ending wars and bombing campaigns, or the mitigation, even cessation, of climate change is impossible because the situation is too nuanced, the plan too lacking in detail, the goal too hard to achieve, the public isn’t behind it or some other bad faith “concern” that makes bold action an impossibility. Nuance Trolls present power-serving defeatism as savvy pragmatism, claiming over and over that no good, meaningful change can happen because no version of it will ever work. Nuance and complexity, of course, are real, legitimate things. Political, social, environmental, and economic dynamics often are complicated. But Nuance Trolls abuse this self-evident truism, using it as a mode of analysis designed to weaken  and water down movements for change that seek actual, material solutions to political problems, and instead promoting inaction to ensure the continuation of the already oppressive status quo.  On this episode, we examine the rise of the Nuance Troll and analyze the media’s selective invocation of “nuance” in order to stifle urgent movements for social justice, reducing poverty, curbing climate chaos and ending occupation and war.  Our guest is Natasha Lennard.

In this News Brief, we breakdown the White House's latest attempt to arm and fund Israeli war crimes while looking like helpless. bumbling humanitarians.

In this public News Brief, we discuss Establishment reaction to pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses, from liberal handwringing to police crackdowns to therapy-speak.          

“Sen. Chuck Schumer warns drug dealers are pushing rainbow fentanyl to children,” CBS News cries. “'It's very challenging': Inside the fentanyl fight at the border,” ABC News reports. “The hard-drug decriminalization disaster,” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens laments. In recent years, we’ve been warned about the growing threat of hyperpotent street drugs, particularly opioids. Fentanyl is disguised as Halloween candy to appeal to children. US Border Patrol doesn’t have enough resources to keep up with drug screenings. Efforts to decriminalize drug use and possession are causing chaos and suffering on our streets.  The dangers of drugs like fentanyl are, of course, very real, and concerns about them are certainly legitimate. But too often, media framings don’t reflect genuine concerns. Rather than offering urgent solutions to help those who are truly struggling-like reduced penalties, or stable housing and healthcare–media, alongside policymakers, consistently promote the same old carceral logic of the Nixon-era War on Drugs, turning a true public-health crisis into an opportunity to increase arrests and policing in general. On this episode, we look at the War on Drugs 2.0: This Time It’s Different We Promise, and how, despite lofty liberal rhetoric about how the War on Drugs has been cruel and counterproductive, media and elected officials are doubling down on fear-mongering, stigmatization, and severe prison and punishment.  Our guest is Emily Kaltenbach.