Afleveringen
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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.
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"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.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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âDavid Plouffe's advice for 2020,â Axios shared in 2019. âJames Carville: 'Stupid wokeness' is a national problem for Democrats,â CNN reported in 2021. âRobert Gibbs, former White House Press Secretary under President Obama, discusses the debt ceiling deal and the latest job numbers,â MSNBC announced in 2023.
On a regular basis, news media clue us into the latest prescriptions from so-called Democratic strategists: people whoâve served as advisers, cabinet members, or other high-ranking positions within Democratic presidential administrations, whoâve 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.
Itâs an obvious conflict of interest. If a presidential alum joins the board or C-suite of Uber or McDonaldâs, for example, they shouldnât 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 âStrategic consultantâ firm or, as is sometimes the case, directly for a weapons maker, they shouldnât be offering talking head opinions on issues of war.
But, within US media and politics, thereâs a bipartisan, Gentlemen's Agreement not to acknowledge this, let alone condemn it. Thereâs 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, itâs 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 âconsultancyâ firm.
On todayâs episode, weâll 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.
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âHere's why creating single-payer health care in America is so hard,â explained Harold Pollack in Vox in 2016. âThe benefits of climate actionâŠare diffuse and hard to pin down,â shrugged a Foreign Affairs article in 2020. âA nuanced view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,â 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 isnât behind it or some other bad faith âconcernâ 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 mediaâs selective invocation of ânuanceâ in order to stifle urgent movements for social justice, reducing poverty, curbing climate chaos and ending occupation and war.
Our guest is Natasha Lennard.
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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.
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âSen. Chuck Schumer warns drug dealers are pushing rainbow fentanyl to children,â CBS News cries. â'It's very challenging': Inside the fentanyl fight at the border,â ABC News reports. âThe hard-drug decriminalization disaster,â New York Times columnist Bret Stephens laments.
In recent years, weâve 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 doesnât 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 donât reflect genuine concerns. Rather than offering urgent solutions to help those who are truly struggling-like reduced penalties, or stable housing and healthcareâmedia, 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 Itâs 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. -
"Ex-officer Amber Guyger testifies in wrong-apartment murder trial: 'I was scared to death,'" a " story reported in 2019. "Starbucks Files Complaints with Labor Board, Accuses Union Organizers of Bullying and Harassment," reported Food & Wine Magazine in April 2022. "Labour MPs fear for safety as pro-Palestine protesters target offices," The Guardianwarned in November 2023.
Within the last decade, weâve seen the rise of a phenomenon weâll refer to as âelite crybullying," in which people in power engage in political manipulation in order to portray themselves as victims. Routinely, we hear that armed American police fear for their safety around unarmed civilians, lawmakers feel for the their safety after there's a sit in protest and corporate executives are being unfairly intimated by union organizers.
It's a sleazy, manipulative tactic that not only flattens, but flips, power dynamics. By claiming to have been bullied or traumatized by those who oppose them, wealthy and influential figures suddenly transform themselves from victimizers into victims. Meanwhile, by this same perverse logic, they characterize their actual victimsâbe they organizing workers and peace activists, who merely seek to stand up for themselves, or people killed by military and police violence â as victimizers.
On this episode, we explore the rise of ruling-class crybullyism, how elites increasingly traffic in the language of anti-bullying and therapy-speak to indemnify themselves from criticism, examine how cynical distortions of power relations recast the upholders of colonialism, labor abuses, and police violence as the oppressed, and the people who dare to object as the oppressors, all in an effort to silence dissent from the justifiably angry masses.
Our guests are Mari Cohen and Saree Makdisi. -
âTeachers Unions: Still a Huge Obstacle to Reform.â âCountering Iranâs Menacing Persian Gulf Navy.â âOpen Everything: The time to end pandemic restrictions is now.â âThe Good Republicansâ Last Standâ
Each of these headlines comes from the same magazine: The Atlantic. For 167 years, the publication has enjoyed elite stature in the American literary and journalistic worlds, publishing such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Barack Obama, and serving as a coveted professional destination for writers throughout the country. Founded by a number of esteemed 19th century authors, the magazine has long prided itself on its cultural and political depth.
But beneath all of its high-minded rhetoric about democracy, free expression, fearlessness, and American ideals is a vehicle of center-right pablum, designed to launder reactionary opinions for a liberal-leaning audience. As the employer of warmongers like Jeffrey Goldberg, Anne Applebaum, and David Frum, under the ownership of a Silicon Valley-tied investment firm hellbent on destroying teachersâ unions, The Atlantic, time and time again, proves a far cry from the truth-pursuing, consensus-disrupting outlet it claims to be.
On this episode, we dive into the history and ideology of The Atlantic, examining the currents of middlebrow conservatism, left-punching, and deference to boring business owners that have run through the magazine throughout its nearly 17 decades of operation.Our guest is Jon Schwarz.
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On this News Brief, we are joined by Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center to discuss the upcoming Johnson v. Grants Pass case, which will be heard by the Supreme Court of the United States on April 22nd 2024. This is the most significant case about the rights of homeless people in decades, determining whether cities can make it a crime to be homeless, to sleep outside, even when there is no safe shelter available to them. We discuss the boarder media narratives that got us to this cruel, irrational point.
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"Viet Cong Use Children as Human Shields," the Associated Press alleged in 1967. "'Civilian casualty?" That's a gray area," Alan Dershowitz argued in The Los Angeles Times in 2006. "We canât ignore the truth that Hamas uses human shields,â"Jason Willick wrote in The Washington Post in 2023.
For more than five decades, military forces with overwhelming firepower, including the U.S., Israel, and others have accused enemy combatants of using âhuman shields.â According to these allegations, militant resistance throughout the world, from the Vietnamese National Liberation Front to Palestinian militants, herd civilians in front of them, or hide in hospitals, religious institutions, and other public places, in order to evade attacks. In turn, they force the enemy to âriskâ killing civilians, and they themselves bear responsibility for those who are killed.
But rarely, if ever, have these accusations been true. Indeed, the term âhuman shields,â despite having a clear legal definition, has become a catch-all for militias or insurgency groups that merely operate among a civilian population, functioning as a convenient pretext for invading, occupying and colonial forces to kill civilians, and reinforcing racist conceptions about besieged populations. So why, and how, do media provide cover for governments that lie about and instrumentalize supposed âhuman shieldingâ?
On this episode, we dissect the decades-old âhuman shieldsâ accusation, examining how it dehumanizes and militarizes people living under occupation and invasions, demonizes resistance movements, and sanitizes civilian-killing aggressors as reluctant actors who "simply had no choice."
Our guests are Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini.
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"Join Wall Street. Save the world," The Washington Post urged in 2013. "How to Know Your Donations Are Doing the Most Good," The New York Times proclaimed in 2015. "I give 10 percent of my income to charity. You should, too," Vox advised last November.
Each of these headlines tops a piece that extols the virtues of Effective Altruism, a philanthropic philosophy, for lack of a better term, ostensibly dedicated to the pursuit of the best ways to address large-scale, global ills like pandemics and factory farming, informed by âevidence and reason.â The school of thought, popularized by figures like the academic and author Peter Singer and disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, has been widely embraced â or at least uncritically boosted â in mainline media for years.
Superficially, this makes sense. Effective Altruism seems unimpeachably virtuous: Itâs great if people want to solve the worldâs problems, and so much the better if theyâve done their research. But beneath this surface lies a deeply reactionary movement, predicated on an age-old desire to characterize the wealthy as the solution to, rather than the cause of, the very problems they purport to want to solve.
On this episode, we parse the rise, motives, and influence of Effective Altruism. We look at how the doctrine gamifies wealth distribution, falsely portrays the rich as uniquely qualified to make decisions about public welfare, often provides cover for eugenics and racism, and masquerades as a groundbreaking ethos of data-driven compassion while it merely regurgitates a 100-year-old rich person ideology of supposedly benevolent control over the masses.
Our guest is Dr. Linsey McGoey.
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"Make sense of the dayâs news and ideas," urges The Morning, a daily New York Times newsletter. "Get smarter, faster on news and information that matters to you," Axios assures its readership. "This is how the news should sound," The New York Times again declares, via its podcast The Daily.
Over the last ten years, roughly speaking, weâve seen the proliferation of the daily digest-style newsletter and podcast at legacy and new media organizations. Inspired, at least loosely, by the so-called explanatory journalism of Vox and similar outlets that arose in the mid-2010s, publications now commonly offer bite-sized breakdowns of the news that allegedly matters most, delivered to the inboxes of upwardly mobile, dinner-party-hosting, perennially on-the-go professionals - or at least those who want to think of themselves as such.
Thereâs certainly nothing wrong with accessibility in news mediaâquite the opposite, in fact. But, for corporate âexplanatoryâ news models, itâs worth asking who makes the decisions about which news is the âmost important,â and about how that news is framed. How do seemingly benign, even folksy promises to âmake sense of the newsâ mask the ideology of corporate media institutions? And what are the dangers of herding audiences into a center-right political consensus that issues complaints like âcampus speech is vexingâ and âthe left is less welcoming than the rightâ?
On this episode, we examine the rise and hegemony of centrist micro-news platformsâfrom Axiosâs trademarked "Smart Brevity" to The New York Timesâ David Leonhardtâs newsletter The Morning and The Daily podcastâlooking at how they package left-punching, pathologically incurious, glib news nuggets served up to busy, upwardly mobile, well-meaning liberals.
Our guest is writer Jacob Bacharach.
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Get shredded! Get a hot trad wife! Close the Baxter Account! Join us Jan 30 at 8:30pm ET for a live show beg-a-thon with guest Hussein Kesvani, as we break down the most ridiculous and toxic rise-and-grind guys on social media, from David Goggins to Andy Elliott to Ed Mylett. We will be giving away merch, dunking on intense grifter assholes, and having a generally good time live on our YouTube channel.
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In this News Brief, we are joined by Adam's anonymous co-author of their two recent studiesâone of print and one of cable newsâdetailing US's media's double standards when covering the 'Gaza conflict.'
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âAging population to hit U.S. economy like a 'ton of bricks',â Reuters reported in 2021. âAging Is The Real Population Bomb,â the International Monetary Fund cautioned earlier this year. âHow an aging population poses challenges for U.S. economy, workforce and social programs,â PBS declared in June. âWhy weâre borrowing to fund the elderly while neglecting everyone else,â The Washington Postâs Catherine Rampell wrote just this past November.
Year after year, it seems, American media issues the same warning: The population of the US, due to - among other factors - rising life expectancy and falling birthrates, is getting older, which spells doom for our economy. A graying public, weâre told, will inevitably upend the labor force, destroy productivity, bleed programs like Medicare and Social Security dry, and thus place an undue burden on the younger population.
But the premises for this panic are based on misleading stats, goofy non-sequiturs, and misdirected faux class warfare. So, why do media keep insisting the olds are out for your hard-earned money? Who gets to shape our understanding of what an aging population actually means economically or socially? How does this narrative shift the burden from the state to the individual in terms of managing retirement benefits and systems of care? And what are the real harms of treating people over the age of 65 like theyâre a cancer on society?
On this episode, we examine the narrative that an aging population is necessarily dire, looking at how itâs instrumentalized to gut public benefits for seniors and thus for everyone, advance the financialization of retirement, and reframe the conflict between rich and poor as one between young and old.
Our guest is social security expert Nancy Altman.
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