"Why Are We Still Governed by Baby Boomers and the Remarkably Old?," inquires The New York Times. "Why Do Such Elderly People Run America?," The Atlantic wonders. "Gerontocracy Is Hurting Democracy," insists New York Magazine’s Intelligencer. "Too old to run again? Biden faces questions about his age as crises mount," The Guardian reports.
Though thes...
2022-09-21 14:18:50 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Patron News Brief, we wish a dubious farewell to QEII and examine the American pathology––both organic and media-curated––of obsessing over weird British royals.
2022-09-20 20:25:32 +0000 UTC View Post
"Education... is a great equalizer of conditions of men—the balance wheel of the social machinery," stated school reformer Horace Mann in 1848. "Math is the great equalizer," preached Jaime Escalante, Edward James Olmos’ character, in the 1988 film Stand and Deliver. "The best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education," announced Barack Obama during his 2010 State of t...
2022-09-14 14:31:10 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Patron News Brief we discuss one of the most played out local news tropes: dopey local reporters trying out shooting simulators that allegedly “train” officers for “split-second” “life or death” decisions. But, as internal police PR admits, they are far more about good P.R. than preventing violence.
2022-08-17 16:03:46 +0000 UTC View Post
A white collar worker wrestles with whether to accept a promotion or help his co-workers organize. Salt miners stand up to the company that’s taken over their town. A factory worker exposes her employer’s union-busting tactics.
Stories like these represent something we don’t often see in Hollywood: Unions and labor organizers as the good guys. Not as egomaniacs or z...
2022-08-03 18:10:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Chances are you’ve seen this storyline play out on either a big or small screen: An FBI agent investigates a prominent labor leader. Or maybe a union boss orders a hit on a recalcitrant member of the rank-and-file. Or perhaps a union president skims money off a pension fund to make an illegal loan.
Plotlines like these derive from one of Hollywood’s longstanding and most favored trope...
2022-07-27 14:25:44 +0000 UTC View Post
In this public News Brief, we detail the strange quadrennial tradition of acting like the US is "abandoning its principles" by reaffirming decades-long alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia.
2022-07-20 15:44:49 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Citations Needed Live Interview with Josh Mason, Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York, recorded virtually on July 8, 2022, we discuss how media narratives on inflation fuel the war on low-wage workers.
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In this News Brief, "Forced Pregnancies, Gutting the EPA, and Growing Frustration Over 'Vote Harder' Messaging," we break down the latest attacks on the liberal state and Democratic leadership's pathological inability––or unwillingness––to meet the moment.
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"John Roberts Passes Test: Politicization of Judicial Appointment is Disheartening," read a 2005 headline from Salisbury, Maryland’s Daily Times. "Ignore the attacks on Neil Gorsuch. He’s an intellectual giant — and a good man," Robert P. George pleaded in The Washington Post in 2017. Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination "is beyond politics," South Carolina...
2022-06-22 21:32:08 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Citations Needed Live Interview with Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Layla A. Jones, recorded virtually on May 20, 2022, we discuss the advent and massive influence of the Eyewitness and Action News formats of local evening news. The model entrenched perceptions of urban decay and violence for a primarily white and increasingly suburban audience. As Jones writes in her 2022-06-15 16:48:19 +0000 UTC View Post
In this News Brief, we examine two New York Times articles—one about Chesa Boudin and one about Eric Adams—and how they serve as object lessons in how liberal outlets repackaging 1990s-era Tough on Crime dogma as sophisticated, sanitized, and progressive.
2022-06-08 15:57:22 +0000 UTC View PostHi all --
We hope you are having a good summer! Below is this fortnight's newsletter. As always we are extremely grateful for your patronage and support.
-- Florence, Adam, Nima, Marco, and Julianne
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2022-06-07 18:14:05 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Patron-only News Brief we discuss the latest fake ISIS story whose big, scary headline has little relation to reality and how, 20 years on since the start of "the war on terror," our media keeps uncritically repeating dubious FBI claims they swooped in and thwarted a terror plot at the 11th hour.
2022-06-03 21:00:55 +0000 UTC View Post
"Follow The Data" is the name of a Bloomberg Philanthropies podcast that debuted 2016. "How Data Analysis Is Driving Policing," a 2018 NPR headline read. "Data suggests that schools might be one of the least risky kinds of institutions to reopen," an opinion piece in The Washington Post told us in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Over the last 20 or so years, a trend of l...
2022-06-01 19:10:12 +0000 UTC View Post
In this News Brief, we discuss the phoned-in, cynical response by Republicans to mass shooting and how they've devolved into a dark, meta self-parody.
2022-05-27 15:51:26 +0000 UTC View Post
(Yes, we're sending this post around again because we're just so excited - and, we corrected a typo that said Citations Needed has been around for four seasons, when it's actually been five!)
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Hey, it only took five years, five seasons, over 160 episodes, 117 news briefs and hundreds upon hundreds of hours of Citations Needed content, but we've finally landed in ...
2022-05-23 18:22:20 +0000 UTC View Post
After a white nationalist kills 10 in a racist mass shooting in Buffalo, those most responsible for mainstreaming white nationalist talking points try and evade responsibility.
When W. E. B. Du Bois Made a Laughingstock...
2022-05-18 16:13:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Criminal Minds. Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer. Inside the Criminal Mind. Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez.
Each of these is the title of a series, fictional or otherwise, or documentary that relies on the work of so-called criminal profilers. They’re all premised, more or less, on the same idea: That the ability to venture inside the mind of an individual who’s...
2022-05-11 14:41:28 +0000 UTC View PostHi all, thanks again for all your support. Here's this fortnight's newsletter.
Look out for a brand new episode tomorrow and more Patron-only New Briefs in the next few weeks. We are very grateful for your support, as always!
- Florence, Nima, Julianne, Marco, and Adam
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In this Patreon-only News Brief we discuss Sarah and Adam's recent substack article breaking down the most popular anti-union talking points and they they don't hold water.
The 4 Most Popular Anti-Union Talking Points and Why They're Wrong 2022-05-06 15:36:54 +0000 UTC View Post
"NFTs May Seem Like Frivolous Fads. They Should Be the Future of Music," argues Rolling Stone magazine. "How to Buy Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies: A Guide for New Crypto Investors," advises TIME magazine. "'I had $10 in my bank account': This 36-year-old went from living paycheck to paycheck to making over $109,000 selling NFTs," proclaims CNBC.
Over the past couple...
"Is it a higher compliment to be called a) a person of real feeling, or b) a consistently reasonable person?" "Are you more successful at a) following a carefully worked-out plan, or b) dealing with the unexpected and seeing quickly what should have been done?" "Which word in each pair appeals to you more? a) scheduled, or b) unplanned?"
Questions like these are posed to millions of curre...
2022-04-27 14:47:34 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Patron-only News Brief, we break down why it's so important to both right-wingers and carceral liberals that California be propped as a failed socialist nanny state that's gone too far, rather than what it is: a land of runaway capitalism and inequality.
2022-04-15 14:43:46 +0000 UTC View Post
In this Citations Needed Live Interview with Luke Savage from 3/22, we discuss his upcoming collection of essays, "The Dead Center: Reflections on Liberalism and Democracy After the End of History," the abandoned hopes of the Obama era, the rise of Trumpism and the inability—or unwillingness—of Liberalism to offer a moral and more just vision for the world.
Hi all, here's this fortnight's newsletter. Thanks as always for your support––t helps keep the show ad free and totally independent and we are very grateful for this.
- Florence, Adam, Marco, Julianne, and Nima
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2022-04-13 00:12:52 +0000 UTC View Post
"It is safe to say that almost no city needs to tolerate slums," wrote New York City official Robert Moses in 1945. "Our ancestors came across the ocean in sailing ships you wouldn't go across a lake in. When they arrived, there was nothing here," Ross Perot proclaimed in 1996. "We proved we can create a budding garden out of obstinate ground," beamed Israeli p...
2022-04-06 15:39:09 +0000 UTC View Post
In this News Brief, we examine the convoluted, vague rhetorical labor involved in making purging unhoused populations with cops seem humane and anodyne.
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Not a Single Reporter Will Follow Up on Eric Adams’ Vague Promise of Placing Purged Homeless in...
2022-03-30 18:52:19 +0000 UTC View Post
In this public News Brief, we examine the most unhelpful, glib, self-aggrandizing, and cynical responses from American media to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
SHOW NOTES
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The NYT’s casually racist, arr...
2022-03-16 14:41:14 +0000 UTC View Post
"Let the Culture Wars Begin. Again," The New York Times announces. "How the ‘Culture War’ Could Break Democracy," warns Politico. "As The Culture Wars Shift, President Trump Struggles To Adapt," NPR tells us. "Will Democrats Go on the Offensive in the Culture Wars?" Vanity Fair wonders.
Over and over, we’re reminded that so-called culture wars are being waged between a simp...
2022-03-09 17:03:10 +0000 UTC View Post