Citations Needed

In this News Brief we catch up on the patronizing, racist media coverage of protests in Minneapolis.          

Trump is likely pinning his reelection hopes on "reopening" the NFL––a grand media spectacle that will signal victory over the virus and usher in a new low in Triggering The Libs politics. A cynical corporate media and pro-Trump billionaire NFL owners are happy to go along with it. But will NFL players? Will Democratic Party leaders? What will a "safe reopening" look like and how, more broadly, sh...

"Free markets drive innovation!" It's a narrative imparted to us ad nauseam. The ultimate catalyst of creation and progress — we're told by policymakers, business executives, think tanks, and the media outlets that bolster them — in which great strides in healthcare, electronics, media, and other areas are the domain of private enterprise motivated by competition and profit, and unencumbered by st...

How can one achieve happiness? It's the eternal question. From Aristotle to Al-Ghazali, Thomas Aquinas to Arthur Schopenhauer. The answer, we're told, is to look within. These days, we're told repeatedly by our modern philosophers, Oprah Winfrey, Srikumar Rao, Tony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra and other corporate happiness monitors that prosperity and fulfillment come through deep intr...

"Economists' forecasts for GDP growth in 2020 vary widely," says The Economist. "Algeria's GDP growth falls to 0.8% in 2019," one Reuters headline reads. "GDP — the broadest measure of economic activity — grew at an annual rate of just 1.9% during the third quarter," NPR warns. Everywhere we turn for economic news, the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is held up as the key proxy for prosperity and...

"Woman Sues TripAdvisor After Falling off Runaway Camel," reports the Associated Press . "Red Bull Paying Out to Customers Who Thought Energy Drink Would Actually Give Them Wings," eyerolls Newsweek . "Tennessee man sues Popeyes for running out of chicken sandwiches," scoffs NBC News . We see "frivolous lawsuit" stories all the time and have for decades. Seemingly absurd cases of get rich quick sc...

As COVID-19 continues to endanger the health of people throughout the world, it also magnifies a long-existent global humanitarian crisis: The use of sanctions by the United States and other powers as a weapon of war. In Iran, one of the countries most devastated by the contagion, sanctions have strangulated the supply of medical equipment crucial to testing the population and treating those who a...

In this extended News Brief, we discuss how the rapid increase of Covid-19 in prisons and jails is being met with indifference by lawmakers and US corporate media.

After over 100 episodes, scores of News Briefs, and almost three years of content production, Citations Needed has finally done it: reduced itself to a listicle. On this News Brief, we examine the top ten worst COVID-19 takes to date (not including the celebrity 'Imagine' video). Proceed with caution.

In this News Brief, we detail recent reports the National Guard and US military may be used in a law enforcement capacity and what this says about the failures of the liberal state. With unemployment potentially reaching 30 percent and an urgent, robust social democratic response from the federal government unlikely, a debate about safeguarding against martial order––especially from an administrat...

The COVID-19 pandemic is ravaging the globe, leaving immeasurable human suffering in its wake. Who is left behind, struggling to survive on the frontlines of precarity, is – as with all things – determined primarily by wealth, privilege, and access to resources and political capital.   This fact has been starkly on display in recent days, as Congressional Democrats began debating their response to...

"According to the Bipartisan Policy Center," "a recent study by the Concord Coalition disagrees," "One review of your budget by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says." We've seen these seemingly benign Official Sounding sources hundreds of times—from presidential debates to 60 Minutes to countless articles in The Washington Post and The New York Times. But what the average person can...

"Obama Warns Against 'Purity Tests' In Democratic Primary," Spectrum News reports. "Spare Me the Purity Racket," Maureen Dowd opines in The New York Times . "'Purity Tests' Divide Democrats," US News & World Report announces. "Political purity tests are for losers," bellows The Hill .   We hear it all the time: progressives, leftists, radicals — and even liberals — are told they must not engage in...

One of the most prized professional norms for journalists, particularly the United States, is the preservation of neutrality in reporting. While the concept of "objectivity" has fallen out of fashion among mainstream reportage in recent years, related concepts that convey a similar idea such as "impartiality" and "neutrality" have come to replace it. In their mission statements and codes of ethics...

"145 CEOs Call On Senate To Pass 'Common-sense, Bipartisan' Gun Laws," NPR states. "Local Democrat pushes back on NY bail reform law: It's about 'common sense,' not politics," a Fox News headline reads. "The Only Thing More Dangerous Than Trump's Appeal to Common Sense Is His Dismissal of It," The Nation warns. Everywhere we turn we are told by pundits and politicians that "common sense" demands w...

Since the rise of Black Lives Matter and a broader cultural awakening in the United States of just how wildly out of whack, cruel and hyper-punitive our criminal legal system is, modest reforms began to emerge across the United States. The lowest hanging fruit for reforms was to get rid of or radically reduce pretrial cash bail: a system that simply exists to punish the poor for being poor. 20 per...

Over the last 20 years, the topics of substance use and treatment have become the stuff of televised entertainment: heart-wrenching stories of desperation and redemption, of suffering and survival. Shows like A&E's Intervention and VH1's Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew , which depict people with substance use disorders and their experiences navigating recovery in rehab, have gone a long way to shape...

From its inception as agriculture trade paper in 1843 to the present day, The Economist has provided a gateway into the mind of the banking class. Something of an anomaly in the publishing industry, The Economist is not quite a magazine, not quite a newspaper; aspirational in its branding but bleakly limited in political ambitions; brazenly transparent in its capitalist ideology, yet inscrutable i...

Everywhere we turn, local media — TV, digital, radio — is constantly telling us about the scourge of crime lurking around every corner. This, of course, is not new. It's been the basis of the local news business model since the 1970s. But what is new is the rise of surveillance and snitch apps like Amazon's Ring doorbell systems and geo-local social media like Nextdoor. They are funded by real est...

The last two decades have seen the release of a number of explicitly Christian movies which tell stories of believers navigating the trials and tribulations - both literal and figurative - of a perceived non-Christian world. In this universe, followers of Christ are constantly under siege by secularists, swarthy Muslims, gay and trans agenda-pushers, feminists and a hostile, out-of control federal...

"'Right-to-work' means freedom and choice," a Boston Globe op-ed explains. "As housing costs rise, some people are choosing to live on the road instead," a Fox Business headline states. "If your insurance company isn't doing right by you, you should have another, better choice," reads Joe Biden's campaign platform. We're told repeatedly that "freedom of choice" is essential to a robust economy and...

Since the early 2000s, a spate of forensics-focused TV shows and films have emerged on the pop culture scene. Years after Law & Order premiered in the '90s, shows like CSI, NCIS, and The Mentalist followed, trumpeting the scientific merit of analyzing blood-spatter patterns, reading facial and bodily cues, and using the latest fingerprint-matching technology to catch the bad guy. Yet what these pr...

In Ep. 90, "How Western Media's False Binary Between 'Science' & Indigenous Rights Erases Native People," we explored the ways capital-S "Science" has been wielded by those in power to erase Native people and culture around the world. Our discussion of the Thirty Meter Telescope "controversy" at Mauna Kea in Hawai'i drew much online debate but instead of talking about the activists there, we thoug...

In this News Brief, we discuss the battle over whether or not to call what happened in Bolivia a "coup," and the problem with the always popular, slippery evocation of "agency."

"A preponderance of foreign elements destroys the most precious thing [a nation] possesses - its own soul," wrote the politically-influential Immigration Restriction League in early 1919. "The great hotbeds of radicalism lie in the various colonies of alien workmen," declared The New York Times on January 5, 1921. Warning of the "menace" posed by "millions of intending immigrants of the poorest an...