website mentioned at end: tinyurl.com/v3je7so

In this News Brief, we detail how horrific population transfers, mass bombings, and collective punishment are spun as humanitarian gestures to protect civilians.

News Brief: 5 Ways US Media Helps Put a 'Humanitarian' Spin on Gaza Ethnic Cleansing

"Make sense of the day’s 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, we’ve 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.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with accessibility in news media—quite the opposite, in fact. But, for corporate “explanatory” news models, it’s worth asking who makes the decisions about which news is the “most important,” and about how that news is framed. How do seemingly benign, even folksy promises to “make sense of the news” 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 “campus speech is vexing” and “the left is less welcoming than the right”?

On this episode, we examine the rise and hegemony of centrist micro-news platforms–from Axios’s trademarked "Smart Brevity" to The New York Times’ David Leonhardt’s newsletter The Morning and The Daily podcast–looking 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.

Episode 195: David Leonhardt and the Elite Consensus Manufacturing Machine

To hear the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/TrueAnonPod
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We welcome back to the show John Dolan aka Grey Brecher aka The War Nerd to talk through the state of conflict across the world in 2024. Are we headed into World War III? Will the war in Ukraine finally end? Does the US want war with Iran? Will anyone stop Israel? We cover all of this and more.

Check out John Dolan’s new book: Erdogan Pizza (amazon.com/Erdogan-Pizza-John-Carroll-Dolan/dp/B0CPC23531/)

Episode 349: State Of Play (trailer)

"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 can’t ignore the truth that Hamas uses human shields,”"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 “human shields.” 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 “risk” killing civilians, and they themselves bear responsibility for those who are killed.

But rarely, if ever, have these accusations been true. Indeed, the term “human shields,” 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 “human shielding”?

On this episode, we dissect the decades-old “human shields” 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.

Episode 197: The "Human Shields" Canard as Catch-All Colonial Absolution

Writer and comedian James Colley joins us to talk about: An unintentional Swedish dog turd cannon, illegally disarming your teen, having meat middleman in your AI romance, and a stinky, stinky hole.
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Buy The Next Big Thing Here: https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-next-big-thing-james-colley/book/9780645757910.html
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Support our show and get exclusive bonus episodes by subscribing on Patreon: www.patreon.com/BoontaVista
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Email the show at mailbag@boontavista.com! Call in and leave us a question or a message on 1800-317-515 to be answered on the show!
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EPISODE 333: French Tuck Dick Print Landslide (with James Colley)

Bonus Episodes

Unlocked for non-members! Originally posted February19, 2024. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe at patreon.com/TrueAnonPod.
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We play some of the many, many, many messages we’ve received this past week. Gossip, conspiracy, blind items, and Ghislaine Maxwell’s idea for a breast-shaped mouse

The hotline is permanently open at ‪(646) 801-1129‬.

UNLOCKED: Episode 355: Tip Line

This week we cover a few stories that share some crucial common themes: Austin's SXSW Festival, Boeing's recent "troubles," and the U.S. government's attempts to clamp down on TikTok

Please support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 334: Midstopia

To hear the full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/TrueAnonPod
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After months of anti-Palestinian repression, raids, arrests, and pictures of crusty antifa types with Israeli flags, we attempt to figure out the roots and solutions to the philosemitic fever gripping Germany’s media and political class.

Episode 364: What's Up With Germany: Part 1 (preview)

Covering all the news and developments of a rather momentous week in early 2024.

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 337: Expanding The Metaphor

We react to Iran's attack on Israel, Jake talks "Civil War" and Coachella, then Anders tries to re-cancel Jose Andres in the wake of the IDF's crazed bombing of World Central Kitchen.

Special Paid Protest for Eon Huntley:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/paidprotest4eon

As the Worm Turns

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 the crisis: corporations, wealthy investors and industry were prioritized, formal wage workers were given crumbs, and the undocumented and informal economy workers – such as domestic caregivers; undocumented workers; sex workers; and freelance, contract, and off-the-books workers – were ignored completely. 

On this week's episode, we analyze a 48-hour time period of coverage in The New York Times and The Washington Post when the discussion of who was going to be prioritized and aided – and who wasn't – cemented in popular discourse with little logic or meaningful debate.

We are joined by Fahd Ahmed, Executive Director of Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM).

Episode 105: Pandemic, Pelosi, and the People We Consider Human

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Episode 105: Pandemic, Pelosi, and the People We Consider Human

Citations Needed Podcast

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