Episode 40: The Civility Fetish
Citations Needed
Citations Needed
4.8 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2018
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
They're not lies, they're "falsehoods"; it's not racism, it's "racially charged comments"; it's not torture, it's "enhanced interrogation." For years, U.S. media has prioritized, above all else, norms and civility.
Mean words or questioning motives are signs of declining civility and the subject of much lament from our media class. However, op-eds explicitly advocating war, invasion, sanctions, sabotage, bombing and occupation or cutting vital programs and lifelines for the poor are just the cost of doing business. What's rhetorically out of bounds - and what isn't - is far more a product of power than any objective sense of "civility" or "decency."
Where did these so-called norms come from, who do they benefit, and why is their maintenance–-even in the face of overt white nationalism––still the highest priority for many liberals and centrists in U.S. media?
We discuss this, and more, with The Huffington Post's Ashley Feinberg.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is Citations Needed with Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson. |
| 0:09.2 | Welcome to Citations Needed, a podcast on media, power PR and the history of bullshit. |
| 0:16.7 | I am Nima Shirazi. |
| 0:18.0 | I'm Adam Johnson. |
| 0:19.3 | Thanks everyone for listening. |
| 0:21.4 | This week you can of course follow the show on Twitter at CitationsPod, like share, |
| 0:27.5 | comment, do whatever on Facebook at Citations Needed and help us out. |
| 0:33.6 | Fund the show. |
| 0:35.0 | Keep it going through patreon.com, forward slash Citations Needed podcast with Nima Shirazi |
| 0:41.4 | and Adam Johnson. |
| 0:42.4 | You'll find us on there. |
| 0:43.7 | All your help is so much appreciated. |
| 0:45.5 | Yes, sorry to keep having to push that, but it actually does help. |
| 0:49.1 | So if you thought about doing it but haven't donated, please do. |
| 0:51.7 | It does make it sustainable. |
| 0:54.4 | We want to be sustainable because that makes a better show. |
| 1:00.1 | So today's episode has been touched on many times, but never really talked about directly. |
| 1:07.3 | And that's the media's obsession with civility, norms, and manners. |
| 1:14.4 | And how that is uniquely incapable of protecting us from the forces on the right. |
| 1:20.0 | In the media, we see weasel words used to describe things that really should just be called what they are. |
| 1:26.1 | So rather than saying that lies have been told, we hear that there are falsehoods. |
| 1:32.6 | It's not racism. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Citations Needed, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Citations Needed and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.