Episode 60: Kitten Rescues, Lip-Syncing & Christmas Traffic Stops - Your Guide to Clickbait Copaganda
Citations Needed
Citations Needed
4.8 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2018
⏱️ 49 minutes
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Summary
The media – local and national, print and TV – love puff pieces designed to make the police look good and generally improve their overall brand with the public. More often than not, these human interest stories are typically fed to local news by the police themselves. This type of pseudo-journalism is most transparent in its most overly saccharin iteration, something we like to call clickbait copaganda.
Stories involving noble patrolmen rescuing cats from car engines, helping little Jimmy find his stolen bike, raising money for charity, coaching Little League, white cops hugging black kids or handing out Christmas presents all do well on social media and help burnish the police's image in the age of Black Lives Matter.
On this week's episode, we examine the increasingly viral nature of pro-police agitprop, dissect how organic these stories actually are, and identify the five main types of clickbait copaganda.
Our guest is journalist Ashoka Jegroo.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Citations Needed with Nemeshirazi and Adam Johnson. |
| 0:09.0 | Welcome to Citations Needed, a podcast on the media, power PR and the history of bullshit |
| 0:14.6 | I am Nemeshirazi. |
| 0:15.6 | I'm Adam Johnson. |
| 0:17.3 | You can follow the show on Twitter at CitationsPod Facebook, Citations Needed and support us |
| 0:23.6 | through patreon.com Citations Needed Podcast with Nemeshirazi and Adam Johnson. |
| 0:29.7 | All your support is so appreciated. |
| 0:32.6 | We are a completely listener supported show and we would love to stay that way. |
| 0:36.4 | So thank you everyone for your ongoing support and I hope it does continue so that we can continue. |
| 0:42.0 | Yeah, thanks so much for the support we have and this holiday season. |
| 0:45.2 | If you're giving the gift, I guess it's a pretty weird gift to give someone but you |
| 0:48.6 | should say I donated or I supported Citations Needed on your behalf. |
| 0:52.7 | And I'm sure they will love that. |
| 0:54.3 | This is the hot new gift item. |
| 0:55.8 | Imagine your loved one hearing their name being read on the show. |
| 0:58.8 | That's true and I'm sure they will really think that that's a great gift that you gave |
| 1:02.8 | them and not be upset about that at all. |
| 1:04.9 | Yeah, we're utterly shameless. |
| 1:06.3 | Anyway, the media, local and national print and TV alike, they love what we call and |
| 1:13.0 | what we've called previously Copaganda. |
| 1:15.8 | Copaganda as a term generally used to describe puff pieces typically fed to local news by |
| 1:19.8 | the police themselves. |
... |
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