Episode 79: How 'Neutral' 'Experts' Took Over Trump's Iran Policy

Citations Needed

News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2019

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Satellite Images Raise Questions About Iran Threat, Experts Say," worries The Daily Beast. "Iran And Trading Partners Will Find Ways To Skirt Sanctions, Analysts Say," frets NPR. "Iran uses proxies to punch above its weight in the Middle East, experts say," declares NBC News. "Fuel from Iran is financing Yemen rebels' war, U.N. experts say," writes the Associated Press.

Experts say. Analysts say. Officials say. We hear these qualifiers constantly in the media and when it comes to reporting on Iran, experts, analysts, scholars and Fellows are consistently tapped to weigh in on the latest nefarious thing the "Islamic Republic" is up to now.

But who are these so-called experts? What's their track record like and what are their tangential, non-Iranian, related regional political goals? And what does a recent partnership between the Trump State Department and Foundation for Defense of Democracies that targets peace activists on social media tell us about the broader problem of so-called neutral experts? On today's episode, we'll dig into some of the resumes of the media's favorite experticians and breakdown how a revolving door of deeply ideological partisans use US media to pawn themselves off as apolitical scholars.

We are joined today by journalist and editor Arash Karami.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Citations Needed with Nemeshirazi and Adam Johnson.
0:09.0	Welcome to Citations Needed, podcast on the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit.
0:14.4	I am Nemeshirazi.
0:15.4	I'm Adam Johnson.
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0:43.3	which are second- once we do breaking the news that you can go back and listen to to get that content that you crave.
0:50.0	Satellite images raise questions about Iran threat.
0:53.5	Experts say, worries the daily beast.
0:56.5	Iran and trading partners will find ways to skirt sanctions analysts say, threats and PR.
1:02.7	Iran uses proxies to punch above its way in the Middle East.
1:05.7	Experts say, says NBC News, fuel from Iran is financing Yemen's rebels, UN experts warn,
1:12.3	writes the Associated Press.
1:14.3	Democrats are raising alarms about Trump inching toward war with Iran,
1:18.7	but experts are torn over what happens next.
1:21.9	Shrug's business insider, while Reuters reports,
1:25.1	Iran can sink US warships with secret weapons military official says.
	...

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