Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs

Magazine. It is my privilege today to be joined by the superb media critic, Adam Johnson.

You may have heard him as the co-host with Nemo Shirazi of the podcast citations needed.

He has written for many different publications, including

fairness and accuracy and reporting, the nation in these times, and the intercept. His debut book

is now out from Pluto Press. It is how to sell a genocide, the media's complicity in the destruction of Gaza.

And if you purchase this book, all of Adam Johnson's royalties are being donated to the Middle East Children's Alliance.

This is a really vital volume for seeing through media reporting from October 2023 to the present day.

Adam Johnson, welcome to Kurt Affairs.

Thank you so much for having me on.

All right.

Before we dive into the subject of your book, which is an analysis of how reporting about Gaza distorted the facts of what happened

and attempted, albeit, I would say, partially unsuccessfully, given the state of public opinion

on Israel-Palestine, but attempted to create a false narrative

of the destruction of Gaza. Let us lay out the actual facts in brief of the genocide. You use

the word genocide. You use it unashamedly. In doing so, you are adopting the language of the

consensus of human rights groups. So before we get to the distortions, I hope you could give us a little

bit of a summary of what the real picture that you think people ought to understand of what

happened in Gaza starting in October of 2023 was.

Yeah, so obviously I'm not a genocide scholar nor am I a lawyer. However, I rely on what we'd sort of broadly consider to be Western experts in this Amnesty International Human Rights Watch, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, 86% of whom voted in favor of a resolution

saying it's a genocide, obviously Doctors Without Borders. There really isn't a credible,

you know, the Lemkin Institute, again, various other genocide, those charged with studying

...