citationsneededpodcast
patreon
Episode 225: How US Media Frames Democracy that Actually Helps People as "Buying Votes"
🕑 Added 2025-07-23 13:51:35 +0000 UTC"Student loan forgiveness is a bribe for young voters," shouted Newsweek in 2022. "Harris's call for price controls on groceries is more pandering than policy," declared The Hill in 2024. "Free for all: Democratic socialist’s policy pitches face tough fiscal reality in New York," warned Politico this year.
Every time an elected official or political candidate proposes a policy with even the slightest hint of actual populism, U.S. pundits, analysts and alleged experts line up to tell us that it’s just a scheme to "buy votes." Offering student-debt relief is just cheating. Lowering grocery costs is simply pandering. Eliminating public-transit fares is merely bribing voters. These initiatives aren't developed in good faith in order to improve the lives of the public; they're cynical ploys to help a given politician get ahead.
We know that some policymakers make promises that they'll never fulfill, or chisel away at robust and universal proposals, or backtrack on bold and transformative ideas. This happens all the time. But all too often, media’s default position is to assert that even the most modest of economically populist proposals are mere strategies to buy votes, revealing grim truths about what our media class seems to think the responsibilities of lawmakers and governments are.
On this episode, we examine the media tendency to assume that anything remotely close to populism is somehow cheating, playing the game on "god mode" or "democracy game genie," and ought to be discouraged by Serious People, putting a sinister spin on what is simply Doing Things People Want.
Our guest is FAIR's Janine Jackson.
*
Guest
Janine Jackson is program director at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and the producer and host of FAIR’s syndicated weekly radio show CounterSpin.
**
Show Notes
Media Did Their Best to Scare Voters Away From Zohran Mamdani
Ari Paul | June 27, 2025 | FAIR
Media Throw Everything But the Facts Against Harris’s ‘Price Control’ Proposal
Paul Hedreen | September 23, 2024 | FAIR
Stop Calling Kamala Harris’ Anti-Price-Gouging Proposal Price Controls
Zephyr Teachout | September 9, 2024 | Washington Monthly
Vox’s Student Loan ‘Expert’ Is Paid by Debt Collectors
Luca Goldmansour | August 11, 2023 | FAIR
Majority in U.S. Still Say Gov't Should Ensure Healthcare
Megan Brenan | January 23, 2023 | Gallup
‘It’s Not Just About Sanders and Warren, It’s About the Issues They Represent’
Janine Jackson and Julie Hollar | December 13, 2019 | FAIR
Clinton Blames Bernie, Delusional “Bernie Bros” for Losing 2016
Bess Levin | September 5, 2017 | Vanity Fair
Why Aren’t Big Bankers in Jail?
Janine Jackson | January 1, 2014 | FAIR
Venessa Wong and Jeffry Bartash | March 7, 2025 | MarketWatch
Harris’s Plan Is Economically Dumb but Politically Smart
Josh Barro | August 16, 2024 | The Atlantic
The Election That Broke the Spell of Chávez
Javier Corrales | December 8, 2015 | Foreign Policy
Charles Lane | November 18, 2013 | The Washington Post
***
Transcript
For a full transcript of this episode go here. You can also find transcripts of past episodes, live shows, Beg-a-Thons, Interviews and News Briefs here.
****
Citations Merch
The Citations Needed merch store is open! Please consider further supporting the show by picking up a t-shirt, tank top, hoodie, tote, water bottle or mug for yourself or your favorite Citations fan (or everyone you know!).
*****
Credits
Senior Producer: Florence Barrau-Adams
Producer: Julianne Tveten
Production Assistant: Trendel Lightburn
Newsletter: Marco Cartolano
Music: Grandaddy
******
Comments
n
Janine was a great guest, excellent episode
🤷🏼♀️
Janine just laying out first thing my two biggest gripes with the media never presenting temporal and spatial context of an event in the us. nothing we did five years ago matters, nor does anything that happens outside of this country. no other time or place could ever have resonance with the moment
