Content:

Citations Needed co-host Adam Johnson will be in joined in conversation with Nashwa Bawab to discuss Johnson’s new book, How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza (Pluto Press, April 2026).

About the Book

How to Sell a Genocide is a thorough indictment of US corporate media’s role in enabling—and, at times, directly inciting—one of the most devastating campaigns of mass killing in modern memory. Johnson unpacks how major news outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC systematically sanitized Israel’s war crimes, hid the US’s central role, and dehumanized the Palestinian people.

Drawing from deep, original data-driven analysis, Johnson dissects the mechanics of propaganda, from the selective empathy, strategic omissions, overt racism and repetition of state-sanctioned falsehoods, to the demonization of humanitarian workers and dishonest coverage of campus protests. With clarity and moral force, Johnson argues that the genocide could not have been sustained without the active, sustained complicity of the US media.
Speakers

Adam Johnson is a media analyst and co-host of the podcast Citations Needed. His writing has been featured in The Nation, In These Times, The Intercept, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle.

Nashwa Bawab is the web producer at In These Times and a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books, Pluto Press and Pilsen Community Books. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.