Want to Save Democracy? Start with Saving Journalism.
Real journalists are losing their jobs while money flows into pay-for-play social media. We need a publicly funded alternative.
Journalism is experiencing one of its worst crises when it’s needed the most.
Overall, news consumption is dropping. And it’s worse among young people, who largely get their news through social media, not news outlets. People under 30, more than any other age group, trust social media sources of news.
The problem is that it’s hard to tell if your favorite social media source is a citizen journalist or a paid promoter. In a recent in-depth report, The New York Times revealed that social media platforms are rife with accounts that are paid to promote campaigns parading as personal opinion.
Rather than hire well-known influencers with huge followings, politicians and organizations are now hiring huge numbers of accounts with smaller followings. “Functioning more like birdshot than a single bullet,” the Times explained, “these high-volume social media campaigns represent the new vanguard of modern political influence, saturating the internet with a topic until it is all but unavoidable.”
A perspective that appears popular online may well be the result of this digital “astroturfing.” A decade ago, many Americans blamed the Russian government for insidious meddling in American politics using armies of paid content pushers. Now the same tactic is being deployed by campaigns and nonprofits.
Watch the trailer for my latest book, Breaking ICE
LATEST STORIES ON RISING UP:
As promised, I spoke with Josefina Mora-Cheung of La Resistencia, who I had the honor of speaking at a book event for Breaking ICE in Seattle in September. Josefina is a powerhouse of an organizer. I paired her interview with an in-depth conversation with Mike Miller, a historian who has tracked the Voting Rights Act from the bloody struggles that led to its passage, to the callous manner of its decimation by extremists on the US Supreme Court.
Seattle Fights ICE Detention and Flights
JOSEFINA MORA-CHEUNG: "La Resistencia had been the only entity that was keeping track of how many people were being brought to the detention center on the flights and how many people were being taken away from the detention center to be transferred or deported..."
How the Nation Built and Broke the Voting Rights Act
MICHAEL G. MILLER: "We should care about these issues enough to talk to our members of Congress about them, for sure. But this transcends voting rights. We have lived in a world where Congress has taken a backseat to the president, for sure, and so much so that we now expect many policy solutions to come from judicial decisions. I think that's completely backward to the design of the Constitution..."
Corporate media's goal is to leave you feeling overwhelmed and accept the status quo.
BONUS EPISODE:
Rising Up For Dignity and Justice for Black People
NADINE SMITH: "[T]he struggle for Black freedom in this country has been the most consistent and persistent engine for progress, and not just for the Black community. The expansion of the right to vote has been driven by the push for citizenship by Black people, the expansion of civil rights, which has benefited women, which has become the blueprint for every justice movement in the country..."
AND... I'm about to embark on the last leg of my BOOK TOUR:
↪ Next stops: Denver, Boulder, and then Minneapolis! If you live in or near those cities, PLEASE DO COME!
Denver, CO
Friday October 23, 2-4 pm - The SHOP at Matter, 2114 Market St
Denver, CO 80205, RiNo arts district, Denver. Featuring Sonali Kolhatkar and guests. Sponsored by Free Speech TV. RSVP below:
Boulder, CO
Saturday October 24, 6-8 pm - KGNU Community Media Center, 1720 14th St, Boulder, CO. Talk, Book Signing, and Q&A by Sonali Kolhatkar. Sponsored by KGNU Community Radio. RSVP below:
Minneapolis, MN
Monday October 26 at 6 pm - Moon Palace Books, 3032 Minnehaha Ave.
Minneapolis, MN. Featuring Sonali Kolhatkar in conversation with Dr. Yohuru Williams, Peter Rachleff, and Shannon Gibney. Sponsored by East Side Freedom Library. RSVP below:
