Yesterday marked the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t — an 18-year-old policy that prohibited gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military and forced more than 14,000 qualified men and women out of the armed forces and many thousands more to serve silently in fear of being discovered. Responding to strong pressure from LGBT advocates and congressional Democrats, President Obama signed legislation repealing the law in December 2010 and officially certified the end of the policy on July 22.
But you may have missed the historic occasion if you were watching Fox News. Given its habit of ignoring news that does not appeal to the conservative base, the network largely ignored the story, mentioning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” just 16 times yesterday between 12 a.m. and 11:59 p.m., according to a ThinkProgress search of Critical Mention. Comparatively, CNN and MSNBC covered the repeal 66 times and 84 times respectively:
Fox offered slim coverage of the certification of repeal in July, underreported the passage of New York’s historic same-sex marriage law, and remained mostly silent after a major law firm reversed its decision to defend an explicitly anti-gay law in March. Last year, the network failed to report that former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman — who had orchestrated President Bush’s gay-bashing 2004 re-election campaign — had come out as gay.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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