This week Free Press launched a campaign asking the Tribune Company not to sell its eight major daily newspapers to the Koch brothers, the billionaires notorious for funding a range of far-right causes.
But this isn’t about partisan politics. Our opposition to the Koch brothers is rooted in the issues Free Press has been working on for a decade: promoting quality journalism and curbing media consolidation.
Our communities need journalism that serves communities and uncovers corporate and political wrongdoing. That’s why we’ve fought media ownership battles against the owners of Fox News (Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.) and the owners of MSNBC (cable giant Comcast), among many others. And in all of these fights we’ve worked alongside both liberal and conservative groups.
Putting too much power in the hands of a few is never a good idea. That’s why we’re calling on the Tribune Company to sell their papers — which include some of America’s largest newsrooms — to local owners, not to Murdoch or the Koch brothers.
Local media ownership is better than chain ownership. Local owners are more accountable to their communities and more dedicated to serving those communities. Even in this changing media landscape, local newspapers are the dominant source for news and information, both on- and offline. Their reporting still sets the agenda for other local media.
Absentee media owners don’t have that connection to local people, issues and debates and they tend to focus on Wall Street, not Main Street. News reportssuggest that local owners are interested in many of the Tribune papers, but that the Tribune Company wants to sell them as a bundle. The Koch brothers, needless to say, are interested in the entire bundle.
Journalism is supposed to be the Fourth Estate — the institution that holds our civic, political and corporate leaders accountable. The New York Timesreports that buying the Tribune’s papers is part of a 10-year political strategy for the Koch brothers to push policies that benefit their personal and corporate interests. You hear nothing about public accountability or an informed citizenry from the Kochs.
What we do know is that in the last election, the Koch brothers funneled a huge amount of money into shady Super PACs and other advocacy groups that sought to hide their donors and mislead the public. In addition, the Koch brothers have funded voter-suppression efforts in some of the very communities where they now want to own newspapers. We don’t want newspaper owners who peddle propaganda and discourage civic participation.
Our fight here is about journalism’s fundamental values. We need journalism that helps communities make sense of complex issues. A newspaper should not be a platform to further a corporate agenda.
There is no evidence that the Koch brothers will be trustworthy stewards of local journalism. We want local owners to have the opportunity to reclaim the news in their neighborhoods. If you agree, join the thousands of people who are calling on the Tribune Company to stand with local communities, protect quality journalism and say no to the Kochs.
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.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
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