President Obama will be hosting a Leaders’ Summit on Refugees next week. The crisis in Syria will no doubt take center stage, with ISIS (also known as Daesh) and Bashar al-Assad being widely discussed. But how much focus will be put on the historic drought that precipitated the Syrian refugees fleeing their homes? Will climate change be discussed as a leading cause of both current and, especially, future waves of refugees?
Will the president once again acknowledge our country’s central role in creating the kind of climate change that is making such droughts and unusual climatic events more common? Will he again state that the US therefore has a unique obligation to lead the world out of this crisis?
Will he highlight his new guidelines that apply a climate test to projects that need approval from the federal government? Will he suggest that such a climate test be adopted by other countries?
Will he say that the climate test should be applied to the Dakota Access pipeline? Will he stop that pipeline? Or will he let it get built, setting up a situation where Native Americans may once again be forced to relocate, this time because their drinking water source becomes undrinkable?
Will he end his eight years in office the way he began them, with a great speech, but without great action?
Will he and the US walk the walk, or mostly just talk the talk?
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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