Read Truthout's Progressive Pick of the Week: Bill McKibben's “Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.”
For tonight's “Conversations with Great Minds” – I'm joined by author, environmentalist, and activist Bill Mckibben. In 1988, he wrote “The End of Nature” – the heir to Rachel Carson's “Silent Spring” – and since then has gone on to write more than a dozen noteable books about the environment and our human impact on it. He is the co-founder and Chairman of the Board of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009. In 2010, the Boston Globe called him “the nation's leading environmentalist” and Time magazine described him as “the world's best green journalist.” And recently he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His latest book – “Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet” – is a guide to living on our fundamentally altered planet.
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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