October 3, 2011

The Media and the Left

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Greg Sargent says:

The left faces an institutional barrier: The attention to Occupy Wall Street notwithstanding, news orgs tend to find right wing demonstrations of popular unrest inherently more newsworthy and deserving of sustained coverage than left wing ones.

True or false? Is there actual evidence on this score from, say, the past 30 years?

It seems to me that the nuclear freeze movement of the 80s got a fair amount of attention. So did the anti-globalization protests of the late 90s. And the Iraq war protests of the aughts. And various gay rights marches and protests. Maybe they’ve gotten less coverage than the tea party has gotten, but that’s not immediately clear.

My sense is that when the left actually mounts a sustained popular movement, it gets a decent amount of coverage. Maybe not as much as we’d like, but that’s probably what everyone who mounts a protest thinks. The problem, I suspect, isn’t that popular movements of the left get ignored, but that the left hasn’t been mounting any big, sustained popular movements lately. The fault, dear Brutus, etc. etc.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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