18 hours Ago By [email protected] (kos)
The traditional media is not our friend. That’s not a controversial stance, but the notion of the “liberal media” has been a hindrance for progressive power-building. It’s not their job to be our friend, but unlike conservative donors, who never tire of building new friendly media outlets, liberal donors refused to do so because, you know, “liberal media.
” This year, the progressive movement saw the folly of that belief. And it brings home just how important it is to support real progressive media like Daily Kos. So yes, I’ll be asking you to subscribe .
And if you already subscribe and have the means, you can now give gift subscriptions! I don’t have to tell you guys that The New York Times was godawful this year. Indeed, publisher A.G.
Sulzberger said the paper’s job is to troll its liberal readers, saying that they should be “willing to take a simple, easy, or comfortable story and complicate it with truths that people don’t want to hear.” He took it as a badge of honor that his paper’s work “will never win over the partisans.” Cool, cool.
That’s what this means for the Times: offering blanket coverage of Hillary Clinton’s bullshit email story, while sanewashing Trump . Indeed, the Times’ atrocities this cycle are too exhausting to list. But just a reminder, Sulzberger literally punished President Joe Biden for refusing to grant the paper an exclusive interview.
They are not liberal; they are a menace . The Washington Post, of course, is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, who barred his paper’s editorial board from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to curry favor with Trump. Bezos also owns an aerospace manufacturer, and Trump will use that and other federal contracts to punish anyone who doesn’t bend the knee.
The Post is not liberal, and Bezos certainly has bent the knee . Media critic Jeff Jarvis calls out the media in the starkest terms: You let yourselves be exploited by these malign forces to spread their bigotry and bile, cushioned with your white-gloved euphemisms and sane-washing. You do not explain blood libel to your readers.
Is that because you do not recognize it yourself? [...
] You quote their noxious words, taking them at face value — as beliefs, as “alternative facts” — unable to see how they are instead saying these things to signal their belonging to the cult and cause [...
] You hide behind your impotent fact-checking, never seeing — though frequently warned — that in the ways you debunk their lies, you spread them, and by pedantically nitpicking the other side in your misguided search for balance you create false equivalence. This is how they exploit you. You thus lie to yourselves and the public you serve by refusing to call lies lies, racism racism, misogyny misogyny, authoritarianism authoritarianism, fascism fascism.
On Monday, Trump critics Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who together host MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” admitted on air that they visited Trump in Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring . But no one felt the need to kiss Biden’s ass. Nothing proves our fear of creeping authoritarianism more than the panic in the power class and its rush to show Trump he has nothing to fear from them.
And Fox News is cheering on this mass surrender to Trump. You know who won’t kiss Trump’s ass or bend any knees? I won’t. Daily Kos won’t.
And I know you won’t. Daily Kos is here today because of reader support, and indeed, you guys are now around 75% of our revenues. Earlier this year, we went through a tough staff reduction and company-wide restructuring to ensure that we are lean, mean, and sustainable in this brutal media landscape.
Your support has never been more directly focused on producing what brings you to Daily Kos in the first place—relevant, hard-hitting stories and information, as well as community. And that’s why our newsroom is the one place where we haven’t made cuts. Over the past year, we have assembled a top-notch team, and we aren’t done.
When all the hires are complete, I will formally introduce you to all the new faces. I can’t wait to do so. We are investing in a new site platform, and look forward to including many of the Daily Kos community’s leaders in the process.
We have removed that obnoxious video ad that everyone (including me) hated, and we’re reducing the frequency of ads in stories. We have plans to further thin out advertising in the free version of the site. But we can do that only because we have your individual support.
Given declining ad rates, other news sites end up compensating by adding more ad units. They don’t have a choice. We do.
Ultimately, we trust you to keep this place alive. So many of you already subscribe and/or donate. Thank you for allowing us to do our mission.
The rest of you? Please consider stepping up and helping out . I would love nothing more than to be 100% reader-supported. I want nothing more than to be beholden to you—and you alone.
Subscribe to Daily Kos . You get an ad-free experience, and we’ll be adding more perks over time. (And if you’ve got suggestions for perks, please share!) Donate subscriptions to your favorite community members.
It’s a great feeling to both give and receive. One final note: Subscription prices will go up from the current $40 a year to $60 on Dec. 2.
On Jan. 2, it’ll go up to $90. While that seems like a stiff increase (and it is), that’s more reflective of the artificially low existing rate, which has remained unchanged since we originally launched subscriptions in the late 2000s.
We’re offering that rate for these last 10 days because I love you guys, not because it’s smart finances. And if you are currently in the middle of an existing subscription, you can tack on an extra year at $40. (I announced that a few months ago, but a bug prevented it from happening.
It’s been fixed.) I highly recommend you take advantage of that deal and save yourself some money. So please support Daily Kos by subscribing and sharing the love ! And hurry, before prices go up!.
