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. @ATT has contributed $2,053,000 to the campaigns of 130 Republicans who are today trying to overturn the U.S. election.
Corporate alignment with anti-democracy lawmakers is textbook fascism.
@JuddLegum with the details: https://popular.info/p/20-corporations-16-million-and-138
Corporate alignment with anti-democracy lawmakers is textbook fascism.
@JuddLegum with the details: https://popular.info/p/20-corporations-16-million-and-138
Legum also reports that @Amazon has contributed $598,000 to the campaigns of 104 Republicans who are today trying to overturn the U.S. election.
Also on Legum's list: @Comcast, which has contributed $1,739,000 to 126 GOP candidates now trying to reject the votes of tens of millions of U.S. citizens.
What do these three massive corporations have in common?
What do these three massive corporations have in common?
>> @ATT owns @CNN
>> @Comcast owns @NBC, and
>> @Amazon's top executive owns the @washingtonpost
This is not a conspiracy theory but a presentation of facts.
>> @Comcast owns @NBC, and
>> @Amazon's top executive owns the @washingtonpost
This is not a conspiracy theory but a presentation of facts.
Commercial news outlets are so financially intertwined with political interests—their bosses so dependent on lawmakers to pass policies to further entrench their control over the media marketplace—that it's difficult to see how the present media system serves democracy.
. @OsitaNwanevu has receipts, too. He's kept a list of companies that have made financial contributions to the GOP's "assault on the democratic process." These companies "should be marked for the record," he adds, and we should also organize mass boycotts. https://newrepublic.com/article/160800/corporate-money-trump-gop-coup
Boycotting media companies isn't as simple as it seems. Some have run successful advertiser boycotts, which might be worth considering.
But there are other ways to make a media system more accountable to a healthy democracy.
But there are other ways to make a media system more accountable to a healthy democracy.
Yale Law Professor @jackbalkin told the @NYTimes that the problems of anti-democratic media “grow out of business models of private companies [These problems can be addressed by] a series of antitrust, competition, consumer protection, privacy and telecommunications law reforms."
Balkin adds that there's a "lack of new trustworthy and trusted intermediate institutions for knowledge production and dissemination. Without these institutions, the digital public sphere does not serve democracy very well." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/trump-lies-free-speech.html
"[A strong and vigorous political system] has always required more than mere formal freedoms of speech. It has required institutions like journalism, educational institutions, scientific institutions, libraries, and archives."
The marketplace alone can't sustain a healthy ecosystem. Commercial media interest—as shown above—often act against the interests of democracy.
Independent, noncommercial news & information is the antidote, especially in local communities often referred to as "news deserts."
Independent, noncommercial news & information is the antidote, especially in local communities often referred to as "news deserts."
And robust, noncommercial news and information do not exist in a vacuum. They rely on active engagement with the communities they serve. And these communities need affordable access to an open internet to play their part.
This is the work of a lifetime, but it's work that more people are becoming involved in as the shortcomings and complicity of commercial media (including platforms like @Facebook and @YouTube) are becoming painfully obvious to everyone. cc: @FreePress
