| Welcome to the April edition of our new monthly newsletter! It was another busy month at Free Press and we have a lot to cover — let’s dig in. Elon Musk: The World's Worst Businessman Even billionaires get things wrong.
But none more so than Elon Musk, who, a year after announcing his bid to buy Twitter, has squandered every opportunity he’s had to make the social-media company a success.
Musk’s mistakes have been many. He’s spent most of the past year behaving like a preschooler on a finger-load of frosting, and his childishness has affected the platform’s bottom line and alienated potential business allies. Read our blog post for more details on Musk’s disastrous tenure at Twitter. READ MORE Public Media Under Attack (Again) Public media is once again under attack after years of underinvestment and disinvestment.
Earlier this month, Twitter placed a “US-state affiliated media” label on NPR’s official Twitter account — inaccurately placing it in the same category as government-aligned propaganda outlets in China and Russia. And last month, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R–Texas) introduced legislation that would end the federal government’s meager but necessary financial support of both NPR and PBS.
We’ve beaten back threats to slash funding to public media before. And we can do it again. Join Free Press Action and tell Congress: Protect public media! TAKE ACTION The Murdochs Want to Erase the Dominion Exposé. We Won't Let Them. With their $787.5-million decision to settle the Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case, the Murdochs hope to wash away months of monumentally damaging headlines exposing their efforts to deceive the American public and help overthrow a democratically elected government at Fox News.
But we won’t let that happen. Read our blog for more about how the harms Fox continues to perpetuate — and how we can hold the network accountable. READ MORE Powerful Town Hall Spotlights Media 2070's Award-Winning Documentary The Media 2070 team held a national town hall to collaborate with participants on ways to combat anti-Blackness in newsrooms and create a media system that no longer harms Black lives. The town hall also marked the conclusion of Media 2070’s tour of its award-winning documentary Black in the Newsroom, which Vice President of Cultural Strategy Collette Watson directed. Collette, who’s also the Media 2070 director, spoke during the town hall, as did Free Press staffers Diamond Hardiman and Venneikia Williams.
Read the recap of this special town hall and watch the replay. READ THE RECAP A View From the Field
Check out the latest updates from the field as Free Press and Free Press Action staffers work alongside our amazing allies and activists to create a more just and equitable media system. Below are just a few snippets from our monthly View from the Field blog — you can read the entire post here!
Earlier this year, Elizabeth Green of Chalkbeat, Darryl Holliday of City Bureau and Mike Rispoli, Free Press’ senior director of journalism and civic information, released The Roadmap for Local News, which offers a prescription for addressing the crisis in journalism that has wreaked havoc on local news over the past 20 years. In March, Mike led a briefing on the roadmap for 100 members of the Free Press-led Media Power Collaborative. This collective of media workers, movement organizers and allied researchers is working to win policies that will give people the news and information they need to thrive.
Vice President of Policy and General Counsel Matt Wood took part in “Making Sense of Section 230: A Deep Dive Into Recent Legal Battles,” a panel discussion held at the State of the Net conference. In December, Free Press Action filed a brief at the Supreme Court in a case that could fundamentally change how the internet works by invalidating Section 230. “Losing the core of Section 230 could risk chilling online expression, which would disproportionately harm Black and Brown communities, LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants, religious minorities, dissidents, and all people and ideas targeted for suppression or harassment by powerful forces.”
Co-CEO Jessica J. González took part in the panel discussion “Is Social Media Helping or Harming Democracy?” at the University of California’s annual #SpeechMatters conference. The event examined ways in which college campuses nationwide can protect people’s fundamental rights in a time when democracy is under threat.
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Photo credits: Elon Musk - Flickr user TED Conference; Rupert Mudoch - copyright by World Economic Forum swiss-image.ch/Photo by Monika Flueckiger | 