We need journalism.

Journalism requires enormous resources. It’s hard to do it on your own. You need a newsroom. Not all for-profit newspapers are bad. Even the corporate-owned Financial Times publishes good journalism:

https://www.ft.com/content/8c6041ff-a223-43e9-9e45-53c3f7cf47f7

But the issue with for-profit news organizations is corporate influence. Look at Rupert Murdoch. He translates his influence into personal power. The Prime Ministers of Australia publically said they are afraid of him.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-19/former-pm-kevin-rudd-says-he-was-fearful-of-murdoch-media/13173242

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/utterly-unaccountable-turnbull-labels-news-corp-the-most-powerful-political-actor-in-australia-20210412-p57idq.html

We need more non-profit quality journalism.

For-profit media can be bought. You don’t want Billionaire thugs owning the media. That’s what happening in many countries. Look at India. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani are purchasing newspaper and removing good journalism critical of Narendra Modi.

Look at Hungary.

Hell, just look at what happened in Israel. Even if you hate Israel, you should pay attention to Israeli politics. People often forget how Benjamin Netanyahu became the longest serving leader in Israeli history.

It was because of billionaires helping him.

Israel has much stricter laws on individuals donating to political campaigns, so Sheldon Adelson got around that in 2007 by founding a free, giveaway newspaper in Israel — Israel Hayom — whose sole purpose is to back Netanyahu, attack his enemies in politics and the media, and enforce a far-right political agenda to prevent any Israeli territorial compromise on the West Bank

Graphically attractive, Israel Hayom is now the biggest-circulation daily in Israel. Precisely because it is free, it is putting a heavy strain on competitors, like Yediot and Haaretz, which both charge and are not pro-Netanyahu.

Adelson then bought the most important newspaper of the religious-nationalist right in Israel, Makor Rishon, long considered the main backer of Netanyahu’s biggest right-wing rival

Last November at a conference of the Israel American Council, a lobbying group Adelson has funded, he joked in a public discussion with a wealthy Israeli: “Why don’t you and I go after The New York Times?”

Told it was family owned, Adelson quipped, “There is only one way to fight it: money.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/opinion/thomas-l-friedman-is-it-sheldons-world.html

We need media that can’t be sold. And we need many of them. And we need them to be well-funded.

You don’t want to donate money to 1 guy alone on Substack. Perhaps he is well-meaning. But ideally, you want a newsroom. An actual organization with a track record of doing powerful work.

So here is a list of non-profit news organizations.

• The Guardian 🌍 🇬🇧 Headquartered in Britain but it’s the largest non-profit news organizations in the world.

• The Intercept 🇺🇸

• ProPublica 🇺🇸

• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism 🇬🇧

• The Walrus 🇨🇦

• The Tyee 🇨🇦

• La Presse 🏴󠁣󠁡󠁱󠁣󠁿

• Le Devoir 🏴󠁣󠁡󠁱󠁣󠁿

• Mediapart 🇫🇷

• Le Monde 🇫🇷

• Disclose 🇫🇷

• The Colorado Sun 🇺🇸

• The Honolulu Civil Beat

• Mississippi Today 🇺🇸

• The Reporters Collective 🇮🇳

• The Texas Tribune 🇺🇸

• California Matters 🇺🇸

• The Salt Lake Tribune 🇺🇸

Please support them. Even $1 a month is great. Complaining about corporate power on Lemmy is easy but it doesn’t achieve much.

Thank you