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You folks at the Media and Democracy Blog might be interested in this piece on impoverished and low-income Americans not being centered directly in the media-led debates and discourse. That's a a major democracy gap too.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/subramaniamvincent/2024/09/18/the-missing-swing-voters-whose-voices-we-need-to-hear/

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Thank you. Definitely something that has been a problem forever -- which is not to say it isn't important today.

Unfortunate, ironic, that it has a paywall but I was able to circumvent by changing browsers.

I believe that LBJ in 1964 was the last major-party presidential candidate to raise poverty as a matter of public concern.

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The comms team at the Markkula Center/Santa Clara University will republish it this week I think, and I’ll send you that link here. Sorry about the whole paywall thing!

In late 2019 the poor people’s campaign did hold town halls for candidates that Donald Trump declined to attend, and several Democratic Party candidates did. Warren, Sanders, Harris, etc. NYT had a piece on it then as well.

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Hi Jonathan, glad you circumvented it. And here's the republished version, to address the paywall problem from last week -- in case you feel like sharing out the piece.

https://www.scu.edu/ethics/all-about-ethics/the-missing-swing-voters-whose-voices-we-need-to-hear/

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Do you think that lack of media engagement results from the same thinking that causes the lack of political party engagement? Because poor people are less able to interact with media revenue models--by buying the things that are advertised, subscribing to papers, watching ads--poverty is given less attention by media?

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I suspect the class alignment argument could similar between parties campaigning with "likely voters" to win, and media campaigning for attention with "likely clickers". (Not my point. One political science academic at Harvard I spoke to told me this and I'm likely to quote her in my next piece.)

That said, empirical statements (stuff that describes how things are) are not normative implicitly. We specially need to ask what the north star for sourcing political journalism needs to be, independent of campaigns. Journalistic sourcing I believe can meet both goals. Source inclusively, center the poor, and still connect the dots to elections issues and legitimize voter participation as a broader aspiration.

And one reference for you: Class and Inequality - Why the Media Fails the Poor and Why This Matters

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003134749-27/class-inequality-faik-kurtulmus-jan-kandiyali

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Much appreciation for the link. It's quite interesting and provocative. I've wondered for years why the low income demographic wasn't talked about in political campaigns and would like more information about Buttigieg's comment re. consultants and why they advise candidates to avoid mentioning the poor.

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I had not realized Buttiegeg blogged about this very topic in Nov 2020. Here's what I found.

https://buttigieg.medium.com/the-deciding-decade-rev-dr-william-barber-ii-on-tackling-systematic-racism-and-combating-poverty-7139e200c4a2

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Thank you

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Please stop calling the media, almost entirely owned by the far right w/Putin’s help, mainstream. We have monopolized Corporate propaganda tv stations & radio. THEY ARE doing their jobs! Supporting the Fascist lovers! We have nor had “mainstream” for years!

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