Sign Our Open Letter To News Organizations: “Urgent Need For Pro-Democracy 2024 Election Coverage”

American media must advocate for democracy. We created guidelines for election coverage so that you can hold newsrooms accountable.

Will America continue to be a democracy in 2025? Leaders of our major news organizations don’t seem to care. The recent hiring of Ronna McDaniel at NBC News showed that corporate media puts access, clicks, and profits above informing voters about threats to our democracy. Those warped priorities mean too few Americans fully comprehend that the upcoming elections are an existential choice between democracy and authoritarianism.

Newsrooms are lulling the public into a false sense of security about what Trump and his allies plan for 2025. Too many journalists normalize Trump’s extremist rhetoric and criminal actions, treat electoral politics (and the massive impact it has on our lives) as a drama-filled sport, and make false equivalencies between a candidate campaigning to uphold democratic institutions and another who is at war with them. We’re doing something about this and we need your help. 

Democracy’s Survival Requires Newsrooms To Reset, Focus On What’s At Stake 

You can be part of the solution. We have created pro-democracy election coverage guidelines for newsrooms and we are attaching them to an open letter for you to sign on to. The guidelines serve as a model of what pro-democracy election coverage can—and should—look like. They draw inspiration from journalism experts Margaret Sullivan, Jay Rosen, Dan Froomkin, and others. This letter will be distributed to the leadership of all major news organizations.

Signing our letter ensures that your frustrations with media’s failure to stand up for American democracy will be heard loud and clear. Beyond that, you can use the guidelines as a tool to demand better coverage by writing letters to the editor, or reaching out directly to journalists, when you see media failures (you should also praise journalists when they do a great job!). Let the guidelines serve as your justification for detaching from corporate media that under-informs. Be inspired instead to invest your attention and money in a local journalism subscription (our 50-state, searchable directory of outlets worth supporting is here).

Share the letter and guidelines with friends, civic organizations, and everyone who cares about the future of America so they can advocate for better media, too. Join thought leaders like Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Nancy MacLean, Victor Pickard, and former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob who have already signed on.

Read the letter and guidelines and sign on here: https://www.mediaanddemocracyproject.org/2024-election-coverage 

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X/Twitter: @MAD_Democracy and @FixMediaNow

Mastodon: http://journa.host/@MAD_democracy

If you have feedback, ideas on how to amplify this effort or would like to discuss possible collaboration, please email us at info@MediaAndDemocracyProject.Org