500 signatures reached
To: New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NPR, Fox, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Star Tribune
Demand the Media Cover the GOP's Coup Plans!
"A failed coup is practice for a successful coup,” Timothy Snyder, Yale historian. “The scenario goes like this. The Republicans win back the House and Senate in 2022, in part thanks to voter suppression. The Republican candidate in 2024 loses by several million and the electoral vote by the margin of a few states. State legislators, claiming fraud, alter the electoral vote count. The House and Senate accept that altered count. The losing candidate becomes the president. We no longer have ‘democratically elected’ government.”
"The only way fascism wins is if the free press covers fascism v. democracy like just another cats and dogs political fight," Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut.
We are petitioning the media to accurately cover the current Republican Party and their authoritarian plans.
”What the Republican Party is doing today is unprecedented in our history – going along with subversion of the Constitution.” -- Investigative journalist Carl Bernstein.
The media must inform and educate American voters.
Why is this important?
1. Democracy must be the main story. Newspapers, television, and radio need to increase the frequency and in-depth reporting on democracy issues. Americans have to understand the strategies planned to manipulate elections – the voter suppression laws, extreme gerrymandering, replacement of honest election officials, and the scenarios for a losing candidate in 2024 to be declared the winner.
2. Stop routine “bothsides-ism" when covering the two major parties – half of the coverage to one and half to the other regardless of merit. Media should cover the facts and refute the lies -- not propagate them or give them equal time and space. When democracy is under attack, journalists should not cover it like politics as usual.
3. Journalists must hold politicians accountable. They must persistently interrogate every politician who is promoting lies. According to a recent CNN poll, “Almost 6 in 10 (59%) of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said that ‘believing that Donald Trump won the 2020 election’ was very or somewhat important to what being a Republican meant to them.” Almost all Republican officeholders and candidates have repeated lies about that election and January 6. The media are responsible for reporting the truth and countering the lies.
4. The press should not allow Koch organizations to receive free promotion of their op eds or commentaries. The Center of the American Experiment, the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and many others are part of a coordinated group funded by the Koch donor network. Their anti-voter, anti-democracy agenda is well documented in Nancy MacLean’s book, Democracy in Chains, and should be exposed by the media.
Indivisible MN03 has endorsed this petition. We are asking you to also sign and demand the media cover the struggle to save democracy!