Checking for Truth
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The media can help or hinder. We need them to help.
We need a free, independent, fair, accurate press to call out anti-democracy acts—such as voter suppression—for for what they are.
We need the press to be accountable
so we can hold our elected officials accountable.
And that means we need watchdogs keeping vigil against both-sidesism, laundering, and other forms of media complicity. These watchdogs do this yeoman’s work.
Minding the Media with Accountability Watchdogs
In a functioning democracy, a free media keeps both government and private actors visible and accountable to the public. Over the past 40 years, however, the media has increasingly pandered to corporate interests and right-wing agitators.
There are diligent, principled journalists who work to hold the media accountable and keep up the pressure for media to do their job fairly and ethically. Here are a few whom we follow and support.
Jay Rosen
“Today we say ‘media’ instead of ‘the press.’ But it’s a mistake. The press has become the ghost of democracy in the media machine, and we need to keep it alive.”
Rosen has been a professor of journalism at NYU for more than thirty years. His writings illuminate best journalistic practices, the many ways trust in the press can erode, and what can happen when that trust is lost.
Press Think: Rosen’s long-form blog of more than a decade, which goes into a level of depth that regular news rarely matches. Be prepared to spend some time reading and thinking. (Press Think derives its name from the doctrine and philosophy of journalism, how journalists actually practice it, and particularly how they examine and improve on their own work.)
Poynter Institute: Training for journalists on the civic and democratic responsibilities of their work, with a focus on fact-checking, local media and diversity going back many decades.
Eric Boehlert (1965–2022)
Boehlert was a media critic who’s been monitoring right-wing disinformation for the past two decades. Long before the 2016 election, when right-wing propaganda became visibly mainstream, Boehlert was revealing how that propaganda leaches into and displaces established media culture.
Boehlert passed away in Montclair, NJ on Monday, April 4, 2022. He was 57.
Eric Boehlert wrote on:
Pressrun Media: A journal about critiquing and holding the press accountable, drawing attention to bad media practices and assuring readers that they aren’t losing their minds: what you see is actually happening.
Media Matters for America: A longstanding news watchdog covering the transformation of nominally conservative media into right-wing disinformation and propaganda outlets.
Dan Froomkin
“The uncontrolled spread of lies is anathema to everything American journalism stands for. Fighting it is the calling of our time.”
Prior to 2014, this long-time journalist and media critic worked at several major publications including the Washington Post. In the past decade he has written frequently on press and government accountability. Since 2017 he has focused primarily on the extremes of disinformation bringing our democracy into crisis. He currently heads up PressWatch.
Dan Froomkin writes on:
Presswatch: “An Intervention for Political Journalism”: Presswatch reports on how the modern media lost its way and works to return journalism to properly informing the American electorate. The site zeroes in on the plague of disinformation since the 2016 election and calls out the many faces of the Big Lie.
Nieman Watchdog Project: As is implied by it’s name the Nieman Watchdog Project is focused on how journalists can hold government accountable.
Straight to the Source
We don't assume our messaging works just because we like how it sounds. We know it works because a large and growing body of research and polling confirms it. The resources here present data that undergirds our messaging choices.
Catalist
Analysts and pollsters rely on this data source that also expands our knowledge of voting demographics. Their published reports help us understand the collective needs of the diverse majority of Americans in Team YOU.
Report: What Happened in 2020: The demographics of the 2020 election, who voted and who didn’t, and in what numbers. Understanding who voted in 2018 and 2020 is critical to understanding who will vote in 2022–2024.
Equis Labs
This organization analyzes how various types of messaging reach Latinx Americans, an enormous population with diverse political opinions. Equis Labs’ work translates vague or naive ideas about ethnicity into a vibrant and complex understanding of what Americans truly care about—and how we can craft messages to reach every community.