Cancel The New York Times, Receive Reward
I interviewed Current Affairs Editor-in-Chief, Nathan J. Robinson, about their innovative attempt to hold legacy media to account and foster independent journalism.
Does the New York Times habit of arguing for illegal wars make you want to cancel your subscription?
Well, now you can receive a reward for doing just that.
After Times columnist Bret Stephens advocated this week for the United States to illegally overthrow the government of Venezuela, progressive political magazine Current Affairs had had enough, posting to their social media accounts that they’d give free, year-long digital subscriptions to anyone who provided them with proof that they’d cancelled their subscription to the New York Times.
In an interview yesterday, I spoke with Current Affairs Editor-in-Chief, Nathan J. Robinson, about his piece detailing this latest Times failure and the dangers inherent to their decades of casual war-mongering.
One of the basic questions that was not answered in Bret Stephens’ piece is, ‘What about the fact that this would be illegal?’ The UN charter, international law, they don’t even enter into Bret Stephens’ analysis. And that’s not just a failing of Bret Stephens, but that’s a failing of the New York Times editors who when they got this draft in their inbox didn’t look at it and go, ‘Bret, you’re going to have to rewrite this, because you haven’t even addressed the fact that the war you’re advocating is illegal.’
As of Tuesday night, Current Affairs had gifted over 200 subscriptions which they said represented a loss to the New York Times of $60,000 dollars in revenue. Sure, this is a drop in the bucket for the Times and its $9 billion dollar valuation. But Current Affairs made the point on their social media accounts that “it’s important to exact a price for pushing war propaganda.”
We could very quickly defund Bret Stephens specifically…At the very least for publishing this column we’ve gotten people to withdraw the amount of money that you pay Bret Stephens annually to write this drivel.
The Times cancellations haven’t stopped. As of yesterday, Robinson told me, the magazine had gifted Current Affairs digital subscriptions to over 300 people.
On what Times coverage like this does to readers:
What they’ve done by printing that column is discouraged their readers from even thinking about the question of legality and reinforced the dangerous presumption that the United States has an inherent right to, if we want to, take out any government around the world. That we don’t even have to think about whether it’s legitimate. And I think that’s so outrageous and so dangerous. That’s why we said, ‘Ok, well, we’ve gotta think about how there can be consequences for a media outlet that pushes that kind of line.’
Nathan and the Current Affairs staff are encouraging exactly the kind of action we all need to take to bolster journalism, democracy’s immune system. Moving our dollars away from war-mongering media and using those funds to grow and sustain public interest newsrooms is one way we save journalism.
We’re trying to not just have this be self-promotional. In my article I also cited other independent outlets like Drop Site News, The Lever, The Intercept, Zeteo, Jacobin…when people are saying to us, ‘Oh, but the New York Times is doing lots of good reporting.’ We say, ‘Yes, but the more people [who] move their financial support from the New York Times over to these independent outlets…the more we can do. We have a staff of six. We’d love to have a staff of sixty. We’d love to be able to do a lot more of this kind of journalism. When people start making that shift, when they start supporting independent outlets that don’t have an opinion section that pushes new war crimes, they are enabling the flourishing of the kind of journalism that ultimately they want to see.
So do your part. Cancel your Times subscription and send proof to help@currentaffairs.org. Tell’em Public Enlightenment sent ya.
The New York Times will be fine. And you’ll be doing the important work of boosting the type of interesting, essential, and fact-based journalism that we the people require to fight the forces of fascism.
And don’t stop at Current Affairs. Check out my list, The News, on Bluesky to find even more great pro-democracy journalism for you to sustain and grow with a donation or subscription (even just sharing their work online helps!). Then head to the Media and Democracy Project’s local journalism directory to find local outlets you can support in this time when journalism and democracy are under attack.
Be sure to check out my full interview with Nathan here:
Don’t keep this to yourself! Share this article as well as the short video below (versions available on Instagram and YouTube as well):
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Public Enlightenment provides the context we need to understand the news. Every like, follow, repost, and paid subscription helps me continue the work of providing you with ways to improve our information ecosystem so that we all achieve healthier outcomes. Help me fight like hell to improve everyone’s media diet.
I livestream most weekday afternoons on TikTok (3:30pm ET). Watch my videos about information nutrition on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram (it really helps when you repost them). Easily access fact-based, pro-democracy news sources using the Lists on my Bluesky.
Like this post!
Restack it using the ♻️ button below!
Share this post on other social media sites.