Media picks and chooses which fundraising to criticize
February 7, 2022
The new American media is not covering itself with glory over GoFundMe and the Canadian truckers. The bias is a little too obvious. For example, BuzzFeed News reports how the fundraising site is to return all donations made. The piece doesn’t actually say that it is good that the funds won’t get through, that they are to be returned. But it also doesn’t say what we know they would have said about such fundraising efforts for Black Lives Matter. That it’s an outrage that donated funds will not be passed on.
Mashable follows the same line. Clearly, there is some approval of how interrupting this funding is happening, even if it’s not directly said. In a manner that the same happening to BLM would just not have been accepted.
It’s also remarkable how the same outlets aren’t detailing the problems BLM has over near zero financial records and, according to at least one report, apparently actually zero trustees of the cash pile that was raised.
The point is not that Canadian truckers are a valid cause, BLM is not. It’s also not that BLM is valid, the truckers are not. It is true though that the two instances are being wildly differently treated by that online media. That’s the bias that needs to be pointed out.
Controlling funds to the truckers is being reported in a manner that simply would not be done with BLM if the same had happened back then. Either folk may donate to demonstrations and demonstrators or they may not – it’s possible to argue either end of that. But to approvingly report on the choking off against a demonstration one disapproves of while ignoring similar problems with one approves of – that’s bias.
This is what is being called out. Not the decisions upon donations, the manner of the reporting on them.
Mashable gains some 8.5 million visits a month, Buzzfeed over 100 million. They’re both parts of this new online media which is replacing both newspapers and TV as the source of news for the younger generations. This attitude here, this contrast between truckers and BLM, is not limited to these sources either. It’s a general occurrence across this new media.
Just to emphasize the point here. At one point GoFundMe was insisting that the funds raised for those truckers would not be returned to donors. Instead, it would be distributed to charities chosen by GoFundMe and not the truckers. That’s flat-out theft. So where is the outrage? And can you even imagine the shouting if that had happened to BLM funds?