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Friend,
In the final crucial weeks before this year’s November election, we noticed something unprecedented and disturbing: traffic for our news reporting was going down—and fast—during a period when it typically surges.
In 2020, with the whole world watching to see whether Trump would be defeated—and with so much of what we all care about on the line—it simply didn’t compute to see traffic slumping, especially after a year in which Common Dreams traffic soared to historic heights overall.
And it wasn’t just us. Facebook admitted they had throttled traffic to several major progressive news outlets, including Mother Jones. Why? According to reporting by the Wall Street Journal it was to appease right-wing interests that have promoted the false narrative that social media platforms are biased against conservative outlets and ideas.
So basically it’s insane—but it also makes total sense. A Silicon Valley giant wants to keep the money flowing, but it’s under pressure to scale back on misinformation in the Trump era. But when it finds out that nearly all the “fake news” is actually on the right and not the left, it has to level the playing field, so it targets progressive sites like ours—which takes fact-based, progressive positions on the issues of war, economic inequality, the climate crisis, health care, and human rights—and equates that critical coverage with the fact-free propaganda of right-wing outlets.
Our common dreams, however, cannot be crushed, and we won’t allow anyone to silence our work or interrupt our mission: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
But we are under threat. With 2021 on the horizon, and a chance before us to break free from the damage and destruction of the last four years, now is the time for us to report the crucial stories, engage with the painful realities, and elevate the voices of those fighting for the better future we know is possible.
We have just over two weeks to meet our crucial end-of-year fundraising goal. Please, if you believe in our work, support Common Dreams today. We only win this fight together.
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