Friends:
Happy New Year and welcome to 2022 — the year that could be the beginning of the end of what’s left of American democracy and the planet’s livable ecosystem, unless things fundamentally change.
The Daily Poster’s regular publishing schedule starts back up tomorrow, but I just wanted to remind you about our first big live event of the year on Wednesday, January 5, with Academy Award-winning director Adam McKay, about the film Don’t Look Up (which I co-produced). The film is a climate allegory that instantly became the most popular movie on the world’s largest streaming platform.
Details about the live event are here — it is exclusive for our paying subscribers (click here to become one if you aren’t already). Make sure to watch the movie before the event, and consider reading this insightful article about the film.
I spent New Years Eve playing board games with the family and reading all of our subscribers’ end-of-the-year feedback — thank you so much for sending us such thoughtful input about the coming year, and for the kind words about Don’t Look Up.
If you’ve watched the film, you know the movie’s fictional TV show The Daily Rip is a proxy for how corporate media has become one of the big obstacles to addressing the crises bearing down on our world.
As we head into the new year, The Daily Poster will keep trying to be part of fixing that problem. At a moment when the ruling party seems barely interested in delivering on its promises and right-wing authoritarians are threatening to take over the government, we will do the opposite of what corporate media typically does: We will continue following the money, holding politicians accountable, and focusing on the emergencies that imperil humanity.
We will do that because we know that when it comes to journalism, corporate media will never be part of the solution — a more robust, independent reader-supported media is the only way forward.
Thank you for being part of our team as we head into the new year and expand our work. We will have more news on that expansion soon — until then, I hope to see you on January 5!
Rock the boat,
Sirota
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Over the weekend I went to see a new Philippine movie On The Job: The Missing Eight. It will be released on HBO as a series. This film shows what the next step is with regard to corporate media in the US when what we see happening with the two party system here continues to degenerate. The film was inspired by the fact that Cambridge Analytica tried out its Facebook profiling strategy in elections in the Philippines before employing them successfully in the Trump 2016 campaign. Both parties now routinely use fake news in the US. This film looks at what happens to the press in a situation where to do the job of journalism you have to align with one corrupt political party or the other and what happens when you try to print something approaching the truth when the consequences are like they now are in Mexico, Russia, and soon perhaps here in the US.
How close are we to this? Well as David points out, that scene in Don’t Look Up with the morning show is very very believable. Faced with dreadful news the reporters squirm for a way out. They know the consequences for reporting the truth. In many places in the US you will now find an alignment between news orgs, political machines, economic interests, and the police. This is where driving while black came from. One of the reporters for Daily Poster comes from a rich town where a popular black ex-policeman got into office and tried to put an end to police framing of suspects and was railroaded out of office by the Democratic machine with the help of the local paid off Dem press. So both parties engage in this. In that wealthy town people are still targeted for arrest if they are trouble makers and the party bosses still pull the strings while ordinary Dems get their propaganda fix from MSNBC and Repubs from Fox and are oblivious to the situation.
So Don’t Look Up is the humorous take on what is happening with the press now. On The Job: The Missing Eight is what happens post 2022 post 2024 when the next shoe drops.
To understand even more about what Daily Poster is trying to wake us up to I recommend renting “Collective”, a documentary made in 2019.
These three films will tell you more about our current situation than anything you read in the Washington Post or the New York Times.
Let’s all snap out of it in 2022.
Thanks for the recommendations. I was planning on a rewatch of Don't Look Up, but was unaware of the others you mention!