Can We Please Put Away the Smelling Salts?

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Just in case I wasn’t crystal clear this morning, I want to double down on my view that NPR shouldn’t have fired Vivian Schiller over James O’Keefe’s latest video sting operation. First, though, here’s a quick summary reminder of what Ron Schiller (no relation) said:

The two actors clearly goad Schiller into making observations, most of which are made after Schiller explicitly takes off his “NPR hat” to give his personal opinion. For example, Schiller says there aren’t enough “educated, so-called elite” Americans, adding that public opinion is driven by “this very large uneducated part of the population.”

Of tea partyers, he adds: “I mean, basically they … believe in sort of white, middle-America, gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

Here’s what I’d like to hear from more people: there was nothing wrong with Schiller saying this. Period. He’s a fundraiser, not a reporter. He’s allowed to have personal views. He’s allowed to express those views, even if they’re obnoxious or intemperate, and even if he’s doing it across the table from a potential donor. He did nothing wrong, and neither did his boss. He deserved, at most, a mild talking-to over this.

I can’t begin to tell you how tired I am of all the faux fainting couch nonsense we have to put up with these days from both left and right. People say stuff. They despise certain groups and certain people. They get passionate. If you cross a genuine line, that’s one thing. But I’m really weary of fairly ordinary political invective being routinely turned into a firing offense. It’s time for all of us to grow thicker skins and knock off this nonsense.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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