Publisher of the Martha’s Vineyard Times, Charles Sennott, spoke to the Island’s Rotary Club Wednesday at the PA Club in Oak Bluffs discussing the need for community support to help sustain the Island’s newspaper amid what he called a national crisis in local journalism and truth.
According to a Northwestern University study in 2023, two-and-a-half newspapers are closing a week on average in America and Sennott, founder of the GroundTruth Project and Report for America, is proactively searching for ways to continue supporting the next generation of public service journalism, what he considers to be the first line of defense against big media misinformation.
More locally, Sennott announced to the Rotary Club that next week, the Martha’s Vineyard Times will launch a new campaign to gather support from Islanders — through subscriptions, advertising and donations — with more details to be announced in next week’s print edition.
“Hopefully, through community support we can deepen our community coverage and hear from you about what are the issues we need to cover and how we can best cover them,” Sennott said.
Sennott is thankful for having two newspapers on Island and believes it’s part of the reason it continues to have a well informed community.
“Counties without local news sources, we call these ‘news deserts,’” Sennott told Rotary Club members on Wednesday. “When there is a desert, it’s not that nothing happens — those communities are susceptible to really toxic flows of misinformation and disinformation from the left, the right and all over the place,” he said. “They no longer have people in their community who they trust.”
Agree with this story. However, Americans have lost faith in our news outlets. Their approval rating is in the low teens. Why? Political bias. From ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, CNN, MSDNC, WaPo, LA Times, NYT, Boston Globe etc, readers face overwhelming bias that favors liberals/progressives/socialists/Democrats. We’ve had enough and are not buying (literally) what they are selling. (See Russian Hoax campaign, Hunter Biden laptop coverup, Joe Biden health coverup, Kamala Harris’ campaign, Trump lawfare campaign.) I’d rather read the MV Times than the Boston Globe any day. I really enjoy the local reporting, photos, announcements and even the ads. I read the editorials just to know what others are thinking…and that’s a good thing. If this election told us anything, it was that Americans are not fools, and cannot be bought or fooled by shiny celebrities, expensive advertising campaigns or biased reporting. Journalism is suffering a historic low as it suffers from a self-inflicted credibility problem. Here’s to journalism rediscovering its mission!
Political bias.
From Fox, Newsmax, Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit, The New York Post, InfoWars, The Blaze,
The Daily Wire, The Epoch Times, The Daily Caller etc, readers face overwhelming bias that favors MAGA, Conservatives, Republicans, RINOs, the Trump crotch grabbing.
Except for Fox News, none of those you listed are significant and are overwhelmed daily by the MSM. I’ve never heard of some of those. Most people get their news from MSM so let’s focus on that.
I’ve heard of most of them. Even watched or read some of them. They are extremely biased and quite untruthful. And many folks in the new Republican Party do in fact consider them to be MSM. But, like you, I don’t.
I’ve lost faith in an America where we think we can displace millions of people and somehow we convince ourselves how wonderful we are to do so.
Give the Island people truthful, in depth news on issues that are important for them to know and think about. Let’s have a winter conversation with all the Island Select Boards on the stage and the audience about the current state of affairs and are we good with where we are and where we are going ……are we happy and enjoying the ride?
The majority of journalists at MSM (newspapers, TV, radio) all across the country are dishonest, unethical, discriminatory and prejudiced presenting a one sided conversation against conservatives. MSM is losing viewers/listeners and employees because of their lack of impartiality and unfair reporting. MV Times is representative of this national failure to thrive. Digital/social media are growing significantly and will replace print and broadcast media in the near future.
While I subscribed to the MV Times when it became a paid newspaper under the editorship of the inestimable Doug Cabral, the editorial orientation under Steve Bernier has shifted so dramatically and become so one-sided that I now only use it for the obituaries and weekly Stop & Shop ads. It has gone from being “news” to simply an “opinion piece”. So sad.
Do you mean to say the the MVT opinion pieces accurately reflects the body politic of the Island?
Dukes County, Massachusetts
Harris: 8,988 votes 74.9%
Trump: 2,721 votes 22.7%
You have chosen to live in a pit f Liberalism, you are free to go.
What do you use the Vineyard Gazette for.
Toilet paper?
My first comment disappeared, lol. It was a good one, too. Truthful.
This story is like wondering why Harris lost the election.
Well, jackie it depends on the what the definition of truth is. In the last 4 years we have seen several seen generally accepted definitions of words change simply to further the gaslighting of the American public with the medias help of course. So many of my comments get moderated for reasons I truly don’t understand other than what’s painfully obvious to both you and I.
Go woke; go broke.
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