Photo: Mitt Romney Breaking Ground at Public Broadcasting Station, 2005

Yes, we’ve all heard and seen the meme: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney loves Big Bird and PBS, but still pledges to cut off government funding, due to the fact that PBS is a drain on the federal budget and requires money borrowed from China to stay afloat. (No.)

Here’s a photo of then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, at a WGBH groundbreaking ceremony in Brighton, Boston back in 2005:

WGBH is  WGBHWGBH provides non-commercial educational public radio and television, and is a PBS member station. WGBH.orgClick here to read about how Gov. Romney signed a bill that would later ensure millions of dollars in funding for nefarious, budget-killing public TV in Massachusetts for years to come.

And in case you were wondering, yes, WGBH does indeed carry Sesame Street.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

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