April 3, 2014

Fox News Sends Reporter to Cover Spring Break in Florida. But What About Benghazi?

Fox News host and prominent knockout-game-myth purveyor Sean Hannity announced this week an investigation into spring break. Here’s the first installment, in which Fox correspondent Ainsley Earhardt heads to Panama City. (For the second installment, click here). The Hannity segment covers binge-drinking, twerking, premarital sex, public drug use, and other things young hooligans perpetrate while on spring break:

“Ainsley recalled that some people were actually having sex on the beach, while girls were flashing the crowds for Mardi Gras-style beads,” the Fox News blog reads. (Erin Gloria Ryan of Jezebel has some of the segment’s money quotes here, including, “I have vodka and Red Bull and I’m getting crunk than a mug!”)

Well, at least it isn’t another Fox segment on Benghazi.

Also, you can compare the quality of the very real and outraged Fox coverage of spring break to the very fake and outrage coverage carried out by KHBX—the fictional news team in Comedy Central’s short-lived, Zach Galifianakis-starring satire Dog Bites Man. Enjoy:

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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.

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