The recent campaign behind the hashtag #PressOn wants you to ultimately support facts by ponying up cash to pay for journalism.
You may have heard of the campaign via Twitter after hundreds of people began using the hashtag.
Hollywood stars, including Ben Stiller, Mariska Hargitay, Los Angeles Clipper J.J. Redick and Steve Kerr (coach of the Golden State Warriors) support the cause.
The idea allegedly began in a private Twitter message thread among journalists and other media members.
Jordan Brenner r of Bleacher Report was originally called the mastermind of the hashtag but later gave credit to Allison Glock for coming up with the pro-journalism movement adding, “She should be a writer.”
“The very concept of truth is under siege, so journalism is more important than ever,” Brenner wrote in a tweet. “Subscribe to an outlet & tweet your receipt. #PressOn”
Brenner tweeted to his more than 4,000 followers on Thursday morning. This resulted in high-profile media and entertainment figures chiming in.
“We all need to accept the same truths,” Stiller wrote. “Facts are facts. Subscribe to a real journalism outlet. Tweet your receipt #PressOn”
“I subscribed to the Washington Post today because facts matter #PressOn,” Kerr wrote.
The #PressOn campaign was fueled in response to what some Twitter users are calling the “new Trump era.”
During his campaign and in his numerous Twitter insults, President Donald Trump has called various media outlets “dishonest” and “fake,” indicating to many followers that he and his administration are a threat to free speech and freedom of the press in their “war on the media.” After press secretary Sean Spicer lied about the crowd sizes at Trump’s inauguration, the president’s counselor Kellyanne Conway referred to the easily disproven falsehoods as “alternative facts.”
After President Trump won the 2016 presidential election, there were reports that the mentioned news outlets saw increases in subscriptions and donations.
One could only assume that this was in direct response of President Trump’s threats to the First Amendment. Unless you’re living under a rock, you should be familiar with Trump’s many episodes via Twitter.
“Dishonest media says Mexico won’t be paying for the wall if they pay a little later so the wall can be built more quickly,” Trump wrote. “Media is fake!”
President Trump later mistook a fake news article for a legitimate one and tweeted it to his 20 million followers.
Supporting the real news outlet isn’t such a bad thing.
After all, if the leader of the free world cannot tell the difference between what’s real and fake news or has mistaken it at least once, then we should do all what we can to fight fake facts with real journalism.
