UPDATE: Almost 800 1,000 folks have signed our petition to the publisher of The Oregonian! Please add your name by our midnight deadline on Sunday so that we can deliver our petition early next week!
I was so proud to be an Oregonian on Sunday night when I watched more than 4,000 of my neighbors walk across the Hawthorne Bridge (Portland, Oregon) hand-in-hand to show support for a gay couple that had been brutally attacked on that very spot a week earlier simply because they were holding hands.
1
As KATU's Tim Gordon noted, "It was an amazing turnout for an event that was publicized just 72 hours ago with a single Facebook page."2
However, our state's largest media outlet,
The Oregonian, failed to cover the rally at all. This is the same paper that reported on a 15-person Tea Party protest in Portland!
3
Tell The Oregonian's publisher: We are not invisible!
It is unfair to cover Tea Party rallies, but ignore 4,000 Oregonians holding hands against hate.
Unfortunately, giving short shrift to progressives has become increasingly common in the year and a half since N. Christian Anderson III became The Oregonian’s new publisher.
As our friends at Our Oregon have noted, "First, the paper famously flipped its opinion on ballot measures 66 and 67 after its new publisher took over, then opened up its front page to advertising (reversing their previous decision) by opponents to the measures, and has since tried to censor political advertisements from the Portland Schools’ Bond campaign that Anderson also doesn't agree with."4
Sign our petition demanding that The Oregonian’s publisher apologize for this unfair treatment and outline a plan to provide REAL “fair and balanced” news coverage in the future.
Sources:
1.“Thousands Hold Hands Across Hawthorne Bridge to Protest Anti-LGBT Violence,” Just Out, May 30, 2011
http://blogout.justout.com/...
2. “Thousands rally at Hands Across Hawthorne,” KATU, May 30, 2011
http://portlandcitycenter.katu.com/...
3. “Tea Party Protest in Portland,” The Oregonian, October 25, 2010
http://videos.oregonlive.com/...
4. “Is Oregon Capitol News an “Independent” News Outlet?,” Our Oregon, May 9, 2011
http://ouroregon.org/...