Disney Caves In to Journalist Boycott

Kevin Drum gets results!

Disney will no longer ban the Los Angeles Times from advance screenings of its movies following a backlash from critics groups, news outlets and journalists, who were boycotting those same screenings in protest.

OK, fine, it didn’t have anything to do with me:

The lifting of the blackout follows an outpouring of solidarity for the Times after the paper’s film coverage was blacked out by Disney due to a story that examined the business relationship between the company’s flagship Californian theme park, Disneyland, and the city of Anaheim….On Monday, entertainment sites like The A.V. Club and Flavorwire, as well as a pop culture writer for the Washington Post, said they would skip the screenings until the ban on the Times was lifted….The New York Times joined the growing boycott on Tuesday afternoon, not long before the reversal of the ban was announced.

Good for them. If we could just get political journalists to show the same kind of moxie toward the daily briefing, we’d really be cooking.

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A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

With just 4 days left, we need a huge surge in reader support to get to our $400,000 year-end goal. Whether you've given before or this is your first time, your contribution right now matters. All gifts are 3X matched and tax-deductible.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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