January 22, 2018

Cable News Has Basically Ignored the Massive Sexual Abuse Scandal Rocking US Gymnastics

“You even had the audacity to abuse me in my own bed, in my own room at the Olympics,” one former gymnast testified last week.

Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman gives her victim impact statement at Larry Nassar hearing. Dale G. Young/Detroit News/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Since last Tuesday, nearly 100 women have confronted Larry Nassar, formerly a team doctor for USA Gymnastics and a doctor at Michigan State University’s sports medicine clinic who has pled guilty to multiple counts of sexual assault and child pornography, one by one recounting harrowing stories of abuse. The number of those giving statements is expected to rise to 144 by the time Nassar is sentenced later this week. They include former patients, college athletes, and gymnasts, as well as several high-profile Olympians, including three members of the gold-medal-winning London 2012 US gymnastics team—Aly Raisman, McKayala Maroney, and Jordyn Wieber. Many of the women are also condemning USA Gymnastics and MSU for their poor handling of the allegations against Nassar.

And yet, the three major cable news channels dedicated just shy of 20 minutes of combined air time to the Nassar hearings, according to an analysis by Media Matters. 

To be fair, it was a week dominated by the threat of a government shutdown, but, as Media Matters puts it, this is “one of the largest-scale sexual abuse stories in recent history,” coming “at a time when the #metoo movement is flourishing in some other industries.” Even so, it didn’t really break through on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. CNN dedicated just about 12 minutes of coverage to the court proceedings last week, much of it on Friday, when New Day co-anchor Alisyn Camerota spoke to Jamie Dantzscher, a former Olympic gymnast who told the former doctor in court: “You even had the audacity to abuse me in my own bed, in my own room at the Olympics.” Before then, the network had spent just four minutes on Nassar coverage.  

What’s more, it wasn’t just coverage of the Nassar hearing that failed to gain air time. Even as scores of protesters flocked the streets over the weekend to rally a year after the Women’s March, Media Matters found that the Sunday talk shows spent little time covering the demonstrations. Apart from a mention from a conservative panelist on CBS’ Face the Nation and acknowledgments from hosts at ABC’s This Week and NBC’s Meet the Press, the most significant discussion came during a 20-second exchange between panelists on Meet the Press, according to Media Matters. 

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate