Public, founded by Michael Shellenberger, has recently lost a significant number of subscribers. They responded with an editor’s note, which IMO was beautifully written. Here’s an excerpt:
Over the last week, we saw the single largest loss of subscribers we have seen in our nearly three years as a publication. Why?
These are some of the messages we received from unsubscribers:
“Don’t lecture us on human rights wrt fighting terrorism. The Geneva Convention wasn’t designed for this.”
“Unbalanced Pro-Israel garbage, amongst all the other garbage that’s been accumulating recently.”
“Comparisons between depraved terrorist atrocity and actions designed to ensure that its population can live in safety and security show too much of an absence of moral clarity (or possibly even worse as bordering on antisemitism) to continue following.”
“This tone-deaf most recent post defending free speech of Pro-Hamas supporters turned me off completely.”
“Your support for Israel and their war crimes is reprehensible.”
At first glance, it may appear that the commenters disagree with each other. After all, some people thought we were too pro-Israel, and others thought we weren’t pro-Israel enough. In truth, the commenters agreed that everything they read from us must completely align with their opinions.
We don’t expect our readers to agree with us all the time. We don’t even always agree with each other. Not every article we publish reflects the views of all the editors. Obviously, if our disagreements were so great, we would not work together. But on issues ranging from Ukraine to UAPs to Israelis and Palestinians, you can expect that we have plenty of debates and hold a diversity of views here.
To reiterate: we hope you continue to be a subscriber, paid and free. We are deeply grateful to all of you who are subscribers, and intend to remain ones. We don’t want anyone to unsubscribe, even if — especially if — you disagree with us on some, and even most, things.
We think highly of our readers and welcome healthy disagreements in the comments. We strive to correct any errors we make, and to consider multiple perspectives. We want Public to be an outlet that sometimes confirms your views, sometimes challenges you to think differently, and always gives you new ideas or information to consider.
This is what we seek out from the publications we read, and we want that to be what you find here.
But we would sooner close up shop than compromise on the principles that we hold as journalists, and that we think all journalists should hold. We strongly believe that the principle of human rights must be universally applied, or they are not human rights. We have the same view about freedom of speech: we believe speech rights apply equally to everyone, even those we most firmly disagree with.
