“Bringing America together.
Uniting our people.
And uniting our nation.
History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity.
We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors.
We can treat each other with dignity and respect.
We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature.
For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.
No progress, only exhausting outrage.
No nation, only a state of chaos.
This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge.
Unity is the path forward.
And, we must meet this moment as the United States of America.
I ask every American to join me in this cause.”
There is no "them", only US.
The circus is cancelled. The public has been exploited long enough. Modern media has capitalized on our differences, pitting us against one another for attention and ad revenue. From social media to cable news, the Attention Economy has left us bankrupt of empathy, while the most extreme, divisive, emotionally charged words and figures win the widest circulation and most dollars.
Now our Republic is at stake. Faith in government to bring us together no longer exists. The private sector, with a commitment to stakeholder capitalism, can partner with the media funded by their ad dollars to stop the bleeding. This can be achieved by reducing support for programming engineered to divide us, instead rewarding that which brings together diverse audiences for collaboration and progress with fairness, reliability, and a spirit of respect for all. Members of the media want to end the cycle of insanity but need the support of the corporations who sponsor and distribute them.
We are the Media Roundtable, bringing together leaders in business and media to elevate the national conversation and restore dignity to our media products and the audiences they serve. In collaboration with the National Institute for Civil Discourse, we are a not-for-profit-only platform and resource committed to positive change. Peruse our resources, learn about solutions, and support the cause by signing our pledge. This is not about accusing “bad” people.
Our strategy hinges on the use of more carrot, less stick. This is about all people coming together to restore unity in our broken nation and corporations partnering with media to lead the way. No matter where you came from, we’re glad you’re here.
-Philo-Publius
"What we need is we need more commingling of political views. Diversity is important, not just diversity in terms of ethnicity and gender and sex and all that. Also, diversity of thought.”
-Katie Herzog, journalist and Co-host of Blocked & Reported podcast
Partners
National Institute for Civil discourse
Keith Allred, Executive Director
In 2011, the University of Arizona created NICD after the Tucson shooting that killed six people and wounded thirteen others, including former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Although many people know about this incident now, fewer people know that Congresswoman Giffords was already in discussion with the University of Arizona about creating a center to study how to improve the quality of civil conversation. The Tucson community came together to create NICD, a non-partisan organization based at the University of Arizona to promote healthy and civil political debate. NICD is devoted to the same principles that motivated Congresswoman Giffords: that people with different values and political preferences can discuss their differences in a civil and productive manner. The galvanizing power of that event brought together an impressive, bipartisan group of leaders to work on these issues, including but not limited to George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, it’s founding co-chairs, as well as Madeleine Albright, Katie Couric, General Colin L Powell, Sandra Day O’Connor and others.
Keith Allred became the Executive Director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse on January 1, 2019. He was recruited to lead NICD because he had recently launched CommonSense American, a new organization that brings Republicans, Democrats, and Independents together from across the country to find and champion solutions with broad support. Impressed by the successful five-year state pilot, leadership invited Keith to make NICD the platform for CommonSense American and to integrate it with NICD’s other programs to revive civility and enhance problem solving across the partisan divide.
Keith has also served in a variety of business leadership roles. Most recently, he was a partner at the Cicero Group, ranked the 12th best boutique management consulting firm in the world by Vault.com. Prior to Cicero, he served as COO of Health Catalyst. Keith’s leadership there played a critical role in attracting a major investment by Sequoia Capital. He is a member of the Board of Directors for Midas Gold, which trades on the Toronto Exchange (TSX: MAX).
oxford road
Dan Granger, Founder & CEO
Dan Granger is CEO and Founder of Los Angeles Audio Ad Agency, Oxford Road. Oxford Road helps fast-growth companies scale their efforts in Podcasts, Radio, and DRTV. By offering the combined capabilities of Media, Analytics, and Creative Development, Oxford Road guarantees superior performance for brands that qualify for their services. Oxford Road was one of Inc 500’s Fastest Growing Private Companies in 2017 and has supported the growth of over 12 Unicorn Companies (Private companies valued over $1Billion) to date. Through Oxford Road, Dan publishes a weekly newsletter, The Influencer, and is host of the Media Roundtable podcast. Dan is also the creator of Audiolytics™, a creative analytics process, proprietary to Oxford Road. Audiolytics™ offers a uniform system to create and score ads based on 71 weighted components to drive maximum performance in-market. His writing and thought leadership has been featured in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Digiday, Business Insider, The Drum, Ad Week, and The New York Post.
Ad Fontes Media
Vanessa Otero, Founder & CEO
At Ad Fontes Media, our mission is to make news consumers smarter and news media better. This is a tall order because we have a big problem in our news media landscape: too much junk news. Junk news is like junk food, and just like junk food has caused a massive health epidemic in our country, junk news is causing a massive polarization epidemic.
We are optimistic that together, we can rise to this challenge. It is imperative that we do so. A problem this big requires a multi-pronged solution and participation from all the stakeholders in good journalism. We analyze and rank news content and display those rankings in a way that is easy for people to understand.
Vanessa Otero is a practicing patent attorney in the Denver, Colorado area. She has a B.A. in English from UCLA and a J.D. from the University of Denver. She is the original creator of the Media Bias Chart, and founded Ad Fontes Media in February of 2018 to fulfill the need revealed by the popularity of the chart–namely, the need for a map to help people navigate the complex media landscape, and for comprehensive content analysis of media sources themselves.
partner, advertising liaison
Shane Pittson
As a partner and liaison with advertisers Shane seeks to find ways that marketers and advertisers can contribute to improvements in our media media landscape, as well as assisting marketers with navigating the media landscape. This perspective is formed through his experience as an advisor, leader and marketer for leading brands in the CPG and DTC space. He studied Information Systems at BYU where he was a Crocker Innovation Fellow. Shane is now the VP of Growth at quip, the modern oral health brand based in Brooklyn. After joining quip in 2015 as their first employee, he has developed systems for growth and operations to scale as the brand has grown to serve millions of mouths. His perspective has been covered by VOX, Fast Company, Digiday, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Cambridge Negotiation Institute
Bob Bordone, Founder and Principal
Robert C. Bordone is an internationally-recognized expert, author, speaker, and teacher in negotiation, conflict resolution, mediation, and facilitation. A Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School, he served on the full-time faculty at Harvard Law School for more than twenty years as the Thaddeus R. Beal Clinical Professor of Law, Director, and Founder of the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program before launching his full-time consulting, advisory, speaking, and training practice. During the current academic year, Bob has been Visiting Clinical Professor of Conflict Transformation at the Boston University School of Theology. He has also been an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
As a professional facilitator, mediator, and conflict management consultant, Bob works with individual, non-profit, governmental, and corporate clients across many sectors. He specializes in assisting individuals and groups seeking to manage conflicts in highly sensitive, emotional, or difficult situations. His corporate clients have included Premera Blue Cross, Health Net, Gap, Inc., Fidelity Investments, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Exelon, Heineken, and Microsoft. In addition, he has worked on projects with many nonprofit, educational, governmental and cultural institutions including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Massachusetts General Hospital, Dartmouth College, the Swiss Foreign Ministry, the U.S. Department of Justice, the United Way, the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Seeds of Peace, and the Vienna School of Economics and Business Administration.