The Only Reason I Even Subscribe To Some Outlets Is So I Can Demonstratively Cancel

by Abir Mikledet, activist

New York, September 30 – The Atlantic. The New York Times. The Washington Post. The Los Angeles Times. I pay for delivery of, or online access to, all of them – not because I particularly value their reportage or editorial stances, but because it affords me the satisfaction of doing something visible when the latest furor erupts and I can strike a blow for whatever by demanding an end to the delivery or access arrangement as a result of the latest controversy involving the reporting or editorial choices of one of those establishments.

Naturally, I must also announce the cancelation on social media.

It’s so satisfying. Lots of plaudits. I’ve done something to show those corrupt propagandists they won’t get my money anymore, at least until they right their twisted ways! Look at the Likes my announcement has garnered!

Then within a few weeks I subscribe again, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do it again.

So far I’ve done this with the outfits I mentioned above, plus The Guardian, the Times of London, The BBC, and the New Yorker. In the case of The Guardian, I’ve canceled my subscription to its online content four times already. Even the vaunted New York Times has earned my cancelation wrath and online skewering a mere three times in the last four years.

Admittedly, several incidents of journalistic malpractice by NY Times personnel or stringers occurred during those interim periods between my cancelation and subsequent renewal, so the rankings are approximate.

Just last week, I canceled my subscription to the BBC for platforming a terrorism apologist. My post on X announcing the cancelation earned more than two hundred Likes, more than half of which I’m pretty sure weren’t from bots. Just today I paid for a new subscription, because I expect Israel’s assault on Gaza City to produce any number of news and analysis items that distort the facts, justify terrorism, and downplay or just ignore Jewish suffering, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that slide without a sternly-worded cancelation in response.

Sometimes I wish there were more famous media companies my subscriptions to which I could cancel in a huff. Ooh, huff. The Huffington Post. And Al Jazeera. I’ll get on that right away.

It’s too bad I can’t subscribe to Reuters, UPI, or any of the other business-to-business agencies. The best one can do with those is to make angry noises when other outlets use, say, a tendentious AP article, but outright cancelation of a subscription to the client organization’s content isn’t quite warranted.

*This* is twenty-first-century activism at its best.

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