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Alternative Media, also known as the Underground Press or Alternative Journalism, has gone up against the mighty Mainstream Media for a long time now, with the prevalent desire of serving the public the right way.

What is Alternative Media?

 

            Alternative Media, also known as the Underground Press or Alternative Journalism, has gone up against the mighty Mainstream Media for a long time now, with the prevalent desire of serving the public the right way. Alternative Media has taken on the responsibility of telling the truth, which is among the many things Mainstream Media has conveniently forgotten to do here in America. 

            Alternative Media is described as “communication media (newspapers, radio, television, movies, Internet, etc.) which are alternatives to the mainstream media, which are owned and controlled by big business and government.”[1]

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            What makes alternative media work is that it isn’t concerned with the ‘(alleged causes [such as heavy biases], which include the) political interests of the (corporate) owners, government influence and profit motive.’[2] The world of alternative media is comprised mostly of non-profit organizations, who would at the very least only desire financial support for the continued existence of their respective news outlets and mediums, whether they be through the internet, television or radio.

Alternative media serves to advocate truthful and unbiased journalism, which is presently spearheaded by the names such as Noam Chomsky, Bill Moyers, Edward S. Herman,  Robert McChesney, Phil Donahue, Dahr Jamail and Amy Goodman, among others.

Herman and Chomsky “proposed a concrete model for the filtering processes (biases) of mainstream media, especially in the United States, called the propaganda model. They tested this empirically and presented extensive quantified evidence supporting the model.”[3]

And so, the propaganda model is this theory which “that alleges systemic biases in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic causes.”[4]

Here is an “Overview” of the theory found on Wikipedia.[5]

            “…First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the propaganda model views the private media as businesses selling a product — readers and audiences (rather than news) — to other businesses (advertisers). The theory postulates five general classes of “filters” that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five are:

  1. Ownership of the medium
  2. Medium’s funding sources
  3. Sourcing
  4. Flak
  5. Anti-communist ideology

The first three are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important.

Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles which the model postulates as the cause of media biases…”

 

The Internet is Your Best Bet

If you really want to find news, Google can be your best friend.

The most obvious place to look for alternative media would be the Internet, without question. As arguably the most popular source of information on anything and everything in today’s world, it also serves as another medium for communication, including news, and more specifically, the news that mainstream media disregards and neglects to show, which can be found through “Alternative Media.”

Alternative Media focuses on the important stuff, and most of the time it revolves around stories that aren’t covered by big media corporations such as FOX and MSNBC simply because the stories aren’t part of their respective agendas.

One of the best ways to find the right type of websites is to go through the recommended links that a lot of other blogs have, especially now that we’re familiar with sites such as http://www.democracynow.org/ or http://www.commondreams.org/, as most of them defer with each other.

Now, as unreliable as Wikipedia.org is, my online research has led me to a page with a list[6] of perhaps the best and well-known sources for alternative media, with the following sites, net radio and TV Channels:

Finally, another option [and a personal favorite of mine] would be to look for blogs. This was also the primary focus of the presentation [that I did with Nick].

So what exactly are blogs?

Blogs, a.k.a Weblogs, are websites which are normally maintained individually, with regular posts of commentary, reporting or other types of media such as video or audio clips and photos.

In this case, blogs also have been serving as another form of Alternative Media.

            But in my personal opinion, if there was anything I learned in Newsmaking, it would be to take strides towards helping the cause against Corporate Media, and one way would be to start up your own blog, as I have. People have to start taking back their media, as it would be the biggest step we can take towards taking back our freedom and our liberties. It is about time that we took action, as people have began to become their own news source. Readers are becoming writers, and a lot of the audience are becoming reporters by being bloggers, as they should.

*Below are my featured blogs and websites based on browsing through the web:

Blogs

Top 3 Favorites

  • http://worldtopnews.blogspot.com/ – This blog covers various topics around the globe, as the name of the blog would suggest. What was interesting about the stories here were they range from political to economic to even health and science articles.
  • http://bicoltoday.wordpress.com/ – As a Filipino, I’m a bit biased by picking this particular blog (which is named after one of the major regions in the Philippines), but it is actually a poor Filipino’s version of Democracy Now. Bicol Today focuses not just on topics in the Philippines, but also around the world. I am mentioning this as an example because I think we need more of these type of blogs here in the U.S.
  • http://mirroronamerica.blogspot.com/ - Finally, we have Mirror on America, which is a lot like Bicol Today. The blog is run by five different contributors who post regularly about news, religion, politics, etc. 
The blog is also a self-proclaimed opposition to Mainstream Media, and the bloggers here would like to think they are helping the cause.

Other examples

Independent News Sites

Top 2 Favorites

  • http://www.rawstory.com/ – This website is a lot like Democracy Now, focusing on American politics and world news stories.
  • http://talkingpointsmemo.com/ – Not to steal one of the sites that Prof. Callahan goes to, but Talking Points Memo is actually featured on recommended links by Raw story and the rude pundit. TPM can be compared to CNN.com, except TPM has the stories you don’t see on TV.

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