True, David, excellent point! It's why I hesitated even to recommend nonprofit/independent outlets. The reality is that it's impossible to find completely unbiased news because the news is reported on by human beings who all have a bit of inherent bias. But like you said, not all independent sites are completely devoid of conflicts of interest.
Thorough and straightforward assessment of everything that I wish all people would become aware of. I was just old enough on 9/11 to open my eyes to all the changes described in this article, and I am a healthy-minded freedom-loving individual because of it.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read and share your feedback! I think 9/11 was an eye-opener for many of us in different ways. And glad to hear you're in a mentally strong place, it's no small feat these days!
I read this on Children's Health Defense and came here, to the horse's mouth ;-) Really excellent piece and so important. I've been following Project Censored for a decade. I also listened religiously to Amy Goodman up until 2-3 yrs ago when every story seemed to be about Trump. I think she's an example of the capture of independent media by the wokespeak narrative. My theory is that Trump was the Great Setup to the Great Reset, and was as repugnant as possible to make the left go the opposite way into obedient, pro-Pharma, pro-high tech, pro-censorship, pro-propaganda warmongers.
But you might be interested in a radio piece I did 13 yrs ago on a book called The Soap Opera Paradigm by James H. Wittebols who i"lluminates the devolution of news into the serial radio drama. Personally, I thought that radio and TV had always been infotainment sponsored by and for profit. My biggest surprise was finding out that wasn't the norm when radio and TV began. As we look at how our expectations for journalism and integrity have been lowered, it's notable that we the people wanted and recognized high quality before junk media, like junk food, hooked us on pre-digested bursts of quick sensations. Media is now the simple carbohydrate of the mind--empty calories fostering a lazy metabolism." http://thirdparadigm.org/3p_024.php
To save you the trouble, I'll excerpt the relevant part here:
One of the points that fascinated me was about the early days of radio, subtitled "Who Owns the Airwaves?" It details how a US govt-corporate consortium – the Radio Corporation of America or RCA – secured a monopoly on all the patents for broadcast and reception. During WWI, the military maintained exclusive control over radio with sponsorships by its partners, United Fruit, GE, AT&T, and Westinghouse. But among the public there was general agreement that the airwaves were a resource to be managed for the common good, with strong representation by nonprofit, educational and spiritual interests. In 1925, over 240 college and noncommercial radio stations were operating, along with "amateur" radio operators.
In 1927, the Federal Radio Commission or FRC was established as a traffic cop for broadcast licenses. Their technical standards put many educational stations out of business, but radio was still mandated to serve "the public interest, convenience, and necessity." The debate between public and commercial came to a boil with the Hatfield-Wagner Amendment, which would have required that 25% of licenses be noncommercial, guaranteeing labor, church, farming and other civic interests part of the spectrum. Instead, the act that passed said that network owners would "study" the proposal. We all know how that ended.
Yet up until the late '70's, news was seen as a fulfillment of this mandate to serve the public interest. They weren't expected to be profit centers. CBS strove to be the NY Times of TV, with quality documentaries like Harvest of Shame about migrant workers, and The Selling of the Pentagon. Generally, the goal was to give news viewers what they needed to be citizens in a democracy, not necessarily what they wanted. CBS prohibited music, visual re-creations, news stories sympathetic to advertisers, and sensationalism. The Standards Handbook maintained, "This may make us a little less interesting to some, but that is the price we pay for dealing with fact and truth." Reuven Frank's book, Out of Thin Air, details the efforts made for substantive, in-depth reporting challenging the government, as Edward R. Murrow did, and powerful institutions and corporations.
Thanks for reading, Tereza! Thrilled to hear you've been following Project Censored for a while, they do fantastic work. And thanks for sharing all this historical info, I'm not as well-versed in radio but it's an important component in all of this. Agreed that a major shift has been that news wasn't expected to bring in profit before — it used to be a public service circa the Cronkite era. From what I understand, entertainment programming on television earned enough $$ that the news didn't really have to, but that started gradually changing about 50 years ago. Now the lines have blurred, it's honestly hard to tell the difference between entertainment and "news"!
Yes, that was exactly the point of the book. The deal between the public and the privately-owned stations was that, in exchange for giving them the airwaves, they would take responsibility for in-depth news coverage. It would have been considered a violation of the public trust to have advertising pay for the news.
As low-tech as it is, I think radio has the power to be community-forming. There's something about people all hearing the same thing at the same time. And it's cheap--there's a reason Democracy Now could get started on a shoestring. I'm hoping to see a resurgence and a network of independent producers that don't need the funding from foundations.
Apr 19, 2022·edited Apr 19, 2022Liked by Rebecca Strong
Well written and thoughtful. I am grateful for the website RealClearInvestigations. It consolidates news from both left leaning and right leaning sources.
I think the problem is that the internet disrupted everything, including what people consider 'news'.
Local news reporting is a tricky beast. Google, rarely mentioned in your research, is the largest influence on investigative reports being discovered. Following Google is Facebook. After that is Twitter, then YouTube
Local newspapers and local TV stations mainly died because the Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube websites destroyed the business models (local advertising) of newspapers and TV stations that had geographical monopolies/cartels.
How to fund investigative journalists is a problem. Some foundations fund independent journalism, but they all seem to pressure (or favor stories) slanted in certain directions.
I am grateful for substack. At least there are articles by 100s of people with journalistic training who do in-depth reporting from all different viewpoints.
Reminiscing about the 'good 'ole days' of journalism is fun, but doesn't solve our problems.
Thanks for the feedback, Kelly! Agreed, Substack is a breath of fresh air. It didn't take long for people to push for more censorship on this platform, but since that goes against literally all the founding principles the site was built on, I think we're in the clear at least for the time being. Will have to take a look at RealClearInvestigations! Appreciate the rec.
The sad thing is I've known many of these facts for 20-25 years - when I had a good job, I contributed to FAIR. But no one around me with more money or influence cared. I was for a time friends with a woman publisher of an alternative newspaper in Indianapolis, but she was so gaga for Bill & Hillary Clinton for their other policies that she spent no time teaching others about media consolidation. And she was typical of most affluent liberals I've known.
Yeah, news organizations tend to target audiences that are mostly white, liberal and affluent (and the people working within them often fit that description). That helps to explain why, even though trust in mainstream media is low across the board, polls show it's usually higher in liberals. It's a problem because as you pointed out, a lot of big and important issues that affect the average citizens go unnoticed and underreported. Nice to know you contributed to FAIR! They've done some really important investigations. But it's impossible for just a few watchdog groups to expose all the conflicts of interest, biases, and corruption. We need more organizations like these.
Well done. I do hope to see in part 2 the influence of the C_A and their 4AM downloads into the MSM and from there into the hearts and minds of Western viewers/listeners. The parroted line in the video, "...this is dangerous for our democracy," sounds like one of those mockingbird drops.
This is interesting, thanks. I'm confused by the use of the quote indents. It seems they are not actually used for quotes?
Like for example, what is the significance of this paragraph being indented?
"As it turns out, there’s evidence to legitimize this concern. In a 2021 MCS study, more than 30% of editors reported experiencing some form of pressure on the newsroom from their parent company or its board of directors. And 29% said they knew reporters had "self-censored" due to such interference. Pressured editors admitted to taking a more relaxed approach in reporting practices when interlocked individuals or organizations were the topics of news coverage. They also admitted to lowering their expectations for balance in coverage of board members."
There is an undeniable Israeli lobby, with governance even more compromised than in the US. Both directly linked, with an influential yet free pro-government newspaper paid from the US. These links are often parlayed into anti-semetic tropes, all the way back to blood libels. Yes, Israel has powerful protectors, worldwide. No this does not equal Jewish space lasers.
Fairly good article. However all of your suggested news websites are leftwing, damaging your credibility considerably. I would never visit any one of them.
Thanks for reading — note that there's a big disclaimer in there that I'm not endorsing any of those outlets, just providing a few examples that don't get corporate backing or advertising $$. I'd argue The American Conservative, which I included, certainly doesn't qualify as left-wing, but I'm open and eager to add more if there are suggestions.
Hey Peter, thanks so much for reading! At least two of those "big six" you mentioned as reliable/truthful — Fox & Disney, are known for leaning right in their ideology. But to be honest, the idea here was to go beyond bipartisanship and think bigger — like, what other industries or corporations are these companies connected to, either via their parent company, shared board members, funding, or investments? Of course, the partisan bias is real. But I think if you dig deep, and that's what I plan to continue doing in this series, you'll see it's little more complicated than far left = good and far right = bad... the sooner we can all get on the same page about the fact that the real conflict is top vs. bottom as opposed to left vs. right, the sooner I think we can enact real positive change. Anyway, I'm grateful for your feedback and thanks again for your interest!
That's interesting, because as far as I know, many on the far-right regard Disney as corrupting the minds of young people, tearing at the fabric of conservative values, and full of surreptitious wokeness.
But your general point is agreeable. I was just making the point, maybe not too well, but everybody in the media, from the corporate media down to the smaller obscure websites, all have shocking confirmation biases and lie by omission.
You're 100% correct about that, and it seems to be more in response to the left-wing activism over the last few years... from what I understood, prior to that, Disney traditionally adhered to more conservative values. And yes, shocking confirmation biases and lies by omission abound. It's essentially a full-time job trying to sift through all the BS and find trustworthy news these days!
Follow the money on those “independent” news sites too
True, David, excellent point! It's why I hesitated even to recommend nonprofit/independent outlets. The reality is that it's impossible to find completely unbiased news because the news is reported on by human beings who all have a bit of inherent bias. But like you said, not all independent sites are completely devoid of conflicts of interest.
Thorough and straightforward assessment of everything that I wish all people would become aware of. I was just old enough on 9/11 to open my eyes to all the changes described in this article, and I am a healthy-minded freedom-loving individual because of it.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read and share your feedback! I think 9/11 was an eye-opener for many of us in different ways. And glad to hear you're in a mentally strong place, it's no small feat these days!
I read this on Children's Health Defense and came here, to the horse's mouth ;-) Really excellent piece and so important. I've been following Project Censored for a decade. I also listened religiously to Amy Goodman up until 2-3 yrs ago when every story seemed to be about Trump. I think she's an example of the capture of independent media by the wokespeak narrative. My theory is that Trump was the Great Setup to the Great Reset, and was as repugnant as possible to make the left go the opposite way into obedient, pro-Pharma, pro-high tech, pro-censorship, pro-propaganda warmongers.
I have a recent video/ essay about one part of how this happened: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/manufacturing-contempt.
But you might be interested in a radio piece I did 13 yrs ago on a book called The Soap Opera Paradigm by James H. Wittebols who i"lluminates the devolution of news into the serial radio drama. Personally, I thought that radio and TV had always been infotainment sponsored by and for profit. My biggest surprise was finding out that wasn't the norm when radio and TV began. As we look at how our expectations for journalism and integrity have been lowered, it's notable that we the people wanted and recognized high quality before junk media, like junk food, hooked us on pre-digested bursts of quick sensations. Media is now the simple carbohydrate of the mind--empty calories fostering a lazy metabolism." http://thirdparadigm.org/3p_024.php
To save you the trouble, I'll excerpt the relevant part here:
One of the points that fascinated me was about the early days of radio, subtitled "Who Owns the Airwaves?" It details how a US govt-corporate consortium – the Radio Corporation of America or RCA – secured a monopoly on all the patents for broadcast and reception. During WWI, the military maintained exclusive control over radio with sponsorships by its partners, United Fruit, GE, AT&T, and Westinghouse. But among the public there was general agreement that the airwaves were a resource to be managed for the common good, with strong representation by nonprofit, educational and spiritual interests. In 1925, over 240 college and noncommercial radio stations were operating, along with "amateur" radio operators.
In 1927, the Federal Radio Commission or FRC was established as a traffic cop for broadcast licenses. Their technical standards put many educational stations out of business, but radio was still mandated to serve "the public interest, convenience, and necessity." The debate between public and commercial came to a boil with the Hatfield-Wagner Amendment, which would have required that 25% of licenses be noncommercial, guaranteeing labor, church, farming and other civic interests part of the spectrum. Instead, the act that passed said that network owners would "study" the proposal. We all know how that ended.
Yet up until the late '70's, news was seen as a fulfillment of this mandate to serve the public interest. They weren't expected to be profit centers. CBS strove to be the NY Times of TV, with quality documentaries like Harvest of Shame about migrant workers, and The Selling of the Pentagon. Generally, the goal was to give news viewers what they needed to be citizens in a democracy, not necessarily what they wanted. CBS prohibited music, visual re-creations, news stories sympathetic to advertisers, and sensationalism. The Standards Handbook maintained, "This may make us a little less interesting to some, but that is the price we pay for dealing with fact and truth." Reuven Frank's book, Out of Thin Air, details the efforts made for substantive, in-depth reporting challenging the government, as Edward R. Murrow did, and powerful institutions and corporations.
Fascinating, huh?
Thanks for reading, Tereza! Thrilled to hear you've been following Project Censored for a while, they do fantastic work. And thanks for sharing all this historical info, I'm not as well-versed in radio but it's an important component in all of this. Agreed that a major shift has been that news wasn't expected to bring in profit before — it used to be a public service circa the Cronkite era. From what I understand, entertainment programming on television earned enough $$ that the news didn't really have to, but that started gradually changing about 50 years ago. Now the lines have blurred, it's honestly hard to tell the difference between entertainment and "news"!
Yes, that was exactly the point of the book. The deal between the public and the privately-owned stations was that, in exchange for giving them the airwaves, they would take responsibility for in-depth news coverage. It would have been considered a violation of the public trust to have advertising pay for the news.
As low-tech as it is, I think radio has the power to be community-forming. There's something about people all hearing the same thing at the same time. And it's cheap--there's a reason Democracy Now could get started on a shoestring. I'm hoping to see a resurgence and a network of independent producers that don't need the funding from foundations.
Well written and thoughtful. I am grateful for the website RealClearInvestigations. It consolidates news from both left leaning and right leaning sources.
I think the problem is that the internet disrupted everything, including what people consider 'news'.
Local news reporting is a tricky beast. Google, rarely mentioned in your research, is the largest influence on investigative reports being discovered. Following Google is Facebook. After that is Twitter, then YouTube
Local newspapers and local TV stations mainly died because the Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube websites destroyed the business models (local advertising) of newspapers and TV stations that had geographical monopolies/cartels.
How to fund investigative journalists is a problem. Some foundations fund independent journalism, but they all seem to pressure (or favor stories) slanted in certain directions.
I am grateful for substack. At least there are articles by 100s of people with journalistic training who do in-depth reporting from all different viewpoints.
Reminiscing about the 'good 'ole days' of journalism is fun, but doesn't solve our problems.
Democratization of the news is fun, isn't it?
Thanks for the feedback, Kelly! Agreed, Substack is a breath of fresh air. It didn't take long for people to push for more censorship on this platform, but since that goes against literally all the founding principles the site was built on, I think we're in the clear at least for the time being. Will have to take a look at RealClearInvestigations! Appreciate the rec.
Good start here. Looking forward to part 2.
Amazing piece. This is exactly the kind of work people deserve to be able to read. This is real journalism.
The sad thing is I've known many of these facts for 20-25 years - when I had a good job, I contributed to FAIR. But no one around me with more money or influence cared. I was for a time friends with a woman publisher of an alternative newspaper in Indianapolis, but she was so gaga for Bill & Hillary Clinton for their other policies that she spent no time teaching others about media consolidation. And she was typical of most affluent liberals I've known.
Yeah, news organizations tend to target audiences that are mostly white, liberal and affluent (and the people working within them often fit that description). That helps to explain why, even though trust in mainstream media is low across the board, polls show it's usually higher in liberals. It's a problem because as you pointed out, a lot of big and important issues that affect the average citizens go unnoticed and underreported. Nice to know you contributed to FAIR! They've done some really important investigations. But it's impossible for just a few watchdog groups to expose all the conflicts of interest, biases, and corruption. We need more organizations like these.
Well done. I do hope to see in part 2 the influence of the C_A and their 4AM downloads into the MSM and from there into the hearts and minds of Western viewers/listeners. The parroted line in the video, "...this is dangerous for our democracy," sounds like one of those mockingbird drops.
Absolutely, C*A infiltration is going to be a big component in a future installment I'm working on (likely the 3d). Thanks so much for reading, JT!
FYI, interviewing an intelligence historian and former senior C_A analyst next week, so promise I'm still planning to cover this topic!
This is interesting, thanks. I'm confused by the use of the quote indents. It seems they are not actually used for quotes?
Like for example, what is the significance of this paragraph being indented?
"As it turns out, there’s evidence to legitimize this concern. In a 2021 MCS study, more than 30% of editors reported experiencing some form of pressure on the newsroom from their parent company or its board of directors. And 29% said they knew reporters had "self-censored" due to such interference. Pressured editors admitted to taking a more relaxed approach in reporting practices when interlocked individuals or organizations were the topics of news coverage. They also admitted to lowering their expectations for balance in coverage of board members."
The overwhelming presence of high-powered media executives who qualify for Israeli citizenship should not be ignored. Yet it is.
Interesting... I've never heard anything about this!
There is an undeniable Israeli lobby, with governance even more compromised than in the US. Both directly linked, with an influential yet free pro-government newspaper paid from the US. These links are often parlayed into anti-semetic tropes, all the way back to blood libels. Yes, Israel has powerful protectors, worldwide. No this does not equal Jewish space lasers.
Add to that a question about prayer. How to pray for, for example "World Peace", without knowing the real world?
Fairly good article. However all of your suggested news websites are leftwing, damaging your credibility considerably. I would never visit any one of them.
Thanks for reading — note that there's a big disclaimer in there that I'm not endorsing any of those outlets, just providing a few examples that don't get corporate backing or advertising $$. I'd argue The American Conservative, which I included, certainly doesn't qualify as left-wing, but I'm open and eager to add more if there are suggestions.
Maybe, but those 6 are still by and large more reliable and truthful than the extreme far-right "media."
Hey Peter, thanks so much for reading! At least two of those "big six" you mentioned as reliable/truthful — Fox & Disney, are known for leaning right in their ideology. But to be honest, the idea here was to go beyond bipartisanship and think bigger — like, what other industries or corporations are these companies connected to, either via their parent company, shared board members, funding, or investments? Of course, the partisan bias is real. But I think if you dig deep, and that's what I plan to continue doing in this series, you'll see it's little more complicated than far left = good and far right = bad... the sooner we can all get on the same page about the fact that the real conflict is top vs. bottom as opposed to left vs. right, the sooner I think we can enact real positive change. Anyway, I'm grateful for your feedback and thanks again for your interest!
That's interesting, because as far as I know, many on the far-right regard Disney as corrupting the minds of young people, tearing at the fabric of conservative values, and full of surreptitious wokeness.
But your general point is agreeable. I was just making the point, maybe not too well, but everybody in the media, from the corporate media down to the smaller obscure websites, all have shocking confirmation biases and lie by omission.
You're 100% correct about that, and it seems to be more in response to the left-wing activism over the last few years... from what I understood, prior to that, Disney traditionally adhered to more conservative values. And yes, shocking confirmation biases and lies by omission abound. It's essentially a full-time job trying to sift through all the BS and find trustworthy news these days!
Sanders is a Trojan Horse. Shameful how he enabled the Clinton Cartel.