Question: The Real Media

Here's a question for all of you. What media (internet, paper, television, radio, otherwise) do you rely on for informing you with the *truth* of what is going on in the world?

Since media seems mostly bought by the establishment elites and big money, what sources have you found that focus on truth, facts, and real analysis?

I'd like to make a list with input from all of you and bookmark/favorites this page for future reference. Maybe the site owners here would be willing to link it on one of the sidebars or something (assuming people participate)?

I'll add to the list below as people respond, but take a look at my initial list to get a sense of the information I'm looking for and the format I'd like to use. Topics can be anything, really. Please let me know if anything should be modified.

List of Useful Media

The list of media sites below has been found by users of this site to be truthful, fact based, and not an instrument of establishment propaganda.

Alternet

http://www.alternet.org/
(suggested by GreyWolf)
Award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources. AlterNet’s aim is to inspire action and advocacy on the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, health care issues, and more.

Antiwar.com

http://www.antiwar.com/
(suggested by Nastarana)
Site on military events devoted to non-intervention and opposing imperialism. Justin Raimundo has a remarkable ability to ferret out significant details about American foreign policy follies; you don't have to agree with his radical libertarianism to appreciate his reporting.

Asia Times

http://www.atimes.com/
(suggested by Nastarana)
Good coverage of the Asian supercontinent. The new owners still employ the notorious David Goodman/Spengler--him of the infamous "More killing, please"--whose columns are occasionally interesting as descriptions of what the hegemony is planning to do to us next. AT also continues to employ Pepe Escobar and Chan Akya. By the way, Chanakya was the great strategist who advised the conqueror Chandragupta, and the reporter who assumed the famous moniker is from India. Escobar is Brazillian, I believe, and both these men are some of the best travelling reporters around.

Black Agenda Report

http://blackagendareport.com/
(suggested by Nastarana)
News, information, and analysis from the black left. Editor Glen Ford has some great articles here.

Caucus 99 Percent

http://caucus99percent.com/
(suggested by apenultimate)
Caucus 99 Percent (this site!) is an independent political discussion and news forum. Used as a replacement site for Daily Kos.

CommonDreams

http://www.commondreams.org/
(suggested by polkageist)
Online news site focused on progressive news.

Consortiumnews

https://consortiumnews.com/
(suggested by polkageist)
Independent investigative journalism since 1995 on the internet.

Democracy Now

http://www.democracynow.org/ (also available via youtube)
(suggested by Lookout)
News site providing perspectives rarely heard via U.S. corporate-sponsored media. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez are its main hosts.

Down with Tyranny

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/
(suggested by polkageist)
Progressive blog that focuses on very detailed issues you probably haven't heard of or considered before. Very interesting stuff.

The Humanist Report

http://www.humanistreport.com/
(suggested by Chaddiwicker)
A political podcast on weekly news stories and pressing political issues. Analyses are guided by humanism.

Industrial Workers of the World

http://iww.org/
(suggested by polkageist)
IWW union site and newsletter. Some very interesting articles. Updated in spurts, somewhat sporadically.

The Intercept

https://theintercept.com/
(suggested by polkageist, thanks to Nastarana for the Johnstone info)
The Intercept newsletter is an left-oriented online news site. Especially pay attention to the brilliant and uncompromising Caitlin Johnstone.

Jackpine Radicals

http://www.jackpineradicals.com/
(suggested by bondibox)
Online news site and rather large forum dedicated to promoting economic and social fairness throughout the world. A little bit more cutting edge than most places. Takes some navigation, but lots to discover.

Jacobin Magazine

http://jacobinmag.com/
(suggested by apenultimate)
Online news magazine covering the politics of socialism and the working class in the United States. Generally very well written and backed up with lots of sources.

The Jimmy Dore Show

http://www.jimmydorecomedy.com/ (also available via youtube--search for Jimmy Dore)
(suggested by apenultimate)
A "comedy" show with focus on discussing issues in the news. Very interesting--I learn new information almost every time I watch. Good range of interesting and informative guests.

John Laurits

https://johnlaurits.com/news-real/ (link goes directly to his news page)
(suggested by GreyWolf)
Articles from citizen journalist, math enthusiast, and poet John Laurits. Shining light on inner events hidden by the shadows (paraphrased).

Moyers and Company

http://billmoyers.com/
(suggested by Lookout)
Bill Moyers' news organization reporting on "the truth about power."

Naked Capitalism

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/
(suggested by polkageist)
News and opinion site promoting critical thinking of economics and finance. Shedding light on the dark and seamy corners of those areas.

Project Syndicate

https://www.project-syndicate.org/
(suggested by jwa13)
Original, high-quality news commentaries. The normal outlet for economist Joe Stiglitz.

Project Vote Smart

https://votesmart.org/
(suggested by polkageist)
Online resource. Type in a politician's name and have instant access to their biographies, voting records, funders, speeches, and positions on topics.

Real Economics

http://real-economics.blogspot.com/
(suggested by Nastarana)
Economic and technological facts for progressives. The best in depth, rigorous discussion of political economy. Visit when you have plenty of time to read slowly and follow links.

The Real News Network

http://therealnews.com/t2/
(suggested by Lookout)
Independent news that reports with ordinary people's interests in mind.

Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp

http://www.leecamp.net/ (also available via youtube--search for Redacted Tonight)
(suggested by apenultimate)
A comedy show somewhat along the lines of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart--much more scripted than Jimmy Dore above.

RT (originally Russia Today)

https://www.rt.com/ (also available via youtube--search for "rt" or "russia today")
(suggested by turniquet)
Get Russia's view on the news. Often a differing perspective than western news sources.

SCOTUS Blog

http://www.scotusblog.com/
(suggested by GreyWolf and apenultimate)
A day-in, day-out blog of what takes place in the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as associated analyses. This one is really informative.

Secular Talk Radio

http://seculartalkradio.com/ (also accessible via youtube)
(suggested by turniquet)
Objective talk radio focused on principles over politicians and objective reality over subjective opinion.

ShadowProof

https://shadowproof.com/
(suggested by GreyWolf)
News site producing journalism, analysis and commentary relentlessly focused on long-existing and pervasive injustices as well as inappropriate control exerted by institutions of power. (Formerly the Firedoglake site.)

Sic Semper Tyrannis

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/
(suggested by apenultimate)
W. Patrick Lang's personal blog focused on the military, intelligence community, and politics. Often politically right of center or libertarian, but the breadth of expertise of the members there and the focus on the truth of what is going on make it very informative.

Telesur

http://www.telesurtv.net/ (spanish)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/index.html/ (english version)
(suggested by turniquet)
Spanish-language, Latin American news originally from Venezuela promoting news focused on human rights and international justice.

Wall Street on Parade

http://wallstreetonparade.com/
(suggested by polkageist)
A citizens guide to Wall Street. News to level the playing field between Wall Street and the 99 percent.

The Young Turks

https://tytnetwork.com/ (also available via youtube)
(suggested by turniquet)
TYT news network with their own shows and journalists who often ask hard-hitting questions. Cenk Uygur is the headliner here.

Zero Hedge

http://www.zerohedge.com/
(suggested by Nastarana and GreyWolf)
An economics and finance site that skepically examines and, where necessary, attacks the flaccid institution that financial journalism has become.

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Comments

polkageist's picture

All on the internet: Naked Capitalism, Project Vote Smart, Down With Tyranny, Consortium News, Counterpunch, Common Dreams, Industrial Workers of the World, The Intercept, Wall Street Parade, and any right-wing sites that have good information. I take truth where I find it. I also read BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Times, Guardian, and Reuters but with a grain of salt.

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-Greed is not a virtue.
-Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962

bondibox's picture

I get most of my news from THIS site. I think you guys/gals are a good sounding board and barometer. Your bullshit meters are finely tuned, and you always seem to find one more angle to the story that I have overlooked. I like the low signal to noise ratio, too, not a lot of crappy stories. Thanks.

Also go to Jack Pine Radicals when I've exhausted what this place has to offer. They seem to be a little more cutting edge, breaking news. Takes a little more browsing and filtering, but there's a wealth of good stuff there.

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F the F'n D's

Bloggers and posters we may enjoy often lack two things, journalism training and news gathering capability. Formal training should not be a sticking point for me, but it ain't nothing.

Dissecting what the New York Times or even ten news sources have chosen to tell you is being a source of opinions about news, not being a source of news.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.


Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0.

We may mock or even hate establishment media, but, directly or indirectly, we are dependent upon establishment media for news, more's the pity. For cost reasons, they are cutting down on their news gathering sources. Things like overseas news bureaus and foreign correspondents are being cut. That means establishment media are more and more reliant upon government and/or amateur stringers to feed them news, just as bloggers are dependent on news gathered and published by establishment media.

The biggest danger may lie in what no one mentions. I am okay at squinting at what I am told. I am not very good at figuring out what no one is publishing. When the New York Times sits on a story for a year because government asks it to, that is a problem that reading forty bloggers or message boards doesn't fix. So is blowing up media with one news story because the news story that is already out there is embarrassing to government or to The Hillary, or something like that.

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WindDancer13's picture

I can guarantee you that what you are getting in the media today comes no where close to journalism. That should not be a huge surprise becasue 90-95% of the corporate media people do not have a degree in journalism. Some do have a degree in broadcast journalism which does not include in its required classes the stringent ethics curriculum found in regular journalism classes. Most of today's "journalists" majored in political science.

Note: Yes, I took the time to look them up. = )

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

Citizen Of Earth's picture

If you just watch the first 2 mins, you'll get the gist.
Basically, it shows various news casts reading the same exact story line obviously picked up from some distribution service that packages up a news story and sells it to many local news casters.

Length 12:34

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

tourniquet's picture

the bbc has a penchant for echoing pro-dem stuff, at least recently.. c99, telesur, (although telesur has a similar penchant), RT, youtube (multiple, tyt, secular talk, jimmy dore, several others)

HA Goodman (gets annoying) and long game, the amazing atheist, bill burr, etc. hate.

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GIANT ALL-CAPS SIG

I'll get on updating the list right now!

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Please keep them coming--there are several sites here that I didn't know existed.

I'm signing off for the night, but will update further tomorrow morning if there are additional suggestions.

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jwa13's picture

https://www.project-syndicate.org/

Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz's normal platform (together with other nuanced writers on matters economic)

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When Cicero had finished speaking, the people said “How well he spoke”.
When Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said “Let us march”.

GreyWolf's picture

https://johnlaurits.com

Good list so far, and I'll think of others after more coffee ... (like http://www.nakedcapitalism.com)

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Cachola's picture

And isn't the Daily Beast totally biased pro -Clinton?

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Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.

GreyWolf's picture

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Citizen Of Earth's picture

I've stopped reading them.

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

HoosierDeb's picture

Hartmann is in the bag for HerHeinous. He's having a fear induced meltdown because Trump. Sad, really.

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Despair is NOT an option!

used to have a brain but, sometime last summer, a Hillary switch was turned on and they went to the dark side. Ditto for Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Huffington Post, The Nation, McClatchyDC, Mother Jones, TYT, hell, almost every quasi-liberal or "progressive" journal and newspaper went there. I now only look at right-wing sites, such as JudicialWatch, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Caller, or independent sites like many already listed. If Hill drops out or gets indicted, I suspect a lot of these so-called liberal journals and newspapers of record will go belly up.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

and go to sites on the sidebar. Enhancing the sidebar is great. We should also drop sites from there when necessary. Thanks for this!

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

Bollox Ref's picture

He's always right.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Lookout's picture

and Democracy Now. To me, it is the best broadcast news around. Available on their site Democracynow.org, youtube, and free speech TV

I think Bill Moyers is still doing good work too http://billmoyers.com/

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

This one, caucus99, for good, sensible discussion from dismayed Sanders voters. Believe that I share your pain. This year has been heartbreaking.

The Intercept, especially for the brilliant and uncompromising Caitlin Johnstone.

Black Agenda Report. which, BTW, has opposed Shillary from the start. Editor Glen Ford posted the best articles recently about why we should be voting for Stein and the Greens. He says the same things I have been trying to say here about don't give Shillary a mandate or a compliant congress, only he makes those points in a much better way than I or anyone else has done. The site has also featured several interviews with the Greens VP nominee, and I have to say, in interviews, he sounds very smart, sensible and responsible. We all know those are not the same qualities. right?

For in depth, rigorous discussion of political economy the best (non-Marxist) site is Real Economics. Go to that one when you have plenty of time to read slowly and follow links.

Zero Hedge and Naked Capitalism are very good for breaking news. I am personally not invested in Wall Street, so not interested in market watching, so I skip large parts of these two sites.

Justin Raimundo at Antiwar.com has a remarkable ability to ferret out significant details about American foreign policy follies; you don't have to agree with his radical libertarianism to appreciate his reporting.

AsiaTimes online has good coverage of the supercontinent. The new owners still employ the notorious David Goodman/Spengler--him of the infamous "More killing, please"--whose columns are occasionally interesting as descriptions of what the hegemony is planning to do to us next. AT also continues to employ Pepe Escobar and Chan Akya. By the way, Chanakya was the great strategist who advised the conqueror Chandragupta, and the reporter who assumed the famous moniker is from India. Escobar is Brazillian, I believe, and both these men are some of the best travelling reporters around.

Then there are some of the (for want of a better word) conspiracy sites, Veterans News Now, Global Research, Wayne Madsen. About these and similar sites, three things.
1. I don't care if they are anti-Israel, so spare me. My opinion, for what it might be worth is that Israel is all grown up now and needs to move out and pay its' own bills.
2a. Sites such as these have to be read with the full use of one's critical intelligence, as also do the NYT, WP, and so on. 2b. I will say in advance, with no intention to insult or offend anyone, I reserve the right to read what I like and use my own faculties of critical intelligence to sift through and find what I can use to figure out what in the world is happening. I am NOT some frail intellectual flower in need of protection from the big bad anti-thises or thatses.
3. What I like about the conspiracy writers in general is that they are willing, even eager, to name names. No careful we don't talk about him/her/that gentlepersons agreements here

Down With Tyranny did exemplary retorting about the DSCC and DCCC high jacking of Senate and Congressional primaries to install compliant, rubberstamping conservadems. I shall love to seeing Schumer and company hoist with their own petard when the Repubs whose elections they enabled impeach their gal Killary.

Of Two Minds for the get your own life in order wake up calls which Smith frequently issues.

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Mary Bennett

GreyWolf's picture

i always mix up zero hedge & naked capitalism and say one when i mean the other

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give a link for Real Economics? I can't find it!

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Mary Bennett

Lookout's picture

or The Real News Network. Out of Baltimore they mainly interview professor types, but I like their coverage.
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRealNews or directly from their site http://therealnews.com/t2/

I also like foreign news sites. Here's a link to all(?) english news broadcasts:
http://www.newsanewtv.com/

It is worth a bookmark.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Citizen Of Earth's picture

saw this on the tweeter and bookmarked it.

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

CS in AZ's picture

in the form of online or on-air daily reporting.

Everyone has their own filters and every source for information spins the news they report (and what they choose not to report) in ways that best support their belief system, ideology, and agenda.

There is very little original investigative journalism these days; most reporters write about whatever "news" they are fed to write about, and most bloggers and commentators talk about those stories.

My method to be informed (to the degree possible) of the day-to-day news is to read a variety of sources that have different perspectives and then try to synthesize it all to get a sense of what's happening, knowing my picture is still incomplete and inaccurate. I do not watch any television news, but will listen to or watch clips occasionally, if something big is going on. Again taking in a variety of perspectives to try to get a more faceted view.

To really learn new information about the world, I rely on books from authors who have thoroughly researched a topic and invested time and work to present a complete discussion. Even then knowing it still provides only a slice of reality.

More and more lately I find myself ignoring and tuning out the daily chatter because it's more and more unreliable as time goes on and we have an ocean now of "information" that is just anyone anywhere saying anything. So much stuff gets "reported" that is later revealed to be utterly wrong, I feel that it's often just a waste of time wading through it all.

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Need to get back to real life until later today! Will update further!

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The Humanist Report - http://www.humanistreport.com/

The Humanist Report (THR) is a political podcast that analyzes weekly news stories and pressing political issues. Our analyses are guided by humanism. Each news story we cover is supplemented with thought-provoking and fact-based commentary that is wholly politically progressive. While secular humanist and ideologically progressive views will be espoused, the same standard of judgement is administered in all cases; therefore, actions of all political party types—even liberally oriented ones such as the U.S. Democratic Party, Canadian Liberal Party, or British Labour Party—will often be critiqued equally—as will individual politicians regardless of their party membership.

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Regarding the Humanist Report

... actions of all political party types—even liberally oriented ones such as the U.S. Democratic Party, Canadian Liberal Party, or British Labour Party—will often be critiqued equally...

- I should hope so!

None of the above, at this point, are liberally oriented, never mind humanist or progressive, although I entertain great hopes of Corbyn and the British people fixing that one.

But the Canadian Liberals are, if not rabidly psychopathic in the manner of the Cons, traditionally corrupt and ally with and as self-appointed 'elites' perhaps more accurately described as weak-minded, ignorant and fat-headed Greeds. I think that everyone here knows what swear-words best describe the US Dems.

Seems odd to think that Orwellian political appellations still affect people's perceptions - a turd by any other name smells far worse than feet.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Thanks to all involved for the list as well as to the OP for starting this! This ought to be pinned somewhere that it can be easily found.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.