NewsBusters was created by the two men, Matthew and Greg Sheffield, behind RatherBiased.com, another conservative media watchdog focused on monitoring Dan Rather's perceived ideological partisan agenda.

One major story missed by the mainstream media that NewsBusters caught was Senator Dianne Feinstein's conflict of interest scandal


A.I.M.Accuracy in Media
A diligent investigator and reporter of media dishonesty and at the same time works for a higher level of integrity in the media.

Regret the Error
This organization reports on errors, retractions, clarifications and trends regarding honesty and accuracy in the North American media. Very Good!

Times Watch
Times Watch keeps a sharp eye on the New York Times and reports on any and all indications of left-wing Liberal media bias in the NYT.

Yahoo News FULL COVERAGE: Media Issues

Columbia Journalism Review (CJR)
One big story missed by the mainstream media that the CJR covered was the ongoing myriad problems in voting machines


Project Censored

Newswatch

Stories Ignored and/or Missed by the Mainstream Media as compiled by:

Project Censored also look at the archive

MarketWatch

Who Owns the Media Why It Matters
It's important to know who owns the media. A strong independent media is the cornerstone of Democracy. An informed citizenry means a healthy democracy. It means a citizenry inoculated against the excesses of government and corporations. When the media does its job, it lets citizens know when the government is allowing corporations to rip off consumers, to pollute the air, to put poisonous substances in the food and water and to destroy the environment. Good media is a check against government encroachment on personal freedoms and attempts by government to lie the people into wars and other misadventures both foreign and domestic. The media, mainly in the U.S., used to be owned by some 50 different companies. And that was a good thing. It meant greater diversity and integrity. Most of all, it meant a greater degree of independence. Journalists were much freer to investigate many issues which they simply can't today and the public was better informed as a result. Today, as a result of the deregulation in the 80s under Reagan, the media is controlled by the very forces it was supposed to monitor for us. All the mainstream media outlets now are owned by five or six companies. One of the first casualties of this consolidation was investigative journalism. The new corporate owners of the media outlets they bought, eliminated almost all the investigative journalism departments. As a result people stopped being told the causes of the problems they faced, only that they faced the problems. For example, mercury levels in tuna and other fish. The cause is industrial pollution, but because the corporate owners eliminated investigative journalism, we only get told that the mercury is in the fish. We aren't told about the industrial pollution poisoning the fish so we can not take action and tell our governments to stop the industries dumping their chemicals into the waters. The same is true for the increase in asthma attacks, bronchitis, and heart disease levels in America. The cause is emissions from power plants, yet this issue, never mind its causes, is rarely if ever, covered in any detail by the mainstream/corporate media. The problem is that the business interests now in control of the media are also associated directly or indirectly with the business interests who would be adversely affected by proper coverage of these stories. If people found out who was polluting their food and air, they would demand that their governments take action against these polluters and make them stop. That would mean bad publicity for these business interests and cost them money. It's much easier and much better business to simply control the media and prevent these bad stories from ever coming out in the first place. Another factor compromising the integrity of the major media today, is the fact that they are advertiser driven. Papers and networks are not only controlled by big businesses but they take money from other (big) businesses in the form of advertising dollars. That's how they make money. That's how they survive. As a result they are organically conflicted. They are structurally compromised. Think about it for a minute. If one of your advertisers were dumping chemicals into a lake outside of town, would you, the paper or the TV station, tell anyone about it? Would you report and aggressively pursue the story as you know you should? No. You wouldn't. Not if profit and survival were your sole motivation. Would you risk losing that account? Would you risk becoming known as a pariah to the business community and have other advertisers close their accounts with you in retaliation or for fear that you would run similar pieces on them? It's called conflict of interest and it is one of the larger unnoticed threats to our democracy, to our democratic freedoms. Do an exercise sometime. Take note of the businesses advertising in your newspaper and/or news show. See who advertises on the major TV networks. Then compare that list to any and all hard hitting investigative news reports you see on that network, if you see any at all. Look for pieces delving into any of those businesses buying off lawmakers and politicians (aka campaign donations), or into their dangerous additives being allowed into the food you eat and the water you drink, the air you breathe. Watch for penetrating pieces on corporate polluters, identified by naming, dumping toxins into the air, water, and soil or on environmental devastation perpetrated by logging, mining and big fishing companies etc. It won't be long until you realize what a misnomer the term "media" or "news network" really is. In fact, you'll soon come to the realization that you are living in a fraudulent framework in which you are told what the news is when, in fact, it is anything but the news. It is a dreamworld,, a semi-fictional landscape, composed of glitzy images of beautiful and famous people, abducted, raped, and murdered white females, weather forecasts and aberrations, animal oddities, prolonged tributes to recently deceased celebrities and politicians, lottery winners, winners of hot dog eating contests & reality TV shows, explosions and violence in countries most of us will never see, police chases, etc. etc., anything but the core issues that affect you and your family today. It is part and parcel of the hidden illness that afflicts our democracies to day - the missing, the corrupted, Fourth Estate. How can you expert anything else when the watchdog is owned and organically tied to the interests it is supposed to keep in check? If you think this all too much too believe, see for yourself. I urge you to research the link between media ownership and the stories the media covers. You will find these links, and the links above, a good place to start:
Who Owns the Media	Media Deception Is More Than Liberal Bias
Media "Distortions"
The Real Dangers of Conglomerate Control	Why the Media Lie: The Corporate Structure Of The Mass Media
Take Back The Media See Who Owns the Media	Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership
Columbia Journalism Review	Media Owners
The FCC and Media Democcracy	Bill Moyer's Media Regulation Timeline (Watch the Video too)
Recommended Videos
The CFR Controls The U.S. Media	Greg Palast and RFK on Media Issues
Environment, Health and Democracy with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Behind The Big News: Propaganda and the CFR
Orwell Rolls In His Grave	9/11: Press for Truth

Alternative Media

The mainstream/corporate print and T.V. media, including cable is losing viewers and readers in large numbers. See these links: 1, 2, 3, and this DIGG thread. The root cause of this decline lies in the fundamental cynicism and growing mistrust people have for the big media. Public perception of that which constitutes real news - the public interest, is strikingly at odds with the stories and programming delivered to us daily by most of the big media. Solid, investigative journalism in the mass media by the likes of Bill Moyers is rare but invaluable and serves to reinforce and validate public mistrust of the media. Witness Moyers's recent Buying the War, which exposed not only the media's failure to do its job, its watchdog job, in the months before the invasion of Iraq, but its disturbingly high level of complicity with the Bush administration in pushing for its invasion of Iraq. People want to know about the issues that affect them and their family directly - erosion of personal freedoms, government corruption, corporate malfeasance, the North American Union (officially known as the SPP, more info here), environmental dangers and problems etc. and not endless coverage of Scott and Laci Peterson, O.J., Jon Benet, Paris Hilton, Anna Nichole Smith, Robert Blake, Brad and Angelina, etc. etc. etc. Where are people going now to get their news? It's (still) called the Alternative Media and if the current trend continues, it will soon be taken for granted as the mainstream media. The internet is the new frontier for media. It has supplanted the television and print media. It's the new marketplace and forum for news and ideas and it really has set us free, free from the "news" the mainstream media thinks we should see. And it's no passing fad. People are creating their own news sites and blogs. Blogs, in particular are flourishing on the internet, one created every second. Blogs are becoming the new medium and have gone a long way to democratizing news reporting and shaping opinion.

Below are some of the more popular "alternative" news sites and blogs (along with those listed elsewhere in the My Favs section:

911 Blogger	Prison Planet	AntiWar
Rense	What Really Happened	RINF
GlobalResearch.ca	StopLying.ca	Calgary 9/11 Truth
Information Clearing House	BlackListed News	Uncover The News

PC1Stop Site Contents