The biggest story in contemporary media can be summed up in one word: consolidation. Columbia Journalism Review provides a list of who-owns-what, as does The Free Press. The Nation has an excellent graphic revealing the very long tentacles of “The Big Ten” —downright eye-opening if you aren’t a student of these matters. StopBigMedia.com also features a chart that slices and dices control of print, broadcast, and Net by medium and by corporation. My personal favorite, though, comes courtesy of Media Channel—a grim work of art, this one.
Highly recommended: subscribe to Danny Schecter’s daily newsletter, the e-mail version of his News Dissector weblog.You’ll not only get the day’s most significant news from a variety of sources, but Danny’s invaluable take on how the day’s stories are being covered. Throw some money at him—this man is doing God’s work. His very impressive biography at GlobalVision doesn’t even include his latest works, notably the film “Weapons of Mass Deception: Media Complicity and the Iraq War.”
Check Robin Tetter’s brief but useful annotated list of media links.
Robert McChesney founded FreePress to provide reports, insights, and plenty of invitations to activism. This is an important site. Sign up for their newsletters.
Disinformation, one of the most interesting sites around, provides their own unique take on “the media”; updated regularly, archive available.
ProjectCensored keeps tabs on the most under-reported stories globally.
The Center for Media and Democracy boasts as its Executive Director John Stauber, who, with Sheldon Rampton, wrote what is probably the most telling book about the news media today—the analysis of the vile commingling of PR and “hard news” titled Toxic Sludge is Good for You. The site includes: SourceWatch, a strictly-referenced wiki comprising a “directory of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda” along with case studies and recent movements among “front” groups for the plutocracy. Spend an evening with it. Also see PRWatch, scathing coverage of the sickening blather spun by the spiders in the industry.
There’s more. Have a look.
See, too, The Nation’s excellent archive of stories related to media consolidation.Alternet also has a nice archive of media-related stories as well.
Media Matters makes for a first-rate bookmark. The site monitors the right-wing media; assuming that the pundits say aloud what their political masters, left and right, can only sometimes hint at, the site serves as a grim window into the dark heart of the GOP. Check out the “Issues” menu; the site serves up an excellent database of how the major media have spun stories on the topics going back months.
FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Media) works with both journalists and activists to reveal the hidden agenda behind the mainstream’s coverage–and, especially, lack of coverage–of important stories, as well as to encourage the dissemination of diverse viewpoints and censored stories. Updated daily. Excellent archives are searchable by topic, region, or media outlet.
Editor & Publisher is “America’ s oldest journal covering the newspaper industry.” Non-partisan daily news and opinion on the state of the papers, must reading for any understanding of the methods and machinations of today’s pressrooms.
MediaWatch is out to identify and expose stereotypes and biased images in mainstream media from a pretty traditional rad-feminist perspective. As such, it combines astute reportage with plenty of multimedia displays–galleries of images “Inspirational” and “Odious” along with a short collection of radio interviews.
Media Studies is a good starting point, with its catalog of sites exploring various aspects of the contemporary media. The University of Maryland’s Phillip Merill College of Journalism publishes the American Journalism Review, a collection of in-depth stories about and analyses of the news media. Also provides excellent lists of newspaper, magazines, wire services, and media companies; journalism organizations, reporters’ tools, etc. Bookmarkable.
For a focus on digital news media, look at the Annenberg School’s Online Journalism Review.
The Center for Digital Democracy focuses on fostering, well, digital democracy. In addition to news and issues coverage, the site promotes activism in this arena.
ConWebWatch keeps tabs on “Internet-based conservative `news’ organizations NewsMax, WorldNetDaily and CNSNews.com “along with “conservative media `watchdogs’ Media Research Center and ‘Accuracy in Media.’”
The Media Awareness Network is a first-rate program out of Canada aimed at young people: “to be functionally literate in the world today – to be able to “read” the messages that inform, entertain and sell to us daily – young people need critical thinking skills … M-Net focuses its efforts on equipping adults with information and tools to help young people to understand how the media work, how the media may affect their lifestyle choices and the extent to which they, as consumers and citizens, are being well informed.” Highly recommended for teachers and parents. And you.
When he’s not busy serving as the world’s foremost linguist, or scapegoat of the Right, or reluctant Democrat, or Latin American affairs expert, etc, Noam Chomsky has been one of the better critics of the US media. I haven’t read Manufacturing Consent, but found this conversation between the Professor and filmmaker Mark Achbar, who turned the book into a film, fascinating on its own terms. Don’t miss this great 20 minute extra from the DVD, a 1969 debate between Chomsky and William Buckley–a civilized discussion between two smart, cordial opponents that seems, by today’s standards, to be from an another age entirely. Oh, and here’s a nice tribute from the great Arundhati Roy.
