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With the advent of free online publishing the major news outlets began to struggle. Declining ad revenues and competition led to downsized editorial staffs and more clickbaity writing. Consolidation of few and large media corporations to even fewer and larger corporations homogenized the news reporting. Today only three major news agencies are responsible for most of the news reporting globally that we see in the West; these are AP (Associated Press, New York), Reuters (London, nowadays merged with Canadian media firm Thomson and based in New York), and AFP (Agence France-Presse, Paris).
https://swprs.org/the-propaganda-multiplier/
As the above article shows, these three organisations send out material to news rooms all over the world. Local editors copy and paste the text into their articles, maybe with some minimal editing, which explains why the same stories, often with the exact same wording, can be read in so many different news papers.
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As has been shown already in early media studies, those who lack meaningful ways of influencing society around them tend to be the ones who care least about news. Mainstream media fails to engage a broader audience, it is sometimes claimed, by serving the interests of the political elite rather than the general population.
Jürgen Habermas, in his seminal book Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, published in 1962, traces the development of the politically engaged public from the emergence of coffee houses in the 18th century up to the 1950's when television and book clubs where beginning to streamline the mass communication. Already at that point, Habermas argues, the only channels available for general citizens to influence the public debate and political decisions were political parties or other organisations.
Before the internet mass media were more powerful since there were no other alternatives for public outreach. The early days of internet, up to the rise of blogging, changed the power balance somewhat. After the arrival of social media and their information silos we are more or less back to a situation of mass communication by curated realities, although the picture is more complicated with numerous visible and hidden actors.
With the rise of social media many of their users reportedly access most or all of their news through their social media platforms. With the ensuing filter-bubblization of the users leading them to non-overlapping reality tunnels it is understandable that some media experts worry about the loss of a consensus world view. Here is were it gets interesting: is the remedy to get people to read and watch a few mainstream news outlets, since those small independent outlets at the fringes might "sow discord" and obsess with reporting on their pet issues, and, much worse, in some instances spread fake news? The most vigilant independent journalists will readily point out a list of instances where mainstream media were caught spreading fake news.
False or inaccurate news reporting is a serious issue, and it is probably widespread. It is human to err, after all. A local newspaper might have a lazy or busy reporter who doesn't, for whatever reason, show up on the concert he reviews. If he were to write accolades about the artist who was supposed to warm up but cancelled at the last moment the audience who was there knows he's cheating. More serious things can be at stake, such as when a newspaper uncritically reports false testimony about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in a country where there are none, thus facilitating an invasion by changing the public opinion.
The problem doesn't stop with the falsehood in a single article. Too often such false stories get picked up and amplified by re-tooting, carbon copying, shares & likes, and the truth of the matter seems settled by shear repetition. Unfortunately, it is a known quirk of the human psyche that we tend to perceive often repeated statements as more likely to be true. Propaganda relies to a large extent on this familiarity bias.
The accusation of spreading "fake news" has often been used unfairly by big media, aided by fact checkers with dubious connections to think tanks, to cast doubt on the reporting of their independent collegues. Part 3 of this guide delves deeper into fake news analysis.
Factuality of reporting, although of fundamental importance, is not the only criterion for evaluating news media. At least as important is the scope of the reporting. Which stories are left out and which ones are played on repeat despite being of little relevance to most people? Fortunately there are many "alternative" or independent media that like to dig into these otherwise neglected stories. The only way to know which important stories are ignored is to keep your Argus eyes all over the register.
There's nothing wrong with narrowly focused news outlets as such. Most concentrate on their own geographic region or foreign events of concern to their nation, many specialise on some set of topics. The best one can do as a reader (or listener or viewer) is to broaden one's news diet by reading sources of various political views and from different parts of the world.
Selective omission and (lack of) contextualisation can be immensely powerful ways to twist news stories and use them as bricks in a larger narrative. It is easy to paint a bleak picture of a group of people, or a whole country for that matter, by only reporting negative facts about them. Likewise, selectively reporting only positive stories is a long established propaganda technique, as popular among governments as corporations.
Debates can be framed in a TINA - there is no alternative - way by inviting only certain guests, or by insisting that the debate be restricted to a certain way to tackle a chosen topic. For example, one might have a debate about how to increase economic growth with two camps fiercely defending completely different solutions, all while the degrowth guy is not invited to the show (or maybe he's not slim enough to climb in through the Overton window).
Besides the dimensions of accuracy in reporting, and the scope of news, there is the orthogonal aspect of tone: emotional vs fact of the matter, sensationalist vs analytical. News reporting can be as accurate and relevant if it is read in a tear-soaked voice, in a fit of rage, or presented as stand-up comedy. Manipulation may be easier with an emotionally intense presentation than using a sober reflected tone. Academic writing such as can be found, e.g., in Le Monde Diplomatique, with footnotes and references to books and research papers, is typically a good place for reflection and contextualisation. But not all readers have the time and patience for long intellectual texts. Nor is the dry, factual tone as such any guarantee for relevance or accuracy.
Who would bite the hand that feeds you? We may hear guarantees from new owners who have bought up a newspaper that they will not interfer with its editorial decisions. The mechanisms may be much subtler; direct interference may not be necessary. In any case, it doesn't seem likely that a journalist at any newspaper muckraking its owner would get away with it for very long.
Independent journalists largely have two options to finance their work: to rely on advertising or being supported directly by their audience. The advertising route almost by necessity has to go through some of the big media platforms like youtube or spotify and is vulnerable to censorship ranging from lost ad revenues to complete de-platformning. As certain voices are silenced at the big platforms their remaining colleagues either self-censor or begin looking around for a backup plan. In extreme cases even funding through patreon or paypal can be cut off, as happened to wikileaks in the past. Many independent journalists have turned to tipeee for funding. So far french speaking media outnumber other languages.
https://en.tipeee.com/creators/journalism
Here is a useful chart, again from Swiss Policy Research, over the US/UK media landscape that shows a few media outlets on a two-dimensional grid with left to right political leanings on one axis and degree of independence on the other.
https://swprs.org/media-navigator
In the next part we present a long annotated list of links to independent news outlets. The list may be updated from time to time.
Part six: Propaganda, introduction
Part eleven (Internet censorship)
Part twelve (Conspiratorial thinking)
Part thirteen (Psychology of propaganda)
Part fourteen (Information warfare)
The Oxymoronist Media Guide is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
First posted on August 15, 2021. Updated on September 11, 2021.