The Internet is the perfect forum. The dissemination of information by the people and not just the few corporations who once had a stranglehold on the industry has been facilitated by the explosion of Internet traffic. For years upon years, news was presented to us by 3 television networks. Your nearest city had 1, maybe 2 newspapers. There may have been a few more radio stations, but the fact of the matter is that all the news in the world and your town, good, bad or indifferent, was selectively filtered, spun and sugar-coated before being broadcast wrapped in fancy paper, ribbon and bow.
There has been a refreshing influx of alternative news outlets bringing us tawdry details conveniently left out by the mainstream media. These writers and reporters don't get paid the big bucks that the glamorous big network stars make, yet they do the same work, usually harder, for far less compensation and less protections. I applaud Amber Lyon for stepping down from a high profile position at CNN for ethical reasons. These people do this work because of their love of the truth, not simply because they are a cog in the gear of some big media corporation.
Millions of people are receiving and forwarding uncensored news from a plethora of news outlets. Here is an abbreviated list: Addicting Info, AlterNet, Daily Kos, Daily Beast, CNN, MSNBC, Salon, Bloomberg Report, Mother
Jones. The writers and reporters: Rachel
Maddow, Bill Moyers, Anderson Cooper, Robert Reich, Michael Moore, Keith Olberman, Lawrence O'Donnell, Andrea Mitchell.
(To be fair, the right has their talking heads at Faux Noise and elsewhere- Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, George Will, Andrew Breitbart, Matt Drudge, Michelle Malkin, and Bill O'Reilly. That is, if you can stand the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard...)
We now receive the unfiltered and uncensored versions of events in real time, from these new outlets, in print, audio and video formats. Big news corporations don't want us to know all the details! They don't want us educated. They only want us to learn enough "to operate the machinery and do the paperwork." (Thanks to George Carlin.) Suppression of information would be a better description of that industry! We don't pay Big News to bring us information on TV or radio. CORPORATIONS pay Big News Big Money in the form of advertising revenue to bring and retain customers (the general public), not to present the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
That stereotypical nerdy blogger in his mother's basement so easily dismissed by Big News is probably more responsible for change in this world than the POTUS, y'think?
