Media Links for more Information

For more information on Media here are a few sites that provide insights into media issues many perhaps have not considered:

• Fairness in Accuracy and Reporting is a national media watch group in the USA offering lots of articles on fairness in the media. They also have an interesting link that shows some of the poorer examples of journalism!
• The Institute for Public Accuracy tracks and responds to the media output of major think tanks.
• Works from Noam Chomsky:
  • What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream?
  • This article summarizes and reviews a Chomsky interview on a British television show, discussing democracy and propaganda.
  • This interview with John Pilger and Noam Chomsky is about some major issues this century involving misleading information and propaganda that have allowed abuses of basic rights.
  • Necessary Illusions is a book about the role of the media in the US and around the world.
  • Manufacturing Consent
  • (This list perhaps doesn’t help to show how much work Noam Chomsky has done in this field. Many more additional articles on this topic are available at the Noam Chomsky Archive Web site)
• The Media Channel , a collaboration of GlobalVision New Media and OneWorld on-line bring this site together. Described as the world’s first global media supersite, the Media Channel looks into the problems of journalism in the mainstream and continued state repression of journalism in many nations.
• Indymedia, or, the Independent Media Center, is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, objective, and passionate tellings of truth.
• Rocky Mountain Media Watch is a media watch group actively reporting on the poor coverage of news in USA. It helps citizens to resist and change the manipulative and toxic formulas of Big Media’s news products
• From OneWorld:
  • Guide to Media Democracy
  • OneWorld’s section on news about the media reports on the situation for journalists around the world who are sometimes beaten, or even killed because of what they report. One such special report is on the situation that has erupted in Zambia where there has been a media crackdown for criticizing the state.
• The Media Institute of Southern Africa provides information about journalism in the southern countries of Africa and their struggles to maintain diversity and independence.
• Democracy Now, a radio show presented by the many awards-winning journalist, Amy Goodman. You can browse a democracy now archive of all past radio shows. Her show covers many topics and issues that most mainstream media barely touches on, or has a very different slant to.
• Center for Media and Democracy has some interesting information about the state of the media and public relations.
• A French source, Reporters San Frontieres (Reporters without Borders) provides some good news articles. While their main site is in French, they also have an English version.
• Project Censored has, for over twenty years, reported on the big issues and stories that have not made it into the mainstream media for a variety of reasons. They have an interesting annual book called The News that Didn’t Make the News.
• The Mother Jones web site is a decent magazine site that looks at a wide variety of issues.
• The Common Dreams web site provides great news coverage of the major issues. Worth checking out.
• Adbusters is a great site. They have some great spoof ads as well as information on numerous campaigns.
• Alternet is a news service for the alternative press. It has some very good articles from a variety of sources and is part of the Indepenent Media Institute.
• Cause Communications is a group that helps activists and nonprofit organisations publicize important issues. They have numerous useful articles on their web site.
• The Conflict and Peace Forum has some interesting articles. Of particular note are the following:
  • What are Journalists For? contains in-depth analysis and critique on mainstream media and how they report on issues around the world. The second part has chapters written and contributed by some well-known media critics.
  • The Peace Journalist Option represents the findings of the Conflict and Peace Journalism summer school which took place at Taplow Court in Buckinghamshire, UK, over the week of August 25-29 1997. Participants comprised journalists, media academics and students from Europe, Africa, Asia and the U.S. who divided their time between lectures, workshops and debate. The resulting document is a fair representation of the findings but may not represent the whole view of any of the contributors.
• The Alternative Media section from About.com provides many links to other organizations.
• The Canadian-based Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society (IMPACS) is a non-profit organization based in Vancouver committed to the expansion and protection of democracy and the strengthening of civil society.
• Norbert’s Bookmarks web site has a section providing a number of links on issues to do with global media giants.
• Hidden Agendas: The films and writings of John Pilger online . This is the web site for works from John Pilger, an award-winning Australian journalist. The site looks in detail at the issues raised in John Pilger’s films, concentrating specifically on the plight of Iraq (including an exclusive Pilger update), Vietnam, East Timor, Burma and the Aborigines in his native Australia. Furthermore it explores his concerns about the ever-increasing power of global media organisations.
• The International Federation of Journalists web site provides a lot of information. They also have an interesting links section providing many more links to other sites on journalism, human rights, media etc.
• The International Freedom of Expression Exchange web site provides regularly updated information on freedom of expression issues and abuses. They also have an extensive links section for lists of even more web sites on similar topics.
• MediaLens provides a critical look at the media, British mainstream, in particular, in a similar way that Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (mentioned above) does for the U.S. mainstream.
• Robert McChesney Web Site is the web site for Robert W. McChesney, a research professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Information and Library Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He wrote the award-winning Rich Media Poor Democracy; Communication Politics in Dubious Times, (University of Illinois Press, 1999).
• These extensive links from Children Now cover issues such as media and children, content filtering, media literacy, advertising, race, gender, children’s programming and so on.
• Panos Paris looks into issues to do with media in the South and developing countries.
• Chicago Media Watch provides many resources on the issues around media, journalism, propaganda and a lot more.
• Propaganda Critic is a web site from Dr. Aaron Delwiche, of the School of Communications at the University of Washington. This site provides a detailed look at different propaganda techniques and criticizes the impact propaganda has.
• mediareform.net provides a vast collection of articles and links on various media related topics. As they also mention on their home page (as of June 14, 2003), We are barraged with advertising. Journalism has become dumbed-down entertainment. The range of news analysis and debate is shrinking along with the diversity of media ownership, placing an extraordinary degree of economic and social power in a very few hands.
• Media Tenor is a resource for information on media content trends, providing analysis, research and articles.
• StopBigMedia.com is a campaign organization to fight runaway media consolidation in the US.
• Spin Watch is a UK-based organization looking at corporate and government spin.