It’s a long one

I like to search out and read alternative news sites on the interweb from time to time and I’ve noticed that there is a credibility problem. Basically there are two viewpoints on the English interweb the mainstream media (MSM) and the alternative media (AM).

My problem with the official news is that it seems very one sided and agenda driven whenever I do take enough interest to dig deeper into a subject. Add in the influence of the corporations that buy the advertising and it makes it hard to take any of it seriously. Even meaningless celebrity scandals are apparently often just publicity ploys.

The problem with the alternative news sites is also myriad. They have a tendency to reference themselves as sources; quote people I’ve been told my whole life are crazy evil despots and too often an article trying to present an alternate viewpoint to some mainstream story might be found on the same page as a link to some ridiculous (and often anti-Semitic) conspiracy story. This makes it harder to give the alternate viewpoint story much truck no matter how plausible it seems.

I’m not going to count the almost omnipresent poor grammar because 1. a lot of MSM has bad English too and 2. the polish of a well written story could also imply a polished subject? And I’m not going to count the absence of credentials in the by-line because I’ve been to post-secondary school and I don’t suffer the illusion that a B.Com. grants integrity or honesty. Or even competency.

The MSM gets some credibility because they don’t seem to make much stuff up of make too many ludicrous claims. Their culpability is in their copious and selective omissions of fact that they justify with time and space constraints but that usually ensure the story follows the official line or at least doesn’t upset potential advertisers. Recently I’ve been bothered by how much new time is dedicated to the African protests and how little to the Wisconsin protests. As a Canadian I’m pretty confident that the events in Wisconsin will have more of an impact on my life than what happens in Libya.

Then I see a story about Raymond Davis and I come back to the AM. Specifically their tendency to quote evil despots like Fidel, Momar and Hugo in their ranting about CIA interference and assassination attempts and I’m left to wonder if they really are so crazy as I’ve been led to believe. Raymond Davis is a good case to look at. This is a U.S. diplomat arrested for murder in Pakistan who the U.S. secretary of State said should have diplomatic immunity but somehow this story is on CNN but can’t even make the front page of the World section. And now that the Pakistani government has refused to release him Mr. Davis has been downgraded to a CIA contractor.

The Raymond Davis story is easy to look up though as Pakistan has a good English language newspaper on-line that often presents a different view from the official Western media version. Sadly a lot of places and issues don’t have that voice. I guess there’s Al Jazeera but are they really any different than CNN?

So I guess that’s it. I’m left reading the good guy’s propaganda, the bad guy’s propaganda and sometimes the wing nuts in the peanut gallery to make up my own mind out of all the lies and half truths. Maybe that’s why my favourite on-line topic is the cut and dry NFL?

C’mon just split the billions and go back to wearing man-sized pads already!