Jul 14 2007
The Alternative Media: Free Speech is Still Possible
Cyrano’s Journal Online, Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop are initiating a weekly email which will include links to both the most recent offerings and to timeless classics available on our very diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to
By Ramzy Baroud
7/14/07
To speak of an alternative media is to acknowledge the deficiency of the prevailing media, the mainstream, in addressing the issues, catering to the concerns, and responding to the woes of the general public, the overwhelming majority of people who are almost completely disregarded by the corporate media everywhere.
It is disheartening, to say the least, that at a time of unpopular wars, corrupt elites and a widening gap between rich and poor, the corporate media still finds it tasteful to follow the mischievousness of Paris Hilton, now that Britney Spears is getting back in shape after her drug mishaps, or discuss at length and tirelessly the most recent scandals or spectacular performances at Britain’s Big Brother or American Idol.
This is, of course, problematic if one is to consider the role of the citizenry in sustaining a healthy democracy, which itself requires an educated and well-informed public. When the public sphere becomes a puppet in the hands of the corporate media, whose profits and losses are often determined by friendly relations with the state, then a meaningful change in the lives of peoples of democratic societies is simply untenable.
The corporate media is, by definition, forged and sustained with corporate funds, by wealthy individuals whose objective is to amass more wealth, rather than ensure that freedom of speech serves as a guarantor for personal and collective freedom, social cohesion – as opposed to alienation – and democracy. Unlike theocratic or authoritarian societies, which simply stifle freedom of expression altogether, the conduct of the media in Western societies is legitimate from a legal standpoint: it violates no written rules, but the end result is the same. In Taliban’s Afghanistan, people knew little of the outside world because TVs and satellite dishes were tabooed. In the US, most people, no matter how will intended, also know little of the outside world. Their perception is almost entirely concocted based on bits and pieces from CNN’s sound bites, Jay Leno’s comedy and Hollywood’s stereotypes.
But it should be recognized that democratic societies, although being robbed in so clever a way from their own meaningful democratic platforms are more than capable of tipping the balance in favor of free speech – as opposed to nations that are violently coerced not to exercise the same right. Indeed, the more the US administration and its corporate media benefactors attempt to consolidate their control over public opinion, under various pretences, notwithstanding, the need for unity in the ‘war on terror’ – thus justifying the ostracizing of dissidents – the more agitated Americans insist on their right to exercise their free speech, refusing to succumb to the new skewed logic of the time. Thus, the need for an alternative media.
Increasingly so, alterative media is breaking away from being a mere local expression of dissent, and is emergent as global initiatives; from international newspapers to progressive publishing houses, there is indeed an intense and genuine effort at countering the corporate media in a collective and equally global fashion. I spoke with two leading individuals whose work is felt around the world, but still, require the support of the public for their missions to truly succeed.
Wendy Kristianasen, the editorial director of LMD, Le Monde Diplomatique’s English edition, told me: “I think it comes down to this: we publish wonderful writing that illuminates the state of the planet in a fresh way. LMD specializes in the very best journalism – things nobody knows about until after we’ve exposed them and important stories other papers miss altogether. And the analysis is sharp, and authoritative.”
“Everyone has heard of Le Monde Diplomatique, they know of it as the famous Paris monthly, radical and independent. What they don’t know is that the paper has dozens of foreign editions around the world, in thirty languages, making for a global readership of one and a half million.” One of its many foreign editions is, of course, in English, and it can be easily obtained from www.mondediplo.com.
Dr. Roger van Zwanenberg is the Chairman and Publisher of Pluto Press Limited (www.plutobooks.com). This tireless individual, through his company, disseminates scores of most valuable books to countless bookstores and academic institutions the world over. His office on London’s Archway Road is reminiscent of a dungeon, but a lot of good comes out of it.
He commented during a recent conversation: “Pluto is 20 years old this year. We are a dying breed, an independent book publisher producing 60 new, non-fiction, books a year. In a world where book publishing and selling are part of the great global media conglomerates, Pluto struggles to remain viable and alive. Our niche, our rationale and our advantage in the marketing place of the world, is that we tackle the great issues of our day… the grandeur of Imperialism, war and peace locally and globally, the tyranny of oppression, and the domination of one people by another…. the great issues as seen through socialist writers’ eyes. Our readers expect not only relevant books, high quality professional production, and modest prices. This is what our house proudly stands for, and why we have a good chance to succeed to remain against the odds of a globalized world.”
Online, CounterPunch.org remains one of the most important and respectable commentary websites anywhere. But since no single article can give a full account of the best alternative media available today, CommonDreams.org is an excellent place to start; this homepage list of alternative media is simply exhaustive.
It’s important to note that the success or failure of the alternative media is wholly reliant on the engagement and the support of the public, who would, ultimately have to make a choice: what issues to care about? What books to read? What music to listen to? And what news are worthy of attention: health coverage, education, war and peace, or Paris Hilton’s prison fiasco? The choice is ultimately ours.
-Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian author and journalist. His latest volume: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press: London) is available at Amazon.com. He is the editor of PalestineChronicle.com and can be contacted at
A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO OUR READERS.
For over two years now, Thomas Paine’s Corner has been a powerful and unwavering voice for a courageous and badly needed agenda for change. We have consistently delivered hard-hitting and insightful commentary, polemics, and analysis in our persistent efforts to persuade, educate, and inspire, and serve as a discriminating but generous platform for voices from many points of view with one thing in common: their spiritual honesty and quality of thinking.
•
Aside from the caliber of its content, Thomas Paine’s Corner’s strength is that there are no advertisers or corporations to exercise de facto censorship or orchestrate our agenda. We aim to keep it that way and we need your help!
•
As a semi-autonomous section of the multi-faceted, thoroughly comprehensive, and highly prestigious Cyrano’s Journal Online, we share Cyrano’s passion for winning the battle of communications against systemic lies, an act which is essential to attaining social and environmental justice. To help us achieve that goal, Cyrano’s Journal, besides its regular editorial pages, intends to begin producing editorial videos to expose the lack of proper context, ahistoricalism, excessive over-emphasis on inane events, and outright lies the corporate media, and in particular television, present to you and your family as a steady diet of pernicious intellectual junk food. This will be an expensive under-taking and there will be no grants forthcoming from the likes of the American Enterprise Institute, the Coors or Heritage Foundation. You can be sure of that!
•
As Greek mythology has it, the powerful are frequently defeated by their own hubris, and that’s precisely what we are witnessing today. Our rotten-to-the-core, usurping plutocracy has become so overtly and arrogantly corrupt that our patience has now reached its generous limit, and the membrane of America’s collective consciousness is about to burst. This will result in a significant restructuring of our socioeconomic and political environments, we hope (and must make sure) for the better. Considering what is at stake in the world today, Cyrano’s Journal and Thomas Paine’s Corner want to accelerate the arrival of that new day, and its promise of a new, truly well organized, kind, and honest civilization.
•
Assisting us in our cause is as simple as clicking on the PayPal button below and exercising the power of your wallet. No matter how large or how small, we thank you in advance for your donation! If you are serious about our struggle for a new society, please don’t put it off. Let us hear from you today.
•Jason Miller
Associate Editor, Cyrano’s Journal Online, and Editorial Director, Thomas Paine’s Corner.
Patrice Greanville, Editor in Chief, Cyrano’s Journal Online
[…] Read more Media […]
Took awhile for a friend of mine of European Heritage to latch onto what I was talking about..that he had been born into a world of where all…Reality…had been manufactured for him….& in an ever increasing manner all…Reality kept on being manufactured for him…
He enjoyed me taking him on…Thought Journies…back 1000 years ago in time..in this land…when none of this was here….& he slowly began to latch onto the world of manufactured…reality…he had been born into…
Such as the three thoughts offered by those of European Heritage…Conservative…Liberal…Moderate…and yes..some with variations…but those are the three forms of thought…that are offered to people…and they become imprisoned by those three forms of thought…without thinking…there are other forms of thought…as there were other ways of living upon the Earth…
Such as the Kogi people in South America still live the Old Way upon the Earth…The Tribal Way…& by the Way of the Circle…as well as simply with the Earth in the least destructive way upon the Earth…
They know this world is out here…and I wouldn’t be surprised if they spent any time in this world they would think this world is completely insane…
And I am not sure they would be far wrong…
Regardless…The Bills come in..& got to be paid..
You cant have a new society while the real cause of all the suffering,wars, famine etc- an ever increasing population is not addressed.
This has nothing to do with freedom of the press or Palestine, Irak, Iran, Ireland or the USA . These are distractions from the real cause of The Worlds problems. Of course global warming needs to be addressed of course we have to stop this rapid growth of greed. But this is Ideology! The Worlds population has doubled in the last 25 years from 3 to 6 billion. In the next 15 years it will double again to 12 billion and in 50 years time there will be so many people looking for food from other sources as refugees with no food or space. Sorry that this is short and un-sweet but you are looking at the wrong problems of the World like so many that are informed by the very press we condemn.
WE are being misled as to the problem! Take a good hard look now before its too late.
Talk to you soon I hope. The Baldchemist