First of all, if you are not familiar with Ben Bagdikian's seminal work on the corporate control of our media, do read his latest: The New Media Monopoly (Beacon, 2004).
These are my previous notes on
Ben Bagdikian's The Media Monopoly: With a New Preface on the Internet
and Telecommunications Cartels(Boston: Beacon Press).
The sixth edition, published in paperback in May 2000, documents the increasing
corporate control of the media. At the time of the first edition in 1983 there
were fifty corporations that controlled most of our newspapers, magazines, radio,
TV, movies and books. The number now is six. (The parent firms, in order of
their annual media revenues, are: Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch's
News Corp, Bertelsmann, and General Electric. These six have more annual media
revenues than the the next twenty firms combined.) They all spout the corporate
line, so if you want to know what is really going on, you must find alternative
sources.
Some of these links, in no political order, are:
www.tomdispatch.com
www.informationclearinghouse.com
www.politico.com
www.huffingtonpost.com
www.truthdig.com
www.alternet.org
World Socialist Web Site (Under-reported news and analysis from a socialist perspective.)
Robert Parry's Consortium News (Excellent articles from the former AP reporter who broke the story on the Iran-Contra scandal.)
The New Yorker (Check out "From the Archive" and their 9-11 file--- Seymour Hersh, Jon Lee Anderson, Jane Mayer, Hendrik Hershberg, etc.)
The Emperor's New Clothes (Jared Israel and the anti-MSM take on Yugoslavia and the War on Serbia)
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (Excellent articles and research on media bias.)
Z Magazine (Excellent articles by Noam Chomshy, Howard Zinn, etc. Subscription required.)
For insights on the US from the UK:
The
Independent (Especially articles by Robert Fisk.)
The Guardian
Some English Language Publications from Asia:
Asia Times Online (Especially articles by Pepe Escobar— "Pipelineistan," etc.)
Pakistan's DAWN and Herald Magazine
The Times of India and Hindustan Times
A Blog from Baghdad that is Driving the Pentagon Nuts