Activist Media

One of the difficulties faced by social movements is getting their message reported clearly, accurately and effectively through the lens of mainstream media. A key factor in this work has been the creation of alternative media that both offer a direct channel to fairer representation and can keep the mainstream media honest by critiquing their coverage. In the contemporary, media-saturated world new problems emerge in the form of "protest fatigue" -- mainstream failure to cover demonstrations often dismissed as "sixties style protests," as if protest can be confined to one decade or is a stylistic choice -- and the silo effect in which people only get the news that reinforces their ideology. The sites and resources below are working to address these issues with courage and imagination.

Featured Site

• Independent Media Center. Indymedia 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, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.

Key Sites

• AdBusters. Includes ad parodies and a variety of tools for exposing the seamy side of the ad business, and consumer capitalism generally.
• AlterNet. Major alternative news site.
• Alternative Press Center. Extensive online directory of alternative media.
• Alternative Press Review. Guide to alternative journalism.
• Bad Subjects. Political Education for Everyday Life..
• Bitch Media. Feminist take on popular culture.
• ColorLines Alternative news on race, class, and gender justice.
• Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia. 101 ways to subvert mainstream culture.
• Democracy Now! Daily TV/radio show from the grassroots.
• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Counters conservative bias in media.
• GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).
• MediaWatch. Stories mainstream media misses or gets wrong.
• The Monitor. Online version of an interesting progressive biweekly paper.
• Ms. magazine. One of the oldest and most influential feminist magazines.
• The Nation. Online site for America's longest-running progressive magazine.
• The Noam Chomsky Archive. Prolific progressive cultural critic's information-rich site.
• Pacifica Radio. A long-standing, important activist media group in Berkeley, CA.
• Paper Tiger. Alternative TV of the highest order.
• Deep Dish TV. Long-standing alternative TV production group.
• Radio for Peace International. Shortwave peace.
• SWAMP: Southwest Alternative Media Project.
• Z-Net. Many progressive media links.