Alternative media are media (newspapers, radio, television, movies, Internet, etc.) which are alternatives to the business or government-owned mass media. Proponents of alternative media argue that the mainstream media are biased. While sources of alternative media can also be biased (sometimes proudly so), proponents claim that the bias is significantly different than that of the mainstream media, hence these media provide an "alternative" viewpoint. As such, advocacy journalism tends to be a component of many alternative outlets.

Because the term "alternative" has connotations of self-marginalization, some media outlets now prefer the term "independent" over "alternative".

Propaganda model

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky proposed a concrete model for the filtering processes (biases) of mainstream media, especially in the United States, called the propaganda model. They tested this empirically and presented extensive quantified evidence supporting the model. Authors such as Louis Althusser have also written in detail about the problems of the mainstream press, and their writings have inspired the creation of many alternative press efforts. Communication scholar Robert W. McChesney, inspired in part by the work of Chomsky and Herman, has linked the failures of the mainstream press primarily to corporate ownership, pro-corporate public policy, and the myth of "professional journalism." He has published extensively on the failures of the mainstream press, and advocates scholarship in the study of the political economy of the media, the growth of alternative media, and comprehensive media policy reforms.

Media

Press

The alternative press consists of printed publications that provide a different or dissident viewpoint than that provided by major mainstream and corporate newspapers, magazines, and other print media.

Factsheet Five publisher Mike Gunderloy described the alternative press "as sort of the 'grown-up' underground press. Whole Earth, the Boston Phoenix, and Mother Jones are the sorts of things that fall in this classification." In contrast, Gunderloy described the underground press as "the real thing, before it gets slick, co-opted, and profitable. The underground press comes out in small quantities, is often illegible, treads on the thin ice of unmentionable subjects, and never carries ads for designer jeans."

See also

• Alternative media in South Africa
• Alternative media
• Alternative media
• Citizen media
• Democracy Now!
• Jesse Macbeth
• List of independent television stations in the U.S. by call sign
• Mass media
• Media activism
• Media democracy
• Media Freedom Project
• Media justice
• Nexus
• Pirate radio
• Pirate television
• Signs of the Times (news website)
• Underground press

References

1. Chomsky, Understanding Power

External links

• A Contrario: Independent Press
• Alternative Media Global Project
• visionon.tv
• Alternative News And Information Network