With the mainstream media in apparent terminal meltdown and the nascent new media machine still trying to find its feet, it’s getting hard to know who to trust when it comes to obtaining the facts surrounding the current news stories. Only a couple of days ago someone asked me who they could trust in terms of unbiased reporting, and I had to confess I was stumped.

So it occurred to me that it might be useful to provide a short list of resources you can use in order to cross-check and reference topical news stories from around the world, so as to try and get a picture of what’s truth and what’s agenda driven reporting. Even with this list, you’ll have to educate your brain to discriminate between the lines, but it may help. Good luck and remember one thing – at the end of the day we’re all just puppets of that big ole PR machine in the sky. 

Oh and if you have any other authoritative sources to add, please comment with them.

William Booth | Ciudad Juarez | Feb 1

WaPo - It is common for lawyers everywhere to cover their office walls with diplomas. The Mexican criminal defense attorney Salvador Urbina is making a different statement. His walls are hung with swords -- a hundred sabers, daggers, cutlasses and Japanese katanas, the blades kept sharp.

The weapons are real, but Urbina no longer sleeps in the city where he practices law. It is far too dangerous. He now spends his nights across the border in a bland suburb of El Paso and commutes to the deadliest city in Mexico each morning. After he began receiving death threats, Urbina got his family out. He will not discuss the specifics of the threats.

"But I know that they can come for me at my office at any time," Urbina said quietly. "They can come and get me just like they got the Escobedos.

Excerpt from story at EDGENEWYORK.COM link below:

http://www.edgenewyork.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=local&sc2=features&sc3=&id=74039

by Cody Lyon

The blogosphere has expanded in popularity - and influence - in recent years with a variety of news, activism and even entertainment sites. The Web site "Best Gay Blogs" currently lists roughly 2,000 active gay blogs from around the world. And around 100 of these are in New York.

"[A successfully gay blog] is really about building a unique community of like-minded individuals to share thoughts, passions and dreams," Best Gay Blogs managing editor Chad Williams said....

Washington, DC | Feb 2

Always helpful to watch the master of guile at work

Fox - "FOX NEWS SUNDAY" HOST CHRIS WALLACE: We got a sneak peek this week at what a general election campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama would sound like, especially on foreign policy.

To get a better idea of how Republicans will go after Obama or Clinton, we're joined by former White House adviser, architect of two presidential election victories and now, most important of all, FOX News contributor Karl Rove.

And, Karl, welcome back.

FORMER WHITE HOUSE ADVISER KARL ROVE: Thanks, Chris.

WALLACE: Let's assume for the moment that Barack Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee next Wednesday. In general terms, and we'll get more specific, how should John McCain go after Obama?

What are things that he could do to Obama in a general election campaign that Hillary Clinton couldn't do in the fight for the Democratic nomination?

Just stumbled across New Zealand in the OECD a bunch of "compare countries" graphs set up by the NZ stats department using OECD stats.

A few "Huh? WTF!?" moments in it....

For example...

* US has, by far, the largest GDP AND by far the largest _public_ expenditure as a portion of GDP on health... but really cruddy returns by every measure in the report. Huh!?

* NZ has too high an imprisonment rate, but the US is crazy off the scale. WTF!? Up with you guys?

* US has second highest attainment of upper secondary education....

This year’s list of stories is released. Many are known to Agonist’s readers, however there are some surprises. Worth a quick click to view and scan. One that I have followed over the past year and noticed that there was a news blackout on the mass arrest of over 30 thousand individuals in massive sweeps nationwide, coordinated by the Feds.

Why would the Feds round up 30 thousand people, and not release statistics on the arrest, trumpeting Bush's muscle to rid the streets of miscreants.

One of the stories, #6 Operation FALCON Raids:

“Operation FALCON presents the first time in US history that all of the domestic police agencies have been put under the direct control of the federal government. The implications for American democracy are quite profound.
Operation FALCON serves no purpose except to centralize power and establish the basic contours of an American police state. It is not an effective way of apprehending criminals.”

Project Censored

"Project Censored is a media research group out of Sonoma State University which tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media."

Juan Carlos Perez | August 31

IDG - Google Inc. took another step Friday in its continued attempts to improve its relationships with wire services, when it announced a program to host full articles from news agencies on Google News pages.

Google News, a site in which Google aggregates links to articles published on news outlets' Web sites, is generally valued by publishers who make money from online advertising and as such benefit from the traffic Google News sends to their sites.

But Google News has been a tougher sell for wire services, which generally make money by licensing their content to newspapers and magazines, an

Times Online

A new website built by an American technology student has uncovered the lengths that companies apparently go to improve their public image by tweaking their entries on Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that - famously - “anyone can edit”.

The WikiScanner site, developed by Virgil Griffith, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, reveals changes to the online encyclopaedia by linking edits back to the computers from which they emanate using each computer’s unique IP address.

Here are the stories impacting the world tomorrow July 16, 2007:
Global and National News Headlines:
Police, Protesters Clash in Oaxaca
Cunningham report portrays entangled panel
Brown Meets Merkel On First Trip Abroad As British Premier
Strong quake hits Japan/Nuclear reactor damaged
Business, Finance and the Markets:
Tax Receipts Pare Treasury Sales as Foreigners Flee
News Corp. Reaches Tentative Agreement To Buy Dow Jones
Pimco Favors Japanese Mortgage-Backed, Inflation-Linked Bonds
Private Equity Gives More to Republicans
Blog Posts and Op-Eds of Note:
Menendez Reacts To Coming GOP Iraq Filibuster
Who’s Smoking What?
The phones, the keyboards, the streets
When All They Understand Is Fear or Force

And a few other things and people.

via OGM

Indexed from Project Censored Read full story details at the link. (Note that many source materials are dated 2005. However, most of the comments are updated to reflect current status. I do think, however, that the stories included in the "2007 censored story" list itself should be revisited in the light of so many more recent political and social issues and events ignored by the media and overlooked, it appears, by Project Censored, too.)

#1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media

Sources:

Buzzflash.com, July 18, 2005

Andrew Stroehlein | February 20

Reuters - Those who need to follow US television news will already be familiar with the Tyndall Report, which monitors the all-important nightly network newscasts of the three big networks. Well, Andrew Tyndall has just radically revamped his website and unveiled it online today.

Rather than a weekly, the site has been relaunched as a daily Weblog complete with embedded links to the video packages discussed. That search page contains comparative figures for the number of segments on various subjects.

Sean-Paul Kelley | San Antonio | February 10, 2007

The Agonist - A little over a year ago we opened the NewsWire in which all members can post without editorial approval. It's been a success in one aspect and a disappointment in another. Let me explain.

It's succeeded better than I thought it would because all the news which gets posted there is always thoughtful, timely (and humorous) and from solid sources.

But it's been a disappointment because so few people have contributed. (If you contribute, however, thank you! This post is not directed at you in any way.) I see several hundred different users online every day. So, instead of asking for donations here at The Agonist I'd like to ask for your time. In the future, if you are a reader who rarely posts, try posting one interesting news article a day, of course doing your best not to duplicate posts and keeping the flavor of the stories global.

If we all do this on a regular basis the news here in The Agonist NewsWire will be comprehensive in a way that no one can compete, all readers will benefit from the breadth of our coverage and ad revenues will go up so we don't have to ask for donations.

So how about it, want to give this a try?

However, please, please, please: no Capitol Hill Blue, Debka and other sources, especially those with a conspiratorial slant.

Nota bene: I want to add, after reading this comment that the reason we don't just use the aggregator included in the Drupal software package is that we don't want to. We want the news to be reflective of the community and the values our community is formed around: thoughtful, global and timely. The NewsWire isn't simply pulled from some computer generated RSS feed, but the conscious effort of a human, and a thoughtful one at that. Computer generated RSS feeds are exactly what we are trying to avoid. Ya dig?

Muriel Kane | Washington DC | Sep 25

Raw Story - The United States edition of the October 2, 2006 issue of Newsweek features a radically different cover story from its International counterparts, RAW STORY has learned.

The cover of International editions, aimed at Europe, Asia, and Latin America, displays in large letters the title "LOSING AFGHANISTAN," along with an arresting photograph of an armed jihadi.

The cover of the United States edition, in contrast, is dedicated to celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz and is demurely captioned "My Life in Pictures."

The International cover story begins:

"You don't have to drive very far from Kabul these days to find the Taliban. In Ghazni province's Andar district, just over a two-hour trip from the capital on the main southern highway, a thin young man, dressed in brown and wearing a white prayer cap, stands by the roadside waiting for two NEWSWEEK correspondents. It is midday on the central Afghan plains, far from the jihadist-infested mountains to the east and west. Without speaking, the sentinel guides his visitors along a sandy horse trail toward a mud-brick village within sight of the highway. As they get closer a young Taliban fighter carrying a walkie-talkie and an AK-47 rifle pops out from behind a tree. He is manning an improvised explosive device, he explains, in case Afghan or U.S. troops try to enter the village."

Flambeee | Brooklyn | March 28

“You are the apple of my eye.
Forever you’ll stay in my heart…”

God bless ya’ Stevie Wonder! God bless ya’!!!

So here’s the thing. I have been a user of the ipod for quite some time now as well as the diminutive but robust Bose speaker system. The setup works great. And I’ve built up a nice little collection of music on it mostly from loading old CD’s and buying new or used ones and then loading them. However, my reticence to buy itunes off the itunes site has persisted for quite some time and I doubt I will ever use the feature...

Flambeee | Brooklyn | March 22

Over the past 18 months, the stock market has keyed off of oil to varying degrees in an almost obsessive manner. Early on during this period, equities tended to move inversely to the price of crude as investors feared that the rise in energy prices would hamper consumer spending as well as corporate margins. More recently though, equities have tended to move with the price of crude as energy related equities cycled into momentum beasts positively correlated with more classic momentum related issues as Google, Apple and other high beta names.

Flambeee | Brooklyn | March 20

freaky people how you feeling?

i have jury duty this morning which sucks my expanding ass to no end so i will need to keep my comments brief… if I somehow get chosen and this goes on for days or weeks i will do my serve and attempt to be fair despite my perturbations and pervasive anti-establishment biases…

and speaking of service…

protests marking the anniversary of the iraq invasion were punk according to the latest unreliable news sources. and while i willl tend to doubt just about anything these jokers have to say, in this case i would expect that their reports of protester apathy are correct. and here is why…

Flambeee | Brooklyn | March 17

today is simultaneously march madness and st. patrick's day.

it is now 730est and flambeee has already begun drinking heavily and will be unable to post his usual blather as he will continue drinking heavily all afternoon. he is reminded of a favorite line,

"it was evening all afternoon,
it was snowing and it was going to snow..."

please feel free to post business related stories on this thread or better yet, find yourself a bottle and commence wrecking ball...

if you happen see flambeee, please feel free to kick him in the ding ding for writing about himself in the third person... he is such a tool...

Flambeee | Brooklyn | March 16

good morning shmenge brothers and sisters...

get the cheap wine and call the “roller of big cigars” as the sp500 closed above 1300 for the first time since my bar mitzvah. im very excited about it and I encourage all of those involved to be excited and to others, everyone univolved, to get excited..

but more seriously, a phenomenal market short opportunity may be on the horizon – almost too good to be true – i wait for these two occurances. 1) sentiment must become more euphoric as evidenced by rydex numbers, put/call ratio, anecdotal evidence and the analysis of the esteemed toronto g and 2) bonds must continue their downward trajectory...

Flambeee | Brooklyn | March 15

the most notable contrast to me this morning is the divergent recent performance of the u.s. markets v middle eastern markets, specifically gulf based indices. yesterday, as the sp500 was making a multi year closing high, the the saudi index
(among others) was off another 5%, has dropped an astounding 32% in 3 weeks or so, and kuwait, dubai and others are also getting crushed.

Flambeee | Brooklyn | March 14

yesterday, i made some comments regarding the notion that the u.s. markets have failed to discount a significant amount of geopolitical instability. i wanted to take a few minutes to clarify this point and expand on the psychological theory behind it a bit as it is really a model of a slow, painful and necessary change in collective identity.

since the end of ww2, the u.s. has existed in relative security and prosperity. this includes more than a fifty year period in which the country became the richest and most powerful in the world even while zero attacks occurred on its home soil. those who were born just prior to this era up until the present have experienced their formative years and lived their in such a stable, safe and wealthy environment for their entire lives. this setting has deeply influenced the american mindset – how we construe our environment and the world around us…

Flambeee | Brooklyn | March 13

monday monday (la la)...

why am I bullish gold right here right now? is it because I am barbaric? is it because the smartest guy I know has gone coo coo for bullion? is it because the world somehow continues to fail to discount the broad variety of nasty geopolitical risks currently extant? is it because the dollar remains vulnerable as the u.s. trade deficit balloons like vito spitafore’s ample pasta gut. is it because the metal has pulled back sharply to support here in the 440 range? or is it un poco de todo?

Flambeee | Brooklyn | March 10

its 700am and all they talk about on the cnbc for past half hour is the dubai port security fiasco. the next time the pretty boy cantinia brings it up or god forbid they get becky quick out on location in baltimore harbor i am turning the station to the chinese cable access where at least the frail old buddha man, despite his teaching in a language I do not understand, calms and guides me towards the infinite oneness…

the dubai story is politics. if you are a politician you are jockeying and if you are a journalist you are touting. filtering this incessant racket, there are two significant takeaways. 1) it serves as additional confirmation that the presidency has woefully unraveled and 2) five years after 9/11, homeland security remains an ominous joke.

Flambeee | Brooklyn | March 09

“caught in the devil’s bargain”

those offering conventional wisdom are quick to criticize past fed policy decisions during periods, similar to the present one, in which the central debate concerns when to end the monetary tightening cycle. they say, “the fed went too far and should have stopped raising short term rates sooner and as a result stifled economic growth or even triggered a recession.”

yet even while such criticism is accompanied by the luxury of hindsight , it is still oversimplified at best and distorts the true economic dilemma faced by the fed at those moments in time. so let us attempt to more accurately re-frame the dynamic and the choices now that ben bernanke and the fed are in the thick of it presently.

it is not a simple matter of choosing between a pair of alternatives that is either good or bad for the u.s. economy. it is not a transparent prospect. this is where the hindsight critics err. they observe past negative consequences of the choice to continue tightening and mistakenly assume that ending the cycle sooner would have prevented these consequences and turned out less painful.

yet in reality, it is more of a devil’s bargain in which the fed is forced to choose between two options both of which possess significant negative consequences.

as the fed continues to tighten here, these same critics will claim that they are stifling economic growth just when growth has become tenuous. they will point their know it all fingers but fail to acknowledge or communicate the consequences if the fed had actually acquiesced to the noise by ending the tightening cycle prematurely. they will neglect to mention inflation risk and the potential of an acute situation, worse than recession, marked by spiraling rates and a consumer crushed like a bug on a boot heel.

yes, ben and the fed have two choices here but this decision is not a simple prospect in which the outcome is black or red. this is more of a devil’s bargain…