Does independent media make a difference?
April 3, 2011 - 11:39pm
The MRzine Web site (http://mrzine.org) was inaugurated on July 14, 2005, and early on included events in North Africa and the Mideast in its focus. In the intervening years there have been many occasions when countries among the most frequent points of origin of visitors to the site have been Turkey, Iran, or Egypt. But for a moment in February, MRzine played a role in events qualitatively different from anything that had gone before. The Bahrain government attempted to block internet access to videos and accounts of events in the early stages of the revolutionary movement. MRzine escaped their notice, and for an important day or two its coverage of events was one of the few available in Bahrain. On one day in mid-February records of MRzine internet usage showed more visitors from Bahrain's capital Manama-population 155,000-than from any other city in the world, and indeed from any country other than the United States.
The Dangerous Cult of the Guardian - by Jonathan Cook
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/28/the-dangerous-cult-of-the-guardia...
"So why do the Guardian and its writers publish these propaganda articles parading as moral concern about the supposedly degenerate values of the 'left'? And why, if the left is in such a debased state, can the Guardian's stable of talented writers not take on their opponents' ideas without resorting to strawman arguments, misdirection and smears?
It hardly matters whether all or some of these critical thinkers are right. The danger they pose to the Guardian is in arguing convincingly that the way the world is presented to us is not the way it really is..."
i think it does, even if it's small right now. For example on israel/palestine people attitudes have changed more in the last ten years than the 50 before that due in large part to indy media/internet for allowing info previously kept under wraps to be seen.