We don’t get a script or set of talking points sent out from a handful of corporate think-tanks – we work each story as it comes from our own perspectives allowing readers to judge the veracity of our work through researching our references and thinking for themselves. Each of us has our own style because there is no “school of alternative media.” And each of us has our own way of dealing with criticism, attacks, and efforts to undermine our work.
Each style, like each weapon or battle formation on the battlefield, has a role to play:
+The “alternative academics” with deep research, many references, and a high-level vocabulary and level of analysis serves as a good fundamental basis and reference for the rest of the alternative media. They can provide the underpinnings of more popular and simplified messages.
+The “alternative journalist” tries to be objective and report both sides of every issue minus the spin.
+The “alternative sensationalists” try to get the completely indoctrinated, brainwashed masses interested in issues their TV and regular websites don’t/won’t cover. They provide a large and steady stream of readers for the other two. They may be slightly lowbrow in their methods, but think of them as the infantry and artillery in the trenches, everyday slugging it out with the corporate media for the minds of the vast public – it would be very difficult to live in those trenches and not get a little dirty.
No one style could undermine and replace corporate dominated propaganda on their own. They must work together – just as infantry, warplanes, tanks, and artillery work together on the battlefield. In the barracks they may not be able to stomach one another, but on the battlefield, infighting will spell defeat.
There is organic infighting, and then there is establishment cognitive infiltration where propagandists posing as alternative media infiltrate our efforts and attempt to pit us against one another. This causes us to expend our energy on each other before ever scratching the establishment.
Be highly suspicious/cautious of those in the alternative media who spend an inordinate amount of time attacking other alternative media organizations and personalities – they are either cognitive infiltrators or victims of their own ego – either way, strategically, they are hurting, not helping the cause.
When entire regions are engaged in armed conflict and people are dying, there is no time for infighting. Stay focused on the mission, on the cause, on the struggle.
