AlterNet

Alt-media that changed ownership in 2018, now NewsGuard gives Alternet a "green" rating.

 http://www.alternet.org   
Started: June 16, 1997

Owner: Independent Media Institute

AlterNet is a US Left-wing online news outlet,, although it follows many of the corporate grand narratives when they align with what the Democratic Party espouses.

It was launched in 1998 by the Independent Media Institute. In 2018, the website was acquired by the owners of The Raw Story Inc.

While it has published many interesting stories, especially in its first decade, claiming to have developed a "unique model of journalism to confront the failures of corporate media, as well as vitriol and disinformation of right wing media, especially 'hate talk" media', it follows many of the corporate grand narratives, especially when they align with the Democratic Party.. This trend seems to have increased since 2018.

As an indication of this change, the CIA front organization NewsGuard gives Alternet a "green" rating, although it gave the site a poor rating on the "handles the difference between news and opinion responsibly" criterion. In 2019, NewsGuard said that AlterNet had been among media sources that had changed their practices as part of NewsGuard's rating process, by providing additional information about ownership or financing.

Another sign that AlterNet is losing the independent edge it used to have, is the fact that "many of AlterNet's readers come from search engines (like Google), a testament to the fact that AlterNet reaches beyond the typical “choir" of progressive readers." Most genuine dissident sites were made invisible by Google in the years before 2020.

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author
Foundation funding	“big establishment foundations are likely to seek out "alternative" media that is more bark than bite, which they can rely on to ignore and dismiss sensitive topics like those mentioned above — and many more — as "irrelevant distractions" or "conspiracy theory" [...] Recipients of funding will always protest that they are not swayed by any conflicts of interest and don't allow the sources of funding to affect their decisions, but whether or not these claims are actually true is already somewhat of a red herring. The more important question is, what sort of 'alternative' journalism garners the goodwill of the Ford Foundation corporate rogues gallery in the first place? Or the Rockefeller Foundation? Or Carnegie Foundation, Soros, and Schumann? Judging by the journalism being offered (and not offered) by Nation magazine, FAIR, Pacifica, Progressive magazine, IPA, Mother Jones, Alternet, and other recipients of their funding, the big establishment foundations are successfully sponsoring the kind of "opposition" that the US ruling elite can tolerate and live with.”	Brian Salter

 

Sponsor

Event	Description
Open Society Foundations	A NGO operating in more countries than McDonald's. It has the tendency to support politicians (at times through astroturfing) and activists that get branded as "extreme left" as its founder is billionaire and bane of the pound George Soros. This polarizing perspective causes the abnormal influence of the OSF to go somewhat unanswered.

 

A document sourced from AlterNet

Title	Type	Subject(s)	Publication date	Author(s)
Document:CIA Experiments on Children	article	Project MKUltra Mind control Drug LSD	12 August 2010	H.P. Albarelli Jr. Jeffrey Kaye

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