Independent Media

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Hunter S. Thompson

Independent Media​

Welcome to the wild west of media content. It could be anything but we are talking about news and information today. Most of it was traditionally printed because broadcast video was expensive to produce and distribute. There was also a problem of corporate network willingness to carry particular content.

The kind of content that you grabbed from a newspaper box for free. As a content creator, you were happy if anyone read it at all.

They mostly tried to be informative on some topic. It wasn't the World Weekly News featuring Bat Boy meant to entertain you. These folks were on a mission.

The Internet and Independent Media​

The Internet invented Social Media platforms that were soon purchased by the biggest players in that arena. Independent Media creators could now reach millions of viewers worldwide. Creators are content restricted on corporate platforms to a small degree for legal reasons, but for the most part are free to say whatever they would like. It became influential enough to get a name from the media ecosystem called "New Media". I feel like "Social Media" and "New Media" are propaganda designed to make Independent Media sound unserious.

Independent Media convinced the American Public to elect a New York mobster for US President twice. It was serious enough to attract my attention. This media demands to be taken seriously and so I have normalized this to corporate and independent version within the following terms:

• Media Platform : A place that hosts media for general public consumption. The two main categories are Corporate Media Platforms, and Independent Media Platforms. A public-owned platform could exist but does not yet.
• Media Content : The content payload delivered on a platform. These are divided into Corporate Content and Independent Content.
• Content Creators : The entities that make content. These are divided into Corporations, and Independent Media Creators.

Independent Content on Corporate Platforms​

Corporate platforms reach more people than independent platforms can hope to achieve today. Ones that host independent content are shielded from liability for content uploaded by individual users. This protection only applies when the platform does not moderate content. This protects our individual right to free speech at the cost of public content that doesn't fully agree with community standards of the public as a whole. Platforms cannot restrict the things we say legally.

Platforms worry about corporate lawfare and this rule is what keeps them in business. One result is that platforms do not provide tools for consumers to filter content based on their preferences. You are going to get whatever the algorithm throws at you. It may be a stupid cat video. It may be white supremacist propaganda. It may be a story about a war plane shot down in Iran that mainstream media ignored. You just don't know what choices it will give you.

The public wasn't quite ready for this firehose of unfiltered content.

Where Independent Content shines​

The general public was accustomed to corporate content. Corporate content is not designed for critical thinking or feedback. It was designed for passive consumption that flows through your thoughts with little objection because they told us that they were the news we trust. I stopped believing that when a bunch of people who "just hated our freedoms" executed a multimillion-dollar operation to destroy the World Trade Center. The narrative must be false because such a group gives you the finger when you walk by. They don't try to undo your nation.

The only well-known journalists I recall questioning evidence leading to the second Gulf War were Amy Goodman from Democracy Now, and Phil Donahue who got fired from MSNBC for his anti-war content. The lack of critical analysis led to an illegal invasion of Iraq that had vetoed by the UN Security Council. Corporations were too busy looking at dollar signs to care seriously about the truth. If Ms. Goodman and Mr. Donahue had the reach in the mid 90s that we have today, we could have avoided this disaster. With these professional independent journalists, we also see lots of information produced by amateurs.

Several independent sources have popped up with live Congressional hearings and interviews. These are a favorite of mine because I can use AI to summarize the entire video and move to the parts I find interesting. The value I get from it varies depending on my knowledge of the underlying issues. I find the most valuable information comes from our elected representatives themselves.

Consider a typical news segment. An anchor introduces the issue for a couple of minutes. They play a 10-second clip out of context from a one-hour speech. Next they turn to some talking head to tell you why it is bad for the next 8 minutes and 50 seconds. Summarizing the original speech with AI and seeing instant analysis with everything in context is much more informative.

Where Independent Content gets dangerous​

Amateur Creators often relate information from their subjective point of view as opposed to a more objective view. This is how it presents as an amateur from my own subjective point of view. Independent creators may present ignorant opinion as fact just as I did with the first sentence of this paragraph. It is not necessarily wrong. It just means that I lack the skills and experience to make a valid claim correctness. One should be skeptical when reading that sentence and should not assume it is fact.

Opinion Content​

Most of what we see and hear about politics is not fact. Consider legislation like the SAVE act and ask yourself how much you actually know about the bill. What facts did the news teach you about what it is and how it works? Most things you hear from Corporate Media are vague statements spoken by talking heads practiced in the art of public manipulation. They are designed to distract you from the legislation itself and focus your attention on parties instead. Independent Media mimicked this culture.

Political issues can feel very personal in subjective reality. The same culture that blames everything on parties made people identify strongly with one, and the enemy was the other party. Independent Creators focused on issues of interest to them and audiences making this propaganda louder than ever. Hopefully the resulting witch hunts will end soon.

Expert Opinion Content​

There are experts on Independent Media as well. Their statements in their field of expertise are usually much more reliable than the statements of a amateur but there is no guarantee.

• Dr. Phil may be a doctor, but I still think he's a quack.
• Content Creators directly selling anything are suspect. It makes me think they are more concerned with sales than putting out top-quality content.
• Experts may talk about things they don't know, which is pretty much everyone talking about AI. I get it, it's free money, but I am not wasting time on it.
• Lastly, even experts like The Surgeon General can just plain be wrong.

Stereotyping​

Independent and Corporate content both suffer from this problem. Politicians revel in this behavior because it allows them to demonize political opposition without debate. "Republicans are just racist" and "Democrats just want open borders" are two good examples of this. Both of these take a very complicated (and by very I mean VERY complicated) issue and turns this into some vapid party blame game. It would be nice to see the news explore important questions around the topic like, "What happens to the economy of El Paso, Texas if you suddenly drop 50,000 unemployed and mostly unskilled immigrants into it?"

Think for a minute before you spew nonsense like this. You may literally be signing death warrants on fellow citizens to get a few party votes. Hopefully the General Public joins me in calling this out wherever we find it and punishing the behavior. It must stop. I will ask nicely one time, and then I will not be nice with the precise impact and mechanism of "not nice" determined on a case-by-case basis.

I have no loyalty to your political parties. I will destroy the organizations if they are careless and continue to threaten my Republic. Several grievances in the Declaration of War would not exist if parties did not block votes on them.

Stereotyping led to citizens killing each other while rapists and pedophiles in the privileged class of society walk free. Instead of attacking legitimate groups of your fellow Americans with unfounded accusations like these, try understanding the problem, finding the actual cause of it, and then look for ways to remove the blocker.

Several people in the Epstein Files are rapists and pedophiles. We should be hunting them down like the animals they are and making them stand trial. The current administration is shielding them from justice. If the head of the DOJ was serving the constitution instead of Mr. Trump's racketeering enterprise, then the public would prosecuting them. Congress knows this, but impeachment is blocked by The Republican Party.

Now I can make a valid claim that The Republican Party is shielding rapists and pedophiles in the Epstein Files from prosecution. It is specific, provable, and difficult to ignore. Much better than a baseless claim like "Republicans are pedophiles". One of them probably is at least, but most are not. The members who are not corrupt either grow a spine or go down with the ship. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Independent Media can make this claim. It's much too scary for Corporate Media.

The future of Independent Media​

The future of Independent Media is a good question. I think it starts with good leadership from the journalists who helped build the major media empires and were then discarded by their corporations. I think there is a place in Independent Media for you and for the journalists that will follow in your wake. I think you have the chops to build what Corporate Media would not let you build. I think the most important skills are about collecting and reporting news and less about flashy ways to present it. Generation X is about getting work done.

Corporate Media is trying to stop Corporate Platforms from hosting Independent Media through propaganda and lawfare. We must deny this action because platforms like YouTube are the only ways Independent Media reaches millions of viewers. We must protect these platforms. An independent news platform would be better, but I think we will see one in time.

Use simple, indisputable facts to "flatten" propaganda. Do not target groups, target issues. In general I don't like to target individuals unless it is a person acting in their profession (ie. Speaker Mike Johnson) on a specific issue (ie. lying to the public).