Exposing the Elite Agenda: Top Alternative News Outlets and Those Co-Opted
by Big Tech and Intelligence

Cathy Smith

Hard-hitting, Independent Alternative News Outlets: Challenging the Establishment

These digital platforms are known for their investigative journalism, grassroots activism, and critical stance toward government, corporate, and imperialist military power.
ThePeoplesVoice.org – Known for its fearless reporting on Social Justice, Human Rights, Political Activism, Political Reform, Environmental Issues, Corporate Accountability, Government Accountability, War, Foreign Policy, Economic Inequality, Poverty, Healthcare, Public Health, Alternative Media, Censorship, Technology, Surveillance, Global Conspiracies, Rights, Government Corruption, Genocide, and the Military-Industrial Complex.
The Intercept epitomizes investigative journalism and rarely dodges government surveillance, corporate corruption, or abuses of power in its reputation for truth.
The Grayzone has done ongoing investigative reporting that largely relates to U.S. foreign policy, imperialism, and Middle East geopolitics.
MintPress News covers stories of U.S. imperialism, war, corporate corruption, and all other stories involving the military-industrial complex.
Consortium News: An independent investigative news site uncovering corruption and government wrongdoing.
CounterPunch has been a trusted resource to anyone with the need to question the status quo in writings on U.S. politics, war, corporate predations, and environmental destruction.
Antiwar.com: Long-time critic of endless U.S. military wars and foreign policy; gives voice to anti-war views opposing the mainstream war narrative.
The Libertarian Institute: Anti-war, anti-surveillance, pro–civil liberties content with a libertarian focus.
The Electronic Intifada: Honest reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and matters of Middle Eastern geopolitics.
The American Conservative: Conservative/isolationist critique of U.S. foreign policy and military overreach/militarization of politics.
The New Inquiry: A venue of cultural critique and political commentary, most on questions of identity, power, and structures of society.
The Baffler has a reputation for works on capitalism, media, and social systems; thus, one frequently finds calls for more radical change.

While still purporting to do news and analysis, many of them are either considered aligned with mainstream narratives or have been critiqued for ties with corporate, government, or military sectors.

Axios: For a news organization, its journalistic integrity is often called into question due to its close ties with corporate and political power. Axios touts that it does fast, factual reporting, but its frequent centrist, "both sides"-type reporting muddies vital political and social issues and removes narratives from those that would confront the status quo. Its content regularly caters to powerful business interests, from its fawning coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants like Facebook and Google; rarely does one find interrogation of their roles in global surveillance capitalism.

Opednews.com: This is a website that has been known to censor controversial or non-mainstream opinions. It purges content and writers who challenge its editorial line. Many contributors have faced "mass banning" and been added to blocklists. The site's soft-handed approach to critique, especially of large corporate entities or the US government, weakens its credibility as a true outlet for independent thought.

ProPublica is a grantee that does acclaimed investigative reporting, yet its funders are large foundations—many of them linked to powerful elites like the Koch brothers or George Soros—which makes one question its true independence. If one considers some high-profile reports, it appears that an obsession with corruption leads to overlooking systemic flaws within funding structures and selective bias in the choice of topics under investigation.

The Guardian: This is an avowedly progressive publication that has been accused of being close to big business, at least where geopolitics is concerned. Sensationalist and largely uncritical support for military intervention in states like Syria and Libya has resulted in criticism of its association with the interests of the Western governments and their corporate allies. Its foreign policy editorials usually align with the establishment more often than against it.

Vox: Vox brands itself as a hub for fact-based journalism. It does cover a wide array of topics, but it tends to be very centrist in its argumentation, avoiding more radical solutions to the biggest issues: income inequality, climate change, and racial justice. Due to its corporate sponsorship and relationship with powerful institutions, its reporting tends to veer toward the status quo without offering substantial critiques of the economic order on which so many of its reported problems are based.

HuffPost was originally founded as a progressive outlet, but since its acquisition by AOL, now a part of Verizon, it has steadily become a mouthpiece of mainstream corporate and political interests. Its coverage in politics and social justice often expresses the centrist neoliberal narrative that keeps the current power structures intact with seamless integration of corporate-backed content into its editorial decisions.

BuzzFeed News: BuzzFeed News does occasionally produce sharp investigative work, but is deeply enmeshed in its parent company's corporate priorities. Its reliance on corporate ad revenue and audience-building through viral content precludes the outlet from engaging in more complex, radical critiques of the status quo. Corporate interests shape both reporting and editorial priorities, at the risk of undermining independence.

Slate: Always criticized for being centrist neoliberal, Slate has become an apologist for establishment solutions to the political and social questions. Funded by huge media corporations, one has to question how radical it can really be against elite interests. Political reporting at Slate often focuses on the construction of "both sides" narratives, particularly on issues such as healthcare reform and economic inequality, for which overwhelming evidence demonstrates systemic problems.

Rolling Stone: Once a beacon of countercultural journalism, it has been increasingly accommodative toward mainstream liberal orthodoxy, at least in foreign policy. For example, the coverage of the wars in the Middle East is no different from standard Western narratives: the roles of imperialism and interests of corporations in creating those wars were downplayed or covered up. A tendency to protect the status quo empire betrays its independent and anti-establishment legacy.

Mother Jones: Critics further note that Mother Jones, while still having a progressive veneer, has taken funding from corporations and has links to political elites that make it compromising in effectively challenging power structures. Coverage of issues like corporate greed and government corruption is done in ways that often pull punches and avoid the kind of radical critique necessary to shake the system.

The New Republic: From the vanguard of progressive thinking, The New Republic has steadily tacked rightward, most markedly since the publication's acquisition by a billionaire investor. More a journal for centrist, market-friendly policies these days than a voice for reform, its reporting now comes closer to an establishment perspective in economic and foreign policy coverage.

Wired: While Wired is supposed to be focused on technology and culture, far too much of their reporting and writing reflects the interests of Silicon Valley: touting tech companies that have little sense of responsibility for their role in surveillance capitalism. Such reporting glosses over the negative externalities of the tech sector, from labor exploitation in developing countries to environmental destruction caused by data centers.

The Financial Times: The pivot of the world financial press; The Financial Times is criticized consistently for its strong connection with interests of financial elites. Its correspondents often express the views of huge corporations in the reporting of international economics and financial markets to ensure stability in the system and in incremental reform that does not undermine the core concerns of wealth distribution or corporate control in society.

New York Magazine’s Intelligencer Section: The Intelligencer section of New York Magazine has built a reputation for thick political analysis, often hewing center on both economic and foreign policy. With sourcing and sponsorship driven by the elite, publication is usually incapable or even unwilling to challenge structures of power and privilege sufficiently, which entails the reification of an establishment grip on policymaking.

How Corrupt News Groups Came Into Being: The Rise of Corporate-Controlled Media

As a reader, your support of independent media is crucial for a diverse and critical media landscape. Consolidation in media ownership has directly led to the proliferation of corporate-controlled media outlets. Over recent decades, most of the small and independent news outlets have been swallowed up by a few gigantic corporations, substantially shrinking the diversity of viewpoints exposed to the public. Huge conglomerates like Disney, Comcast, Viacom, and News Corp have taken control of big tracts of the media landscape and constructed a storyline that works to their corporate and political interests. This is resulting in a loss of journalistic independence because too often, corporate media entities place profits and political influence over the public's right to unbiased investigative journalism.

And then came digital media, and those lines began to blur even more. Online outfits such as BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Vox came into being as free independent, progressive news organizations, but quickly found themselves entangled in dependence on venture capital, advertising dollars, and the patronage of their most powerful corporate benefactors. These have, in turn, found themselves increasingly complicit with the same corporate and political elites many of them had started off with the express purpose of critiquing. This is why your continued support for independent media could make all the difference in having the tide shift toward more public-interest-driven endeavors, with an increasingly bright and rosy outlook regarding the future of media.

Why Democracy Now! and the "Corrupt" Camp Are Co-opted While Democracy Now! indeed sustains a critical view of U.S. foreign policy, corporate power, and social justice concerns, many observers argue that it has been subtly co-opted over time. Much of this is due to the fact that the organization receives its funding from very large philanthropic foundations, in addition to partnering with mainstream media outlets. Core funders include the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations of Soros, and The Rockefeller Foundation, all linked to powerful elites vested in maintaining business as usual. That model has opened up questions on how these large foundations subtly coerce the organization to work along lines in conformity with particular political and economic narratives-for instance, very sensitive areas such as US foreign policy and corporate power.

Democracy Now! has been criticized for faux-critical stance on some issues by not taking more radical anti-establishment positions and instead using narratives appealing to the liberal mainstream. Democracy Now! has been particularly careful with regard to the events connected with the conflict in Israel-Palestine and often presents its materials in a way that suggests continued legitimacy of Israel's policies in view of growing signs of genocide against Palestinians. Its reporting on U.S. interventions in the Middle East often focuses on the humanitarian aspects, glossing over the broader geopolitical and imperialist motives of U.S. involvement, especially when it aligns with the interests of the military-industrial complex and deep-state actors.

Who May Be Doing the Co-opting? The Role of Elite Interests

The entities most likely behind the co-opting of supposedly independent outlets like Democracy Now! These large foundations, think tanks, and political lobbying organizations tend to work in concert with governmental and corporate power. An example would be the Open Society Foundation of George Soros, which has provided funding for numerous progressive causes; critics also say that at times this foundation provides a cover of legitimacy for promoting neoliberal economic policies and interventions that benefit U.S. foreign interests.

Corporate-backed think tanks, such as the Brookings Institution, the Hoover Institution, the CIA-linked Ford Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations, are powerfully positioned to shape political debate. These think tanks often promote policies that benefit the military-industrial complex with the aim of ensuring hegemony for the United States and preserving the status quo. Meanwhile, intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA, and large corporate figures in the technology world, have more traditionally held sway over media perceptions. They shape the flow of information through direct and indirect means to make it serve their strategic interests.

The increasing usage of surveillance capitalism, along with the growth of global media empires, ensures that dissenting voices are silenced or co-opted into a narrative serving the interests of those in power.

Examples of Co-opted, Controlled Dissent: Pro-Deep-State, Pro-Zionist, Pro-Status Quo more egregious co-option and control of dissent: The Guardian and Democracy Now! who, while reporting critically on important subjects, firmly remain on pro-status quo fixations. The most striking example of this kind was the coverage that The Guardian ran on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While the outlet does at times focus attention on human rights abuses in the region, too often its framing of Israel's actions is placed within a context that minimizes or denies asymmetry in power between Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, The Guardian has also been criticized for frequently running op-eds reinforcing pro-Zionist discourses that at times uncritically promote Israeli military attacks and policies responsible for harming Palestinian civilians. On the issue of U.S. foreign interventions, Democracy Now! has equally been criticized for providing controlled dissent which falls short in truly questioning deep-state interests in charge of the U.S. military-industrial complex. For example, during the Syrian Civil War, Democracy Now! usually doesn't take into consideration how the U.S. imperialism is a participant in destabilizing that part of the world. While the outlet does critique the humanitarian consequences of war, it is relatively soft on directly pointing out how U.S. and NATO involvement has caused the chaos while simultaneously covering up that U.S. corporations and defense contractors have profited off the prolonged instability of the Middle East.

The result of this failure to comprehensively challenge the systemic causes of war and militarization has led critics to claim that Democracy Now! is peddling a form of dissent that is ultimately palatable to deep-state interests and military agendas. In both cases, these outlets provide a platform for alternative perspectives. Still, their unwillingness to challenge the underlying structures of power-including corporate greed, military-industrial dominance, and political alliances with oppressive regimes-renders their "dissent" impotent and insufficiently radical to achieve real change.

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