Ned Lud, for The People’s Voice

“Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.”

- A. J. Liebling

In an era where the news cycle spins faster than a centrifuge on meth, the question is no longer what we know, but who decides what we’re allowed to know. This urgency demands our attention and action.

Welcome to the ghost train of manufactured consent, where fact is filtered through profit margins and dissent algorithmically disappears.

Mainstream media, once imagined as the fourth estate safeguarding the public from the predations of the powerful, has devolved into a caged jaundiced lapdog-sick with access addiction, trembling at the feet of corporate masters, and draped in the polyester suit of false neutrality.

THE CORPORATE COLLAR

Let us begin with the obvious yet somehow still taboo: most mainstream media is owned, directly or indirectly, by multinational conglomerates whose financial tentacles are tightly wrapped around the throat of public discourse.

NBC is a Comcast subsidiary, ABC is owned by Disney, and CNN is part of the TimeWarner-AT&T hydra. The editorial latitude of any newsroom beholden to advertising from Big Pharma, Big Oil, or Big Ag is about as free as a lobbyist’s lunch menu.

Take a hypothetical (read: entirely real) example: Monsanto or Nestlé spends millions on commercials. Are the same outlets receiving those dollars expected to investigate their environmental vandalism, labor abuses, or water privatization schemes? That’s not journalism-it’s choreographed stenography masquerading as inquiry.

Critical exposés get kneecapped in editorial meetings. Investigations are buried on page 27 beneath a Kardashian scandal and a pet squirrel on water skis.

This isn’t a glitch-it’s the business model.

ACCESS ADDICTION & THE PROPAGANDA PARASITE

Access journalism is the second IV drip in the comatose body of modern media. “Reporters” now function less like watchdogs and more like concierge services for the elite-smiling, nodding, and genuflecting in exchange for pre-cleared quotes and backroom whispers.

In this perverse ecosystem, power rewards obedience. Challenging the official narrative risks blocklisting. Careers are made not by revealing uncomfortable truths, but by flattering insiders and laundering leaks as “exclusive scoops.”

This is why whistleblowers flee to Substack, podcasts, and independent platforms. It’s why Julian Assange is in prison and David Muir is on prime time.

When the institutions meant to interrogate power become co-conspirators in its PR, journalism dies-and propaganda inherits the corpse.

THE STATE–MEDIA SYMBIOSIS

Corporate media doesn’t merely fail to challenge state power-it reflects, amplifies, and shields it from scrutiny.

Take COVID-19 policy, military escapades, or the surveillance panopticon. The preferred source for most networks is the very institutions under investigation: the CDC, the Pentagon, and the NSA. The fox gets to write the chicken coop audit.

And when independent scientists, dissident economists, or community organizers contradict the “official line,” they are smeared as fringe, delisted from search engines, throttled by algorithms, or demonetized for “misinformation”-a term now wielded like a broadsword against inconvenient facts.

What we are witnessing is not journalism-it’s an epistemological cartel.

WHEN THE TRUTH IS REPORTED-AND STILL BURIED

To be clear, mainstream outlets occasionally do real reporting-but only when forced, and almost always under duress.

The New York Times and Washington Post covered Big Poultry’s exploitation of rural workers, but only after ProPublica, The Intercept, and farmworker advocates rang the alarm for years. 60 Minutes ran a segment on meatpacking’s COVID cruelty, months after independent outlets published internal documents, worker testimonies, and leaked emails.

Even when the truth is reported, it is defanged, declawed, and dipped in tepid prose:

• The language is bloodless: “concerns” are raised; “questions” are posed; “stakeholders” are “engaged.”
• The culprits remain abstract: no names, no consequences, just a bureaucratic fog.
• The headlines mislead, the summaries misinform, and the truth dies beneath a pillow of euphemism.

The New York Times, ever boasting about being journalism's bold "truth-to-power" institution, lagged far behind the Edward Snowden scoop in 2013 and only belatedly scrambled to cover it after more aggressive, smaller publications such as The Guardian and The Washington Post had already printed the largest disclosures.

While Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Barton Gellman were reporting on the NSA's bulk surveillance programs, the *Times* initially held back, as if fearful of enraging the national security apparatus. It wasn't until the story was irresistibly international news-and the *Times* risked being irrelevant-that it belatedly joined in, although it had the resources to lead.

This was not an isolated incident. The Times has a long history of slow-walking inflammatory reports that challenge U.S. dominance (see: its behind-the-times coverage of the Iraq War's false WMD claims, its decades-behind-the-times coverage of Harvey Weinstein's abuse, and its initial reluctance over the Pentagon Papers). But it still holds on to its self-image as the last watchdog-despite routinely showing that it's too frequently more a follower than a leader when real accountability is on the line.

If the "paper of record" is always withholding its biggest stories until it is forced to, how much of its reputation is actually earned-and how much is simply branding?

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA: THE UNFUNDED VANGUARD

So, where do the inconvenient truths go? Into the digital catacombs of alternative media-funded by readers, demonetized by Silicon Valley, and ridiculed by the gatekeepers.

The Intercept exposed the PFAS “forever chemicals” scandal before the EPA admitted their toxicity.

It was Democracy Now! and Unicorn Riot that documented the brutality at Standing Rock while CNN broadcast drone shots and platitudes.

Tech Inquiry and The Grayzone revealed Palantir’s ICE contracts and Google’s Pentagon liaisons years before Politico or Reuters touched on them.

These are the canaries in the algorithmic coal mine, and they are routinely silenced not because they lie, but because they tell the truth too early, too clearly, and without permission.

THIS ISN’T A GLITCH-IT’S A DESIGN

The hollowing out of the media isn’t an accident. It’s a feature of late-stage corporate feudalism, a term used to describe the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few large corporations, where control of information is the highest form of power.

Mainstream journalism has become the soft power wing of the empire, a term used to describe the influence a country or organization can have through cultural or ideological means, such as shaping public opinion. It's a velvet-gloved puppeteer for consensus manufacturing. It exists to narcotize dissent, delay outrage, and normalize atrocity.

Alternative journalism exists because it must. Not because it’s perfect, not because it always gets it right, but because it dares. It challenges where others flatter, exposes what others obscure, and speaks where others are paid to be silent. Their courage should inspire our support.

If you want to know what’s happening, don’t wait for CNN or The New York Times to tell you-it’ll be too late. Look to the outliers, the independents, the demonetized, the de-ranked, and the deplatformed. They can keep us informed and empowered in a world built on lies.

In a world built on lies, truth is the ultimate subversion.

THE STORIES THEY STRANGLED: A ROGUES’ GALLERY OF SUPPRESSED TRUTH

- A Sampling of What They Buried So You’d Stay Asleep

While the corporate press stuffed its maw with press kits, staged soundbites, and Kardashian ephemera, the ragtag irregulars of alternative journalism were spelunking the septic caverns of institutional rot. Here now is the autopsy report, which is filed under “Too Inconvenient for Prime Time.”

THE CORPSES IN THE CORPORATE CLOSET

Monsanto’s Ghostwriting Cabal

Unmasked by US Right to Know: Monsanto scientists secretly ghostwrote “independent” studies lauding glyphosate’s safety while the New York Times recycled their propaganda with stenographic flair. Truth was toxic-literally.

The Chicken Cartel Conspiracy

The Counter and Farm Action blew the whistle on Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, and their poultry price-fixing racket: a scheme so grotesque it siphoned profits from farmers, bled consumers dry, and still took years for the DOJ to feign surprise.

The “Pink Slime” Cover-Up

Before ABC’s delayed outrage circus, obscure food safety bloggers and defunct watchdogs like The Daily exposed USDA-approved meat slurry: ammonia-soaked beef scraps served to children under the label of “nutrition.” Silence was the seasoning.

THE BLOODSTAINS ON THE WHITE COLLARS

Uber’s Greyball Deception Program

Revealed by The Guardian: Uber deployed covert surveillance software to evade regulators and surveil journalists-meanwhile, tech media was too busy fellating Silicon Valley’s “disruptors” to notice the authoritarian playbook unfolding.

Theranos: The Cult of Biotech Delusion

While CNBC and Fortune canonized Elizabeth Holmes as the following Jobs, John Carreyrou (WSJ) waged a trench war against internal censorship to expose a biotech bloodbath-complete with rigged trials, vaporware science, and complicit venture capitalists.

PFAS: The Forever Chemical Conspiracy

The Intercept and EWG traced DuPont’s eco-genocidal Teflon toxins across states and generations, while the EPA played Twister with corporate lobbyists and claimed, “further studies are needed.” Spoiler: The studies already existed and were buried in-house.

THE STATE’S DIRTY FINGERPRINTS

Standing Rock’s Suppressed Siege

Unicorn Riot streamed the canine assaults, tear gas barrages, and militarized theater targeting Native water protectors. CNN called it a “clash.” ABC called it “complicated.” Only alt-media called it what it was: a pipeline police state in real time.

Palantir’s Algorithmic ICEbox

The Intercept and Tech Inquiry exposed Silicon Valley’s militarized intermediaries constructing ICE’s mass deportation dragnet. Palantir’s brand of patriotism meant building databases that broke families, while corporate media sanitized it as “data analytics for public safety.”

Google’s Pentagon Passion Project

The Grayzone exposed Google’s quiet funneling of AI tech into the US drone assassination program. Wired demurred, opting instead to profile Sundar Pichai’s low-carbon diet and his views on workplace meditation.

THE PATTERN: TOO TRUE, TOO EARLY, TOO DELIBERATELY IGNORED

Feel the rhythm yet?

• Stage 1: Alt-media breaks the story-unfunded, uninvited, unbowed.
• Stage 2: Power denies, obfuscates, slanders, and sues.
• Stage 3: Legacy press yawns or echoes the official denial.
• Stage 4: Years later, when the truth can’t be chloroformed, the Times, Post, or 60 Minutes arrive-sanitized, decontextualized, Pulitzer in hand.

This is not journalism in decline. It is journalism under management.

The corporate press isn’t missing the truth. It’s running interference for it.

THE ANTIDOTE: FUND THE HERETICS

Next time a talking head scoffs, “Why didn’t real journalists cover this?”-remind them:

• They did-but they wrote for The Intercept, not NBC.
• They were-but their Substack was demonetized for “disrupting community guidelines.”
• They tried-but their Guardian article was geo-blocked in the US after legal saber-rattling.

Alternative journalism isn’t “alternative” because it’s fringe-it’s alternative because the mainstream is bought.

The heretics of journalism don’t need your applause.

They need your subscriptions, shares, defiance, and-yes-your dollars.

Because the truth, like all endangered species, won’t survive without deliberate protection.

In a world this censored, the only rebellion left is reality itself.

Intellectual and Theoretical Foundations

• Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman
• Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988)
• A.J. Liebling
• The Press (1961)
• Chris Hedges
• The Death of the Liberal Class (2010), Empire of Illusion (2009)
• Upton Sinclair
• The Brass Check (1919)

 
THE INVISIBLE INK OF POWER: Why the Mainstream Media Fails-and Why Alternative Journalism Must Survive

© 2025 Ned Lud, for The People’s Voice