🌵 | 🌴Mark M. Willaman

As mainstream media continues to crumble in 2024, the rise of alternative and independent journalism is impossible to ignore. It got me thinking......... What are the differences between legacy/mainstream 'journalism' versus alternative/independent aka 'citizen journalism'? And how do you vet the quality of your news sources? 1) Most mainstream/legacy “journalism” exists to prep, set, maintain, advance, and control predetermined policies, agendas, and narratives. 2) In contrast, alternative/independent media seeks to uncover facts regardless of whether they support any party line. This doesn’t mean alternative media is always factual. Getting to the truth can be messy and uncomfortable. However, alternative media offers a forum where diverse viewpoints can be freely shared and challenged. It’s more of a public square providing a space for open discourse versus a centralized and closed hierarchy. So what can one do to differentiate between factual and not entirely truthful news? Reconsider where you get your "news". No, you won't find the facts on FOX, WSJ, CNN, NPR, PBS, on TV, or in major print/digital media, Reuters, AP, or Google searches. That's the point. Unfortunately, it requires a significant time investment, and the patience to find and listen to long-form podcasts with credible people who have deep and historical knowledge of the topic(s) they speak about (people rarely invited onto legacy media). People who are not 'told' what to write/say. If you only have time for soundbites and mainstream headlines/coverage, then accept that you don't have the complete picture. The world is too complex to be summarized into TLDRs, bite-sized or snackable content by celebrity media personalities or 'journalists' employed by large corporations that dictate the narratives assigned to them by entrenched power structures and the Government 🕵️‍♂️One tip to vet the quality of your news sources: save headlines and/or opinions/statements, then revisit them in 6-12 months (sometimes a few days). You’ll be shocked by the inaccuracies. Remove them from your life. Other tips: ⚠️Be suspicious of : - continuous one-sided narratives - when alternative viewpoints are not provided nor welcome (or met with personal attacks, or 'conspiracy" theory accusations) - where debate and/or questioning is not permitted - (my favorite) when the same headlines and narrative appear simultaneously across global media. 🤔Stay curious, open-minded, and non-partisan, question EVERYTHING, and avoid letting emotions, ego, ideologies, or 'beliefs' cloud your judgment. You'll be surprised and then enlightened by what you uncover and where it will lead you. Have an enlightened 2025.

@nxt888 💯

Here is what the civilizing mission actually produced, by the numbers: Africa in 1800: hundreds of independent kingdoms, confederacies, city-states, trade empires. Diverse, complex, self-governing political entities. Africa in 1914: 90 percent of the continent under European colonial control, reorganized into administrative units designed for extraction, their borders cutting through ethnic and linguistic communities with the casual brutality of a pen on a map drawn in Berlin. Africa in 2026: fifty-five nations, many of them still following the extractive economic logic installed by colonialism, still paying debt to former colonial powers and their financial institutions, still governed in many cases by elites trained to administer on behalf of external interests rather than internal populations, still watching their resources leave the continent as raw materials and return as finished goods at a markup. The "development" that colonialism promised is now, more than six decades after formal independence, still being promised. By the same institutions. Using the same language. Attaching the same conditions. This is not a coincidence. This is not a failure of the civilizing mission. This is the civilizing mission, running exactly as designed, having successfully converted "we are taking your resources by force" into "we are helping you develop." The mission was never to raise you up. The mission was to make sure you stayed down, and believed, while staying down, that you were being helped.

@NakedHedgie The history they never taught you in 'school'.

Charles III openly called for NATO Article 5 in defense of Ukraine, a clear plea for World War III. Last two European wars led to 70 million casualties. UK’s Russia derangement is a mortal danger for the world. King Charles calls for World War III open.substack.com/pub/trendcompa…

The latest “press freedom” ranking from Reporters Without Borders says global press freedom is collapsing. The real story is that the index itself is built on a completely biased definition of what “freedom” even means. Reporters Without Borders isn’t exposing propaganda in their report. They’re producing it and then labeling it “press freedom” so people don’t question it. Free press has never existed. Not in the U.S., not in Europe, not in Russia, not anywhere. Every system controls what gets covered, what gets buried, and how it’s framed (narratives). That’s not controversial, that’s reality. Now look at the language in the report. You’ll see “Putin’s Russia” all over the place. Funny how you never see “Trump's America” or “Starmer's Britain.” Not an accident. That’s narrative framing baked right into the report. Before you even get to the rankings, you’re being told who the “bad guys” are (hint: non-collective-west nations). And then there’s what they conveniently ignore. The index hammers countries for direct state control but basically shrugs at the Western versions of state control. Corporate media consolidation. Government oversight. Advertiser pressure. Platform censorship. Algorithmic suppression. Coordinated narrative enforcement (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic). If you get deplatformed, buried, or labeled a “conspiracy theorist,” your voice is gone all the same. But apparently that counts as “freedom.” Here’s a thought. If this were actually an honest index, it would measure something far more telling: how each country treats independent journalism. Do independent reporters get visibility or get buried. Do mainstream media outlets invite them onto their programs? Do platforms amplify them or quietly suppress them. Are they debated or dismissed and deplatformed. That’s where real “freedom” shows up, and it’s exactly what this report avoids. The best part is the countries sitting at the top of the rankings. Many of them criminalize certain speech, detain people under “misinformation” or “public safety” laws, and aggressively marginalize dissent. Yet somehow, they’re the gold standard. OK. What this index actually measures isn’t press freedom. It measures how closely a country aligns with a Western media model, while completely ignoring how that same model shapes, filters, and controls information in its own way. Bottom line, no country has a truly free press. The only difference is the method of control. Calling one version “free” and another “not free” isn’t objective analysis. It’s narrative dressed up as data. * Note: This post was not "Made with AI".

A sampling of images that expose mainstream media bias. Legacy “journalism” isn’t about reporting facts. It’s about shaping narratives to support predetermined policies and agendas. Team blue or team red, it doesn’t matter. Both ultimately serve the same permanent state. Pay attention to the language: • “Hijack” vs “board” • "Kidnapped" vs "captured" • “Regime” vs “government” • “Illegal annexation” vs “assert ownership” • "Unprovoked aggression" vs "intervention" • “Riots” vs “protests” • “Invasion” vs “incursion” • “Conspiracy theorist” vs “subject matter expert” This is not accidental. It’s narrative construction. Each headline subtly tells you who to like and who to fear, which countries are good and which ones are bad. That framing shapes what the public is willing to accept and support, from COVID policies to foreign wars. This is how propaganda works. Not always through outright lies, but through carefully chosen words that guide how you interpret reality. Also notice how the same phrases show up across outlets and even across social media, often at the same time globally - from the NYT to the BBC, from FOX to CNN. It's not a coincidence and it is not random. Pay attention to the language. That’s where the bias lives. You are not being informed. You are being influenced. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.😉

@barnes_law 💯

The same people deeply concerned with the right of navigation on the open seas cheerled American blockades of Venezuela, Cuba and Iran. They are oblivious to the contradiction.

@blockchainchick @barnes_law 💯

FIVE YEARS OF GROCERY RECEIPTS JUST EXPOSED THE MOST PROTECTED LIE IN ECONOMICS. Since 2019, the government says cumulative inflation is about 25%. Here is what actually happened to the things you buy every single week: Eggs: +79% Ground beef: +77% Coffee: +68% Car insurance: +55% Electricity: +43% Bacon: +26% Bread: +24% Five out of seven of those are running 2x to 3x faster than the official number. And the only two that tracked near CPI? Bacon and bread. The lowest-cost, lowest-margin items in the basket. The things that actually drain a household budget, the protein, the energy, the insurance you are legally required to carry, those are the ones the official number keeps understating. The CPI was retooled in the 1990s to reduce reported inflation. They added substitution adjustments. They changed how they weight housing. They smoothed out the things that spike. This is documented BLS methodology, not conspiracy. Food overall is up 30% since end of 2019. Car insurance premiums up 54% since 2020. Electricity just hit all-time record prices. But the official line is 2.4% annual inflation and the Fed debates rate cuts. Your grocery receipt is the only honest inflation report left.

Brilliant discussion. Once again, not a single mainstream media outlet or news channel is reporting these valid points, or having credible people like John Helmer on their programs to debate/discuss them. As uncomfortable as it may be, for some, it is important to hear alternative perspectives on what is happening in the Middle East, and other hot spots. Legacy mainstream media, however, is preventing that from happening.

John Helmer: Trump Furious as Allies Reject U.S. Plan to Escort Ships in Hormuz x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

This viral montage is a case study in how mainstream media is used to shape and control public perception. You could make a similar montage for every major 'news' event - from Covid to geopolitics. When every network, left and right, uses the EXACT same phrase, it tells you everything about the dangers of mainstream media and why everyone should avoid these outlets. The role of mainstream media is manufacturing consent. Period. It has nothing to do with reporting facts. By endlessly repeating pre-constructed narratives across broadcast, digital, and print media, the public is conditioned to believe what they are told. Their government’s actions are then falsely justified, clearing the way for those actions to proceed with minimal pushback. The model is simple: Narratives are created within the permanent state, distributed to the mainstream media outlets who in turn dutifully echo the narrative throughout their ecosystems. Outlets are given the framing language, the guardrails to stay within, and the facts or perspectives to exclude. The messaging is then slightly adjusted for team red and team blue outlets to create the illusion of political difference and appeal to each audience’s partisan emotions. In reality, all mainstream outlets operate within the same narrative boundaries, and all political parties serve the same power structure. How can it be more obvious? When you see identical language repeated across the entire media landscape, you are not watching "news", you are watching narrative enforcement (propaganda) and mind control.

Confused by what the mainstream media is telling you about the current conflicts in the Middle East (or Eastern Europe)? You should be. It's nonsense. Thanks to Nima and the Dialogue Works for allowing us to hear a much more plausible explanation from Jiang Xueqin. Brilliant. Btw, Jiang has a track record of being quite accurate in his reporting and analysis.

Jiang Xueqin: The Iran War: The Watershed Moment That Changed the Middle East Forever x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

There’s a step missing: narrative control. Before sanctions or bombs, the public must first be convinced the empire’s actions are justified. The role of the mainstream media is manufacturing that consent. Through media narratives, the population is led to believe each step is righteous and necessary. At the same time they are led to believe, falsely, that because of manufactured “threats,” the labeled enemy is undeserving of sympathy, compassion, acknowledgment, or rights. This pattern is not unique to any single conflict. It has been used for decades against nearly every “enemy” the public is asked to fear, clearing the way for the empire to pursue its objectives without major pushback. For those paying attention, this process has been unfolding for a very long time. These narratives are not created overnight. Much of what the public believes about the world is shaped by carefully constructed narratives. That is the power and the danger of mass media.

There is a pattern to imperial decline. First it lectures. Then it sanctions. Then it isolates. Then it bombs. Then, when none of that delivers the fantasy of clean submission, it starts speaking in the language of destiny and finality. That is where Trump is. That is where Netanyahu lives. In the zone where policy runs out and apocalypse begins to look like leverage.

@TheDuranReal 💯 Excellent discussion. Worth a listen - you'll never get these facts on mainstream media. As always, Barnes is outstanding. And has a track record of being mostly accurate.

Open-ended Iran War (Live) with Matthew Ehret & Robert Barnes youtube.com/watch?v=HRu-Z7…

Interesting video on the influence of mind control through the media. Some parts of it are a little “out there,” but a few lines really stuck with me. “The public is mind-controlled to believe the news is not entertainment and that government officials aren’t actors — they are.” “The news is as fake as the movie that came before it.” “Media and government function as the same governing force, and populations are managed through narrative and repetition.” ......... Watch Western mainstream media coverage of the current Middle East conflict and tell me that isn’t exactly what’s happening. I’m not seeing a single legacy news outlet doing honest reporting on this conflict. It reminds me of the other conflict in Eastern Europe. Same script. Instead of scrutiny, we get narrative reinforcement. Anything that challenges the official storyline is ignored. This isn’t journalism. It’s propaganda. And once you see it, it becomes impossible to unsee. Note - this is not partisan criticism: this applies to both Team Red and Team Blue media outlets. They operate within the same narrative boundaries. Wide enough to satisfy their audience and keep the public divided. Meanwhile, the independent journalists whose reporting has repeatedly proven far more accurate on geopolitical conflicts are once again absent from mainstream media panels - completely ignored. The result? An uninformed public that, instead of recognizing the dangers of a de facto uniparty system, rallies behind their “team” and attacks the other. BTW - Funny how sanctions, athlete bans, and moral outrage only seem to activate when the “right” country is doing the invading.😉 Source Video > youtube.com/watch?v=JcdYH1…

@johnkonrad Interesting.

This is potentially the biggest Iran story nobody is talking about: the global insurance market may be heading toward a systemic crisis. Here’s why… Most people don’t realize London isn’t just a financial center it’s THE center of global insurance. Lloyd’s underwrites ~40% of the world’s marine cargo. Ship sinks, port gets bombed, canal gets blocked the bill lands in London. This is why the UK punches above its weight. Not the Royal Navy. Not diplomacy. Insurance. Control insurance, control trade. And London doesn’t just control the 90% of global trade that moves by sea. Lloyd’s and the London market are major insurers of almost everything skyscrapers, factories, ports, satellites, entire supply chains. You can’t participate in public markets or raise large amounts of capital without insurance. Now, the normal playbook for war risk is repricing, not cancellation. Canceling coverage entirely is a massive escalation in underwriting posture. It signals something beyond risk, it signals uncertainty so deep the underwriter can’t even price it. The question everyone should be asking: why? Why not just jack up premiums and make a fortune off the crisis like they did in the Black Sea off Ukraine? To answer that, you have to understand WHY London has maintained a stranglehold on global insurance while losing nearly submarket related to ships. The answer: better intelligence. It is no coincidence that MI6 headquarters sits directly across the Thames from the @IMOHQ, the world’s maritime regulator & a short distance from Lloyd’s itself. I have no proof of a direct pipeline, but it has long been speculated in the industry that intelligence flows from MI6 to Lloyd’s. Having the best intel in the world would be the single greatest competitive advantage any insurer could possess: the ability to price risk that competitors can only guess at. Here’s the problem: the majority of MI6’s intel doesn’t come from its own agents. It comes from Five Eyes the alliance comprising the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. And within 5Eyes, the dominant partner is obvious. The CIA, NSA, NRO, etc generate the lion’s share of intel. So if Lloyd’s pricing advantage flows from MI6, and MI6’s best intelligence flows from the US… what happens when that data pipeline gets throttled? All indications are that @Keir_Starmer was blindsided by the size and scope of the US/Israel strikes on Iran this weekend. That alone tells you something about the current state of transatlantic intelligence sharing. And we know there has been serious anger in Washington over the UK’s decision to sell Diego Garcia, home to America’s most strategically important base in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius. It is not a huge leap to conclude that the submarine cables linking Langley to London have gone dark, or at minimum have been significantly throttled. What this means for UK national security is a question for the Brits. But what it means for EVERY company globally that’s insured through the London market has massive implications for the entire financial system. Because most large insurers worldwide don’t do independent intelligence work. They index off Lloyd’s rates. If you’re insuring a skyscraper in Tokyo, a semiconductor fab in Taiwan, or a port in Argentina you get a Lloyd’s quote, then shop that price around. Other insurers see Lloyd’s number and assume the diligence was done. They price accordingly. This means if London is suddenly flying blind it’s not just Lloyd’s policyholders at risk. It’s the entire global reinsurance chain. The cancellation of war risk coverage on ships isn’t the crisis. It’s the canary. If this hypothesis is correct, we could be looking at a systemic repricing event across global insurance markets…. the kind of cascading uncertainty that defined 2008 and COVID. Watch Lloyd’s. Watch reinsurance spreads. What Five Eyes. That’s where this story, and possibly Wall Street, breaks. CC @BillAckman

@caitoz 💯

I don't even know what to write about this one. What am I supposed to say? "Hey everybody, they're lying to us about this war"? Everyone already knows that. Even the people who support this war know all the justifications for it are lies. They know Iran isn't building nukes. They know Iran poses no threat to the United States. They know all that bullshit about Iran cutting out women's wombs and murdering tens of thousands of protesters was evidence-free atrocity propaganda. Nobody needs me to tell them these things. Nobody needs me to tell them that this war is going to kill a whole lot of innocent people and inflict unfathomable amounts of suffering upon our species, both directly during these attacks and indirectly in the chaos and instability ensuing thereafter. Everyone already knows this. Everyone already knows this, and it's happening anyway. They're just doing whatever evil things they want to do, without the slightest regard for public opinion or consent. They're just going right ahead with a military operation to topple Tehran, after decades of inertia for fear of the horrific consequences it would unleash. They're just choking off Cuba using siege warfare, which previous presidents refused to do because it would be a monstrous act of war. They just kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation, which previous administrations had refused to do because it's plainly against international law. They just helped Israel turn Gaza into a gravel parking lot and are now building a giant dystopian tech surveillance encampment to imprison the survivors. They just designated an American company a "supply chain risk to national security" for the first time ever because the AI firm Anthropic refused to let the Pentagon use its technology to operate autonomous killing machines and surveil American citizens — an open admission that the Pentagon plans on using AI to run autonomous killing machines and surveil American citizens. There's an old Frank Zappa quote that's been popping into my head more and more lately: "The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater." We're seeing a lot more bricks lately. That's all I can think to say right now.

The Washington Post lost more than $100 million in 2025. Another $100 million in 2024. $77 million in 2023. Propaganda is expensive, and it isn’t sustainable 😉 When an outlet is losing nine figures year after year, it’s not just a distribution problem. It’s a product problem. They’ll blame “waning web traffic” and “changes in how consumers access news.” That’s the polite explanation. It avoids the deeper issue. Audiences don’t abandon products that consistently deliver value. They leave when coverage is perceived as biased, agenda-driven, selective, or detached from reality. And this isn’t confined to one side - mainstream media, right and left, have drifted into narrative management (propaganda) rather than straightforward and honest reporting - and it is getting worse by the day. More consumers are noticing this and disengaging from mainstream print/TV/digital news outlets, and institutions they no longer trust. And they’re finding substitutes. Independent and alternative outlets are growing rapidly — a shift legacy media rarely highlights. Markets are [ultimately] efficient. People migrate away from what they no longer value.

It’s no surprise student trust in “media” is falling, and that is a healthy development. When discussing the “distrust of journalism,” we have to separate mainstream media from independent media. Trust is eroding rapidly in the former while alternative audiences grow. Why? Because accuracy is judged over time, and over time it has mostly been mainstream outlets repeatedly misreporting “facts” and pushing narratives that align with their ownership interests -- the permanent state and oligarchs. And this is not about political “teams.” That is a distraction. Both red- and blue-leaning outlets filter reality to satisfy ownership agendas. When educators bring those same “team” assumptions into media “literacy,” students are taught what to think instead of how to think. Media literacy should not teach which mainstream outlets to “trust.” It should teach skepticism of all corporate and government-aligned media, how to verify claims, how to track accuracy over time, and how to identify voices that are consistently accurate in their reporting. Student newspapers? In theory, fantastic. In practice, they are often heavily controlled and censored, much like mainstream media. When certain subjects trigger consequences, students quickly learn the limits of permissible reporting. We have recently seen that play out. The real solution is not convincing students to trust any mainstream media source. It is helping them understand why they should not, and giving them the tools to verify reality for themselves.

Teen distrust of journalism is rising — media literacy may be the industry’s best defense #teens #medialiteracy #news #trust editorandpublisher.com/stories/teen-d…

Your report (link below) shows most Americans believe “doing your own research” means comparing multiple sources or searching Google. That sounds reasonable, but it quietly assumes the broader information ecosystem is neutral. It isn’t. In reality, accuracy is best judged over time, not in the moment. The most reliable way to evaluate news isn’t simply comparing outlets on a given day, but tracking who turns out to be correct months or years later. Very few people do that. Instead, your research shows people turn to search engines and major media platforms. But these tend to surface overlapping institutional narratives, so “comparing sources” becomes comparing variations of the same viewpoint. You feel informed because you checked several places, yet you are still operating inside a loop of controlled narratives. Independent or dissenting reporting (voices with a remarkable track record of accuracy) won’t appear casually in feeds or search results and are rarely invited onto mainstream outlets; you have to deliberately seek these reporters out -- made more difficult because mainstream sources often cancel, ridicule, or demean these voices. Further complicating things is that most people have a political “team” and a bias toward outlets that cater to it -- when in fact both teams are frequently given inaccurate news. So “doing your own research” isn’t just cross-checking headlines. It’s longitudinal: remembering claims, revisiting them later, and adjusting trust based on who was right. And if possible, quit being aligned to a 'team' and think for yourself. Bottom line is that real verification is REALLY DIFFICULT - it requires time, memory, and follow-up, and most people understandably just want a quick answer before moving on with their already hectic, time-constrained lives.🤦 Source Report: pewresearch.org/journalism/202…

💬 ⬇️

Nearly all Americans (94%) – including similar shares of both political parties – say it is at least somewhat important for people to “do their own research” to check the accuracy of the news they get.

No doubt universities cracking down on student newspapers is bad policy. Still funny though as some graduates will soon hear “you can’t run that story” from a managing editor instead of a dean (along with what to cover, how to frame it, and what never gets covered). Maybe the universities are just preparing student journalists for mainstream media life 😉

editorandpublisher.com/stories/when-u… #simplesharebuttons