Your Guide to Honest Media
Your Guide to Honest Media
Combating our Era of Fake News, Corporate Propaganda and Idiocracy
I’m listing some of the best podcasts, substacks, webzines and videos. In these varied media forms and topics, there’s something here for everyone. I’ll highlight one writer or team for each section, and then list the rest alphabetically. This library will be updated as my journey continues.
Onwards to news, economics, sociology, geopolitics, movies, self-improvement and truth...
Substack
* Simplicius’ Garden of Knowledge (Ukraine war analyst)
A Skeptic (Ukraine war news aggregator)
Aaron Mate (award-winning journalist)
Andrew Korybko (American Moscow-based political analyst)
Andrew Sullivan (journalist and culture commentator)
Behind the Iron Curtain (Sergey Aleksashenko)
Big Serge Thought (war analyst)
Caitlin Johnstone & Tim Foley (journalists)
Chris Hedges (award-winning journalist and author)
CJ Hopkins (political satirist & anti-censorship writer)
Cynthia Chung (super smart writer on arts and geopolitics)
Dark Futura (philosophy and analysis of culture and technology)
Dr Gilbert Doctorow (historian and analyst)
Edward Snowden (whistleblower extraordinaire)
John Mearsheimer (political analyst and author)
Jonathan Cook (award-winning UK journalist)
Julian MacFarlane (opinions on USA vs Russia)
Matt Taibbi's Racket News (award-winning journalist and author)
Seymour Hersh (award-winning journalist and author)
Scott Ritter (military analyst and ex-UN inspector)
The Dennis Kucinich Report (ex-US Congressman)
Webzines
* AntiWar.com (providing updates from West & East, North & South)
* Naked Capitalism (news aggregator with contributions from prestigious writers)
Consortium News (founded by Robert Parry, a reporter who exposed Iran-Contra)
Democracy at Work (opposing capitalism as a systemic problem)
Jacobin (socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture)
People’s Dispatch (voices from people’s movements across the globe)
Popular Resistance (growing a culture of Public democratic resistance)
The GrayZone (big journalism under pressure from big enemies)
Tom Dispatch (top notch writing as antidote to mainstream media)
World Socialist Website (anti-imperialism section)
News
* Al Jazeera (funded by Qatar Government)
Democracy Now (US-based indie focused on peace activism & social justice)
Middle East Eye (covering North Africa and the Middle East)
News.am (Armenia and other Caucus news)
OffGuardian ("Because facts really should be sacred")
South China Morning Post (because we must see Asia through Asian eyes)
Destinations That Wonderfully Don’t Fit Under One Topic
* Lex Fridman (my favourite interviewer of clever people)
* Radiolab (the podcast that made the world make podcasts)
Intelligence Squared U.K. (debating & interviewing big issues)
Intelligence Squared U.S. (debating & interviewing big issues)
Real Life Lore (“Answers to questions that you've never asked”)
Sam Harris (one of our era’s great thinkers)
Tessa Fights Robots (you have to read ‘The Bad Witch’)
Bloggers, Vloggers & Podcasters (News & Geopolitics)
* Scott Horton Show (anti-war activist)
* Blocked & Reported (Katie Herzog & Jesse Singal, internet’s best duet)
* Unlimited Hangout with Whitney Webb (the greatest Epstein tracker)
* A Son of the New American Revolution (ex-CIA analyst Larry Johnson)
Abby Martin’s Empire Files (documentarian and activist)
Al Jazeera Investigations (breaking some of the biggest global scandals)
Alastair Crooke (ex-British diplomat)
Bari Weiss (journalist)
Black Mountain Analysis (geopolitical, economics & conflict analysis)
Chinese Whispers (news)
Clearing the Fog (with Margaret Flowers & Kevin Zeese)
CounterPunch Radio (anti-imperialist analysis and interviews)
Democracy Now (world news)
Geopolitical Economy Report (analysis of global news)
Hard Talk (BBC’s confrontational interviews with global leaders)
Irrussianality (the relationship between Russia and the West)
Ishgal (Lindsey Snell reporting from Armenia & Ukraine’s Donbass…)
Jimmy Dore Show (comedian & political commentator)
Judge Napolitano’s Judging Freedom (legal & political news)
Macro 'n Cheese (irreverent treatment of macroeconomics)
Ray McGovern (the most likeable ex-CIA analyst)
Reminiscence of the Future... (home of Andrei Martyanov)
Robert Wright (journalist)
Russell Brand (sane commentary through outrageously fast comedy)
Scheer Intelligence (political conversations)
Russia Today (RT)
The LaRouche Organization (spreading the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche)
Triggernometry (comedians & political commentators)
Useful Idiots (with Matt Taibbi & Katie Halper)
Voltaire Network (home of French intellectual Thierry Meyssan)
War on the Rocks (commentary on USA foreign policy)
WTF is Going on in Latin America & The Caribbean (with Teri Mattson)
Analysts
* BNE IntelliNews (news/forecasting on Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa & Middle East)
Lt-Colonel Daniel Davis (analysing politics and the military)
Professor John Mearsheimer (Professor of Political Science)
Gordon Hahn (Senior Researcher at Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies
Responsible Statecraft (online magazine of the Quincy Institute)
Economics
* Professor Michael Hudson (ex-Wall Street analyst)
Dr Jason Hickel (economic anthropologist)
Freakonomics Radio (Stephen Dubner uncovers the hidden side of everything)
Professor Jeffrey Dachs (economist fighting to end poverty)
Professor Richard D. Wolff (economist)
Military Strategy
* Military Summary Channel (Dima leads us through the Ukraine War)
Alexander Mercouris (Ukraine War commentator, member of The Duran)
Moon of Alabama (cutting through political & economic propaganda)
Weeb Union (daily updates on military moves in Ukraine)
South Africa
Sadly, I cannot list any news media here that doesn’t have blatant agenda for a single side of the forces controlling or seeking to control us South Africans. We’re a fundamentally corrupt country that has been sold. However, there are destinations of interest:
* Carte Blanche (weekly television series exposing crime and social issues)
Cliff Central’s Burning Platform (commentating on the latest news)
Brain Travel (Because Sometimes Escape is Necessary)
* Bald & Bankrupt (unfiltered travel amongst real people)
Alan Su (humble traveller in Iceland, Faroe Islands, Japan etc.)
Anton Somewhere (Ukrainian traveller in Azores, Namibia, Norway etc.)
From Sochi to Yerevan (Russia, Azerbaijan & Armenia)
Smartless (Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, & Will Arnett interview actors)
WTF with Marc Maron (comedy actor interviews other entertainers)
Happy hunting.
Truthseeking in Our Sheepish World
I refuse to be a sheep and eat the grass that the wolf wants to feed me so that it can eat me later. I want to know who is making my life difficult and stop our world’s decline into ideocracy. I need to know why store prices jump, crime increases, politicians lie, wars are waged, and voting changes nothing.
Truthseeking (or wolfseeking) is a painful journey. Not everyone has years to crawl through this muddy field but they’re capable of lessening their intake of TV and newspaper news, and instead subscribing to a handful of writers who get themselves dirty so that they don’t have to. Journalists wanting to share with us are being killed, tarred, and imprisoned.
Everyone has the potential to be, at the least, a runaway sheep. You can improve the world by not gossiping important events into triviality, or by being manipulated into spreading hate and fake news. Don’t become a topic on Joey B Toonz. Be mindful when you speak - saying “I don’t know” can be as wise as communicating reality.
Finding my opinion was difficult. I will only become wiser if I keep learning tomorrow and forever. But contrary sources gave me direction to where I am now. I have suggestions that have educated me into reducing my bias (which we all inherit from our upbringing/culture). Some wells revere facts above all else, others are controversial in opinion or history. Not agreeing with them all the time makes them invaluable to the debate in my head. For example:
Sam Harris is an extraordinary enlightener. I would never only judge him on his belief that State lies to stop Trump was a necessary evil. That I don’t like Trump is more reason for me to disagree.
It’s harder for me to swallow Bari Weiss’ Zionism but she’s stood against sell-out liberal media and challenged accepted cultural lies. She’s a call for sanity in a liberal scene that’s gone insane and affected the Western world.
A few alternate figures may have questionable history but that's irrelevant to their knowledge of the topic at hand e.g., Roman Polanski's crime doesn’t magically turn his movies into trash. We can disagree with someone about covid or global warming without dismissing everything they say. The caveat is that I couldn't stop my reverence for Glenn Greenwald, famous for reporting on Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing, devolving into my unsubscribing when he 'hosted' Alex Jones' comeback show. Self-serving conspiracy theorists damage truthseekers, ultimately becoming tools of the corrupt establishment which pretends that real conspiracies are fake too.
It's tragic that award-winning journalists have been sidelined by the mainstream but that's not absolute because the Fourth Estate is emboldened.
Substack has become more important than the iconic publications I grew up with e.g., Chris Hedges, Matt Taiibi, Caitlin Johnstone and their brethren are indispensable. Simplicius the Thinker could be a person or a team, an American or a Russian, but it doesn’t matter because it’s the #1 source for the real Ukrainian war versus the TV war.
The Military Summary Channel and Moon of Alabama provide more insight into that war than corporate-funded think tanks. Via an email conversation, I realised that a Naked Capitalism founder is Russo-biased but his/her writing is excellent, and their esteemed guest writers and aggregation service is invaluable. Scott Horton, an anti-war activist, may be my favourite political podcaster.
Then there are the servants of oligarchy…
I haven't listed gross misleaders such as CNN and MSNBC which are more propaganda than helpful. Fox News is better regarding Ukraine but little else. It remains partisan, its only ambition to sell advertising by striking at the Democrats on behalf of the screaming faction of the Republican Party. The New York Times and the Washington Post, once among my liberal favourites, are ultimately loyal to the sins of the Democratic Party - truth dies in their disloyal darkness.
The major outlets of the UK (BBC) and Germany (DW) may lean towards the military industrial complex but are sharper destinations, particularly for documentaries.
Al Jazeera and Democracy Now deserve exclamation. They're the best international television news.
Armed with alternative media wanting a less cruel world, I’m better able to navigate and question Mainstream Media.
Considering that the war in Ukraine is affecting everyone, it is natural that many great writers have focused on that. They’ll likely inform us of the next crisis before it happens, as they did for this war, the Iraq War and the 2008 global economic depression.