Boycott Corporate-Owned Media

Mainstream media is owned by oligarchs. They are not our friends. Here are 29 independent media alternatives to keep you informed.

About a month ago, I did two TikTok videos on how to stick it to the man by withholding our consumer dollars from oligarchs. Those videos went viral and amassed 2 million views. So many people have reached out and told me they cut the cord from big, extractive retail like Amazon and Walmart. Many of you have asked me for the next “to do” list.

The next battle we need to fight is against corporate-owned media. These are the channels, platforms and brands many of us grew up with. At one time in our lives, we placed enormous trust in these outlets and the journalists who worked for them. Those days are over.

I worked in the media industry. Those businesses make their money off our attention. Unfortunately, all of the major platforms are owned by oligarchs. They’re no longer part of a free press. Real journalism was removed from the menu long ago.

These days, platforms like CBS, BC, NBC and CNN offer slivers of selective truth packaged as entertainment. This content offering is meant to manipulate and gaslight the American people for the gain of the one-percent in power.

The so-called Fourth Estate is already kissing the incoming Trump crime syndicate’s ring. For weeks, they’ve been humanizing King Trump and attempting to make him seem more presidential. They’ve genuflected to Elon Musk by refusing to call his repugnant, double Nazi salute exactly what it was. Let’s review:

The New York Times: “Elon Musk incites online speculation over the meaning of a hand gesture.” Sky News called Musk’s SS salute “a quirky moment.”

The BBC: “Elon Musk responds to backlash over gesture at Donald Trump rally.”

The Washington Post: “Elon Musk’s inauguration salute stokes debate in Congress, Europe.”

MSNBC: “Elon Musk’s gesture resembling Nazi salute at Trump inauguration event sparks backlash.”

When even the allegedly progressive cable network has to couch a true statement with a word like "resembling,” there’s a massive problem. And it’s day two of Trump Fuckery 2.0.

Over on TikTok, it seems like state-media backed by Mark Zuckerberg and the Meta surveillance-state apparatus has already taken over. Users are being censored for speaking ill of Trump and his groupies. One user dared to mention the inauguration and had her video auto-edited and redacted in real-time.

This is where we are today. We can deny it, or we can fight. Our fight begins with boycotting all of the corporate-owned media platforms. Here’s a full list of boycott targets:

Do not consume content from these sources. Block them on every social media platform to deprive them of your attention. If you subscribe to any of these, cancel your subscriptions. I subscribed to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Forbes for 30+ years. I no longer do because these publications bend the truth to serve their billionaire handlers and special interests like Israel and the Zionist lobby. I refuse to give my hard-earned dollars to propagandists intent on destroying American civil liberties for financial gain.

Instead, I’ve invested in independent journalists, platforms and thinkers. I’ve been operating this way for two years now, and I don’t miss the pablum for the masses. If anything, I feel more connected, educated and informed than ever.

Your Independent Media Starter Pack

Here are my recommendations for independent journalists, platforms and thinkers to support. If you can pay to subscribe to their work, please do. It’s important to remember people’s labor and expertise is valuable. Paying people what they’re worth is another way to stick it to this extractive system.

1. Zeteo: Mehdi Hasan’s platform on Substack. Hasan’s show was canceled on MSNBC during Israel’s assault on Gaza. The “super progressive” network claimed there was no connection between Hasan’s position on the violence in Gaza and his show being canceled, but most people saw through that. Hasan started Zeteo, a straight-shooting, provocative media organization.

2. Ken Klippenstein: Klippenstein used to work at The Intercept and was the DC correspondent at The Nation. Lately, it seems like he’s the only one with the tenacity and courage to publish scoops. He published Luigi Mangione’s manifesto and JD Vance’s dossier when legacy media refused to share the full text of either document. This guy is fearless.

3. The Power: This is Carole Cadwalladr’s Substack newsletter. Cadwalladr writes for The Guardian and is the Pulitzer-nominated investigative journalist who exposed Facebook/Cambridge Analytica. She spoke about in a TED talk, got sued and lived to tell the tale.

4. The Intercept: A non-profit news organization started in 2014, The Intercept has broken some big stories including The New York Times’ made-up story about sexual assault on October 7^th and documents released by Edward Snowden.

5. ProPublica: A non-profit, investigative journalism organization that has won several Pulitzer Prizes. ProPublica has done groundbreaking pieces on the unethical rot in the Supreme Court, environmental reporting, hate crimes and Native American repatriation.

6. The Grayzone: You probably saw clips from Antony Blinken’s last press conference when two reporters were ousted. One was Max Blumenthal, an award-winning journalist and editor-in-chief of The Grayzone.

7. Sam Husseini: Sam Husseini was the other journalist removed from Blinken’s last press conference. He was physically carried out of the room by Capitol police officers. He’s been a persistent, courageous voice about the genocide in Gaza, and he also covers geopolitics, major media and big tech.

8. The Lever: An investigative reader-supported news outlet founded by David Sirota, speechwriter and former senior advisor to Bernie Sanders, The Lever’s mission is to hold power accountable. This outlet thoroughly covers corporate influence and misdeeds.

9. Drop Site News: An investigative non-aligned news outlet started by Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill dedicated to exposing the crimes of the powerful — particularly in overt and secret conflicts where the U.S. government is playing a key role.

10. Meidas Touch News: MeidasTouch Network (MTN) was founded by three brothers Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas. An independently owned and operated outlet run by Ron Filipkowski, MTN is a pro-democracy news network.

11. Okay Africa: Black-owned and independent, this is a popular destination for Africans in the diaspora and on the continent, OkayAfrica covers news, elections, arts and culture throughout the continent.

12. Sarah Kendzior: Writer, former co-host of the Gaslit Nation podcast and author of four books including Hiding in Plain Sight and the upcoming The Last American Road Trip. Kendzior is an academic and anthropologist who covered the autocratic regime in Uzbekistan. As a journalist, she’s been published in The Globe and Mail, Al Jazeera and The Guardian.

13. Atlanta Black Star: Atlanta Black Star was created to publish empowering narratives for all people of African descent and everyone who adheres to the culture. Black-owned, this outlet focuses on news, politics, entertainment and culture from a black perspective.

14. Let’s Address This with Qasim Rashid: Rashid’s newsletter is a human rights project to provide objective, consistent, and clear insights on the critical human rights issues impacting us all. A human rights lawyer and author, Rashid brings a unique lens to the topics of the day.

15. In Retrospect: Frederick Joseph’s Substack newsletter delves into the profound nuances of our global narrative, while traversing the corridors of politics and culture. Joseph is a 2X NYT and USA Today Bestselling Author, and his latest book is We Alive, Beloved.

16. Erin in the Morning: Erin Reed is a transgender journalist who covers the rapidly changing world of queer and transgender rights and legislation. Reed has written for Harpers Bazaar, The Los Angeles Blade and other publications. Her newsletter provides concise summaries and source documents so you don’t miss anything happening on the rapidly evolving world of trans rights.

17. Washington Babylon: Ken Silverstein’s newsletter covering Washington and the world in the age of oligarchy. Silverstein is an investigative reporter with bylines in publications including the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press.

18. User Magazine: Taylor Lorenz’s independent outlet that keeps you up to date on the online world. User Mag is founded on the belief that the real story of technology lies with its users. Instead of focusing on corporate earnings and boardroom conflicts, User Mag covers how people are using technology. Lorenz was a columnist for The Washington Post. She called President Biden a war criminal and left the WaPo soon after. A technology reporter for The New York Times, The Daily Beast and Business Insider, Lorenz has never been afraid to speak truth to power and shake things up.

19. Lucid: This is historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Substack newsletter. Ben-Ghiat’s expertise is in authoritarians, propaganda and democracy protection. An NYU professor, she started Lucid in 2021 to separate the signal from the noise in politics and provide big-picture thinking about authoritarianism and threats to democracy in the US and around the world. She uses her skills as an historian to identify the patterns and dynamics at work in the news.

20. Thinking About…: Timothy Snyder is an historian who teaches at Yale and author of the book On Tyranny. His work concerns east European history, the Holocaust, the history of the Soviet Union, and the history of Ukraine. He has also written about U.S. history, international relations, digital politics, and political thought.

21. The Warning with Steve Schmidt: A newsletter with lots of video that explains what is happening and why in our turbulent era. Schmidt was a political strategist to Republicans including George W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign. Extremely critical of Donald Trump, Schmidt became an independent and started The Lincoln Project (TLP). TLP campaigned heavily against Trump in 2020, raising $100 million. These days, Schmidt is a registered Democrat who continues to speak truth to power.

22. Letters from an American: Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of American history at Boston College. Her newsletter is a chronicle of today’s political landscape. Because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American.

23. Ground News: Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias and break free from algorithms. The publication’s bias ratings assess the political bias of news publications, and the platform offers readers options for reading about the same topic from different lenses.

24. The Electronic Intifada: Founded in 2001, The Electronic Intifada is an independent online news publication and educational resource focusing on Palestine, its people, politics, culture and place in the world.

25. Dispatches from a Collapsing State: This is Jared Yates Sexton’s Substack newsletter that attempts to shine a light the consequences of hypercapitalism, unchecked corruption, white supremacy, patriarchal dominance, and the rise of authoritarianism that is currently threatening us all. Yates Sexton is a political analyst and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, Salon, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere. He’s the author of several books and the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.

26. Al Jazeera: Al Jazeera launched from the Qatari capital, Doha, in 1996. It was the first independent news channel in the Arab world. Media in the Arab world, till then, was characterized by state-controlled narratives that denied audiences the right to know and the right to be heard. Al Jazeera is an independent news organization funded in part by the Qatari government.

27. Rest of World: Rest of World is a nonprofit publication that challenges expectations about whose experiences with technology matter. The platform connects the dots across a rapidly evolving digital world, through on-the-ground reporting in places typically overlooked and underestimated. The name Rest of the World is a corporate catchall term used in the West to designate “everyone else” and conveys a casual disregard for billions of people, and a Western-centric worldview that leaves an unthinkable number of insights, opportunities, and nuances out of the global conversation.

28. The Cradle: A journalist-driven publication covering West Asia that represents the tens of millions of regional voices not heard in the world’s English-language media.

29. Grist: Started in 1999, Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to highlighting climate solutions and uncovering environmental injustices. The platform uses the power of journalism to engage the public about the most existential threat we face and the sustainable future that is achievable.

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