Information Sources

Since we cannot depend on the media to bring us accurate information, I thought I'd start a thread about some alternative sources of information, generally ones that require a bit of resource since no one is going to spell it out.

Please, this is not the place for alternative news sites, whether conservative or liberal, whether it's Alex Jones or the Huffington Post. What I'd like to have here are sources of information rather than news media or blogs.

Wikileaks

One such site is Wikileaks. When George Bush was in office, the Democrats loved Wikileaks because they were releasing documents that embarrassed the Bush administration. Now that Barack Obama is in office and Hillary Clinton is running for office, the Democrats hate Wikileaks and the conservatives love it.

The truth is that Wikileaks is simply a site that allows for the anonymous release of documents, however they were obtained. It began with a focus on whistle blowers, allowing employees to leak information about the companies or government agencies they worked for, but it also indexes and makes available information that was obtained through hacking.

I haven't noticed that Wikileaks has taken a political side, except that whatever administration is in power is viewed as the opposition since they are under threat of arrest, prosecution or disappearance.

Many of the congressional hearings, department of justice investigations, and news stories have come about because of information leaked through Wikileaks.

Their site can be found here. Links to documents supporting current news stories can be found from the front page of the site but the documents themselves are indexed, and may be searched by keyword. Anyone with the time can be the first to come across a news story from documents released by Wikileaks. I know that I have come across news items that I have posted here and on Facebook that none of the news media had been talking about though keyword searches. While the Wikileaks staff will point to some of the juicier stuff, everything is available for browsing.

Judicial Watch

Another good source of information is Judicial Watch, which can be found here. While Judicial Watch is conservative in the information they pursue, they are relentless in filing Freedom of Information Requests, which is something that the news media used to do while we still had such a thing as investigative journalism.

Unfortunately today, the news media and the justice system will only investigate Republicans, so Judicial Watch presses the issues that are ignored by the news media. While they are rarely credited in subsequent news articles, many of the stories that you have come across came about because of FOIA requests made and pursued by Judicial Watch.

For example, neither the news media or the justice department had any interest in Hillary Clinton's emails, and we'd all be dead of old age before congress got around to anything, so the entire affair about Hillary's emails came to light in response to FOIA requests made by Judicial Watch. When they finally received the requested emails, they found that only a small part of them had been released. This led to the congressional hearings and what could only loosely be termed an investigation by the justice department, which was intended only to exonerate her.

When Judicial Watch received only a small portion of the requested emails, hackers released additional emails through Wikileaks.

Judicial Watch also points to some of the more interesting stories resulting from their efforts, but the actual documents may be viewed through their site, as well.

 

The useful feature from both Wikileaks and Judicial Watch is that you can view the actual documents and form your own opinions. Judicial Watch might publish articles highlighting some of the stuff that they've found, as does Wikileaks, but anyone with the time, the inclination, and the ability to conducts database searches, can decide for themselves what it might mean.

The problem with newspapers, television and radio news, blogs, and web sites is that if someone is going to be doing research, writing articles, and publishing or broadcasting these articles, there has to be a motivation.

The print and broadcast media have a profit motivation but, unfortunately, they also have a political agenda as well as stockholders and investors who expect that the news they read or hear will meet with their approval, which adds yet another agenda. Additionally, individual reporters or news people develop relationships with the people they cover, so one hand washes the other, leaving only the results dirty. If they want access to government sources, they have to play ball with the government. Given that the news media seems unwilling to invest heavily in research anymore, they are often spoon-fed stories by the government agencies, businesses, and people they are covering. Rather than investigating a story, the television news media will simply put someone on from both sides, both of which are biased, and that's what passes as news all too often. Similarly, the print media will simply quote people from one side or another.

For others, particularly web sites, blogs, and some independent news sites, agenda is the primary motivation, while they may make some money on the side through advertising. Of course, some of these are more useful than others. Brietbart.com for example, is a conservative news and opinion source, currently pro-Trump, but that wasn't always the case. However, they nearly always indicate their sources so, despite the bias, they can be useful. There was a time when World Net Daily was a fairly accurate, albeit conservative, news site but that is no longer the case, and I rarely go there anymore, and am even less likely to link to their stuff. Perhaps lacking a secure funding source, their advertising is a distraction in itself as they display ads from less than savory businesses and websites, their headlines are nearly always misleading, and their stories are too often without useful content.

On the liberal side, you have much of the same, with some being more useful than others. The Huffington Post has actually gotten better over the years. Although there is a definite liberal bias, they sometimes post stories that are not helpful to the liberal cause just because they are newsworthy. The Huffington Post began as more of an entertainment blog, so they have changed a lot through the years. The Hill is a newspaper (and web site) that was once about the closest thing that I had seen to an unbiased publication. Several years back, I couldn't tell whether they took a side or not. Now, although they still publish articles from all sides of the political spectrum, they have far more of a liberal bias, which has become accentuated with the Hillary campaign. A common comment that I make on their stuff is that The Hill puts the "hill" in Hillary. Plus, they have gone more toward opinion than news.

Wikileaks is probably the most objective source that I know of, as they will make available pretty much anything that they get, and they have hit people, governments, and businesses throughout the political spectrum. But Wikileaks requires some work on the part of anyone who wants to get the most out of it. It is more like opening the door to someone's filing cabinet so that you can dig through it for yourself.

 

TPP is something different, more like NAFTA on steroids. As for the Internet, that went to the United Nations on October 1. Congress gave it away with hardly a vote against it. That is why our forum was down yesterday, or was that the day before? There are already changes and my prediction is that, at some point, anything that the UN considers to be hate speech will be either removed from the Internet or difficult to find, and opinions they disagree with, such as anything opposed to global warming and political correctness, will meet a similar fate.