This year saw a steady advance of regrettable tendencies in new media and its consumption. Unreliability and public mistrust of traditional forms were matched by the toxic rancour of social media discourse.
Perhaps for a while, in the halcyon days of the noughties, new media was seen as a viable alternative to corporate establishment press. But that hope now seems overstated, with online journalism often subject to the same capitalistic pressures and lax standards as print and broadcast media. On top of that, there have been the growing scandals around social media giants spying on us, selling our data and being a haven for trolls and bots.
The best counter-weight to all this is a strong independent sector with robust journalistic standards. That’s what we at The Media Fund are seeking to promote and raise finances for.
Please consider a New Year’s Resolution to boost this vital sector by becoming a member of The Media Fund. Quality independent journalism simply can’t be provided without money. Without that journalism, we may be left at the mercy of the hard-right and the liberal mush-head incarnation of the corporate world, and the alarmist, hype-mongers, bots and trolls clogging up social media.
Here’s a selection of great work from our Media Fund Partners from across 2018.
In no special order, some are short, some are in-depth databases still being added to. They are local, national and international in scope.
Facebook Will Rule The World – Unless We Stop it.
Real Media
Monitoring Project: High-Frequency Trading (i.e. historic global fraud)
Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Bristol Cable
Byline
Corporate Watch
New Internationalist
BECOME A MEMBER
Stephen Durrant