From our Cheap Shot series.
You know the antagonists: mainstream media versus alternative media.
Need to feel a certain way about any topic, from minute to galactic? Just search the web, find the right media, feel good.
Or bad, if that's your thing.
We have repeatedly expounded on media questions on this blog from several angles, such as the old German ex-printers vs. Google, the joy of the reader comments sections, the superfluous reporting about anything (t-shirts to tea kettle) that can be linked to some pariah ideology, as well as gems of information we'd never see without the internet.
This post is but a version on some of the above, but with a clear mainstream vs. alternative media (definition) setup thanks to the writer at Spiegel Online.
Criticism of and distrust in the pillars of 20th century reporting is not limited to the United States, although their particular brand of attacking the mainstream media right there in or on the mainstream media (definition) has not yet made it across the Atlantic in its full crazy goriness.
The piece in Spiegel Online takes the criticism of reporting about the Germanwings crash in the French Alps, killing 150 people, as the foundation of an exploration into what the "alternative media" reported on the event.
The author uses quotes around "alternative media", a good indication of a subsequent critical debate of their reporting. The first paragraphs of the article delve into the meaning of the word alternative in itself, a notion of being different, a promise, etc.
A sad couple of paragraphs in, the first examples of something alternative show we are seeing the wingnut definition only, at best esoteric, at worst criminal.
With delusional somewhere in between.
The alternative media in this Spiegel piece are the idiots and conspiracy folks. Once set up like this, the mainstream becomes the reasoned and sane opposite of the fringe.
The blogster won't go for wholesale condemnation of the Spiegel writer, though, because he does have one, a single, point which he unfortunately fails to make.
Which is this: compared the huge, flourishing independent US media, Germany has rather little to offer. We have favorably mentioned the folks of netzpolitik for all things internet and there are a few others in other areas. There are cultural, legal, an economic reasons for that beyond the scope of this focused post.
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