In the 20th century, alternative media was mostly known as “leftist” and gave readers insights into the world that mainstream publications did not, but with a distinctly collectivist perception. The alternative press was also, obviously, a paper press, with distribution mostly in big cities as the alternative press attracted less advertising and fewer subscribers simply by its nature.
The Internet has changed all that. Today’s non-traditional press is distinctly alternative with a bias toward libertarian and “free-market” analysis. While there are plenty of leftist and rightist publications, many blogs and other analyses are truly free of the faux left/right taint and its Hegelian antecedents. They choose instead to analyze and comment from something approaching a libertarian perspective.
And much of alternative ‘Net reporting (real reporting) often focuses on the power elite in a way that the mainstream media does not. Also, for this reason, among others, critics have attempted to marginalize the message as being the result of “conspiracism.”
So far the labeling has had little effect with the alternative ‘Net media gaining power and viewers at the expense of mainstream media – which continues to report on the current sociopolitical and economic system worldwide without questioning its underlying validity.
The mainstream media subscribes to the mainstream money model and supports the incubation and promotion of dominant social themes. This involves a belief in a central banking-oriented, government-backed currency system, one in which “wise men” make decisions as to interest rates, money supply and other issues having to do with where the economy is headed and how it will perform.
It is the alternative ‘Net model, focusing on free-market thinking, that continues to gain popularity and readers in the 21st century and it is difficult to see how this trend will be negated short of a shut down of the Internet.