|
Nominations and Campaigning for the 2024 RationalWiki Moderator Election are now open |
AlterNet
| You gotta spin it to win it Media |
|
| Stop the presses! |
| We want pictures of Spider-Man! |
| Extra! Extra! |
| Someone is wrong on The Internet |
|
| Log in: |
AlterNet is an Alternative interNet liberal news outlet. They cover topics left out of mainstream "corporate media" (such as positive coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement) and expose underhanded establishment politicians and businesses. Trouble is, they have a bad habit of indulging in woo. In many ways, they're like a more aggressive HuffPo: as long as they're not talking about science outside of evolution, cosmology or climate change, they're okay.
Good stuff[edit]
Occupy Wall Street[edit]
AlterNet devoted an inordinate amount of digital ink to the topic of Occupy Wall Street.[1] They, along with a handful of other independent media outlets, gave decent and fair coverage of the events happening at Zucotti Park and other Occupy movements that were happening throughout the world.
Feminism and misogyny[edit]
AlterNet is one of a very few internet media sources that does not cater to MRA's shouting MISANDRY![2] They frequently host articles addressing sexual violence and assault, dealing with women in video games and generally about how treating women terribly is a bad thing and what it does to not only women, but also men in society.
Bad stuff[edit]
Pseudoscience[edit]
AlterNet has a bad habit of promoting woo. The worst of these is by far their stance on GMOs: they stridently avoid asking actual scientists' opinions on the topic or reading a single peer-reviewed paper by them on the subject (aside from those by this dipshit[3]), have frequently misrepresented data regarding transgenic organisms[4] and will happily castigate anyone that doesn't toe the quack line.[5] As if that's not bad enough, AlterNet has even dabbled in a little bit of radiophobia[6] and thinks toothpaste is bad for your health.[7]
On the upside, AN has taken it upon itself to trashing Whole Foods Market Inc largely for its Libertarian "fuck you, got mine" stance.[8][9] Sadly, it seems that attacking those cultish, pseudoscience positions would be rather hypocritical for the rag.
Assadist propaganda[edit]
AlterNet used to host The Grayzone Project, a space for the alleged Kremlin-linked[citation needed] Assadist Max Blumenthal and his protege Ben Norton to express their admiration for the lion of Damascus, and attack any perceived opponents of the Syrian regime by branding them radical Islamists. Such opponents included the White Helmets,[10] Syrian children who suffered gas attacks and were accused of faking it, and of course, any Western journalists who dared to say that maybe chemical attacks on Syria’s own people aren’t super great for the image of anti-Imperialism which they purported to represent. Much of the claims published by these characters were subsequently disproven by the UN. Around February 2018, AlterNet finally pulled the plug on The Grayzone Project.[11] More simply known as The Grayzone, Blumenthal's project continues with opaque funding.
External links[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ As you can see here, they have an entire page dedicated to it.
- ↑ Seriously, check it out!
- ↑ Here is AlterNet running a story about the infamous Séralini paper as legitimate and accepted science.
- ↑ Here is a story misrepresenting conclusions from a paper regarding glyphosate and kidney disease in places where the herbicide is used with hard water contamination in order to show how "MONSATAN is poisoning us with GMOs"!.
- ↑ Here they are calling Mark Lynas a shill for Monsanto for discovering the actual science behind transgenic crops and thus no longer supporting anti-GMO woo.
- ↑ Because cellphones emit RADIATION and RADIATION causes CANCER!
- ↑ Because toothpaste contains fluoride (among other things) and it's an icky chemikill!
- ↑ Mostly due to how it treats its workers as a whole...
- ↑ ... and at the individual level.
- ↑ See the Wikipedia article on White Helmets (Syrian Civil War).
- ↑ Grayzone Project at alternet.org. This page still exists as of June 2018, although no posts from Blumenthal appear to have been posted since December 2017.