INTERNET RESOURCES for Thursday, October 17, 1996

Site of the day

Alternative News

Also, don't believe that what you do read tells the whole story.

That's the opinion of Ben Attias, a communications professor at California State University at Northridge. According to Mr. Attias, the objectivity of mainstream newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media is confounded by the influence of their owners -- corporations that place their economic well-being ahead of impartial reporting.

"For example, don't expect NBC, owned by G.E., to run stories critical of G.E.'s nuclear-waste-disposal procedures," he says. "One would expect a media outlet to serve the interests of its owners," he continues. But for scholars, journalists, and activists, "alternative sources of information are mandatory."

Mr. Attias has found many such sources on the Internet and has compiled them on a World-Wide Web page. The site contains links to dozens of sources of alternative news, government information, and alerts from activists on issues as varied as electronic privacy and the cultural influence of McDonald's restaurants. Most of the activists take a leftist perspective on the news.

The site devotes special attention to allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency supplied crack cocaine to American inner cities in the 1980s as a means of financing aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. Mr. Attias says the story has been ignored by the mainstream media for several years and is still overlooked despite an investigation published in the San Jose Mercury News last summer.

Mr. Attias hopes that by providing an outlet for diverse voices and opinions, the Internet will help the public make more informed decisions. "The World-Wide Web is one place where anyone can publish information intended for a mass audience without access to traditional mass-media outlets," he says.

• World-Wide Web: http://speech.csun.edu/ben/news/index.html