Media Literacy and Media Analysis Links

Action Coalition for Media Education
ACME, free of corporate media funding, is a strategic network linking media educators, health advocates, media reformers, independent media makers, community organizers and others. ACME attempts to promote synergy in the media reform movement, and will help to prevent media education from becoming watered down by profit-driven or appreciationist agendas.

Adbusters Culturejammers

Alliance for Better Campaigns
The Alliance for Better Campaigns is a public interest group that seeks to improve elections by promoting campaigns in which the most useful information reaches the greatest number of citizens in the most engaging ways.

Alternative Press Review
Your guide beyond mainstrem media.

The Benton Foundation
The mission of the Benton Foundation is to articulate a public interest vision for the digital age and to demonstrate the value of communications for solving social problems. Current priorities include: promoting a vision and policy alternatives for the digital age in which the benefit to the public is paramount; raising awareness among funders and nonprofits on their stake in critical policy issues; enabling communities and nonprofits to produce diverse and locally responsive media content.

Censor
Censor.org combines original material with a daily-updated media and politics Web log that comments upon and links to the work of major news organizations, as well as to other critical, independent voices published on the Internet -- contextualizing the day's news in a broader fashion than what is available from the mainstream media.

Center for Digital Democracy
The Center for Digital Democracy is committed to preserving the openness and diversity of the Internet in the broadband era, and to realizing the full potential of digital communications through the development and encouragement of noncommercial, public interest programming.

Center for Interactive Technology, Television and Children
CRITC is dedicated to furthering research and knowledge on the effects of electronic media on children's social development and academic achievement. CRITC uses a range of methods to pursue empirical research on children's use of television, video and computer games, and other interactive media

Center for Media and Democracy
The Center for Media and Democracy works to strengthen democracy by promoting media that are "of, by and for the people" - genuinely informative and broadly participatory - and by removing the barriers and distortions of the modern information environment that stem from government- or corporate-dominated, hierarchical media.

Center for Media and Public Affairs
The Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) is a nonpartisan research and educational organization which conducts scientific studeis of the new and entertainment media. Having looked at the election process and late night political jokes, CMPA is also one of the few groups to study the important role media plays in communicating information about health risks and scientific issues.

The Center for Media Literacy
A nonprogit educational organization, CML is dedicated to promoting and supporting media literacy education as a framework for accessing, analyzing, evaluating and creating media content, CML works to help citizens, especially the young, develop critical thinking and media production skills needed to live fully in the 21st century media culture.

Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting
Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting is a national membership organization dedicated to putting the PUBLIC back into public broadcasting so that we can all join in the debate about our nation's future. At the national level, CIPB has developed a detailed proposal for a Public Broadcasting Trust (PBT) that is independently funded, publicly accountable, and true to the service's founding mission. At the community level, CIPB builds chapters, and is working with national partner organizations to democratize community public broadcasting service. Toward these goals CIPB offers a training manual, video and a national clearinghouse for organizing.

Civic Media Center
Based on the belief that the news you get in the mainstream press outlets, libraries and public debate isn't really conprehensive or even truthful, the Civic Media Center is a non-profit alternative library with over ten-thousand books, videos and periodicals from independent, non-corporate press.

Clear Channel Sucks
ClearChannelSucks.org is a free speech website dedicated to educating the public about entertainment giant Clear Channel. Clear Channel owns over 1,200 radio stations and 37 television stations, with investments in 240 radio stations globally, and Clear Channel Entertainment (aka SFX, one of their more well-known subsidiaries) owns and operates over 200 venues nationwide. They are in 248 of the top 250 radio markets, controlling 60% of all rock programming

Columbia Journalism Review - Media Ownership
'Who Owns What' is an online guide to what major media companies own.

Commercial Alert
The goal of Commercial Alert is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy. The nonprofit concentrates on the role of commercialism in culture, education, government, and health.

Consumer Federation of America - Communications and Media Policy
Consumer Federation of America's Communications and Media Policy team is dedicated to educating the public about media reform issues and contributing to a growing national dialogue on media issues crucial to a healthy democracy. The CFA's site features the latest headlines, a wealth of consumer-oriented information, numerous and varied opportunities to get involved, a weekly opinion poll, and much more.

Critical Media Literacy in Times of War
This site offers modules for visitors to sharpen their media literacy skills regarding media coverage of war. It provides the tools to compare domestic and international coverage of U.S. millitary intervention, analyze soureces, word choice and bias, as well as identify political perspective. Millitary interventions in Afganistan and Iraq offer examples of how war test freedom of expression.

Disinformation
A commercial site, oedipal in that its development was first funded and promptly shut down by megaconglomerate TeleCommunications, Inc and now produces its own media, Disinformation provides a search service of choice for individuals looking for information on current affairs, politics, new science and the "hidden information" that seldom seems to slip through the cracks of the corporate-owned media conglomerates.

Free Press
Free Press is a national nonpartisan organization working to increase informed public participation in crucial media policy debates, and to generate policies that will produce a more competitive and public interest-oriented media system with a strong nonprofit and noncommercial sector.

FAIR: Fairness in Accounting and Reporting
FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an anti-censorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled.

Grade the News
Stanford University's Grade the News aims to provide timely critiques and in-depth, systematic analyses that allow the public to compare newspapers and local television news broadcasts on equal footing. Their main service is a periodic survey of thousands of local San Francisco Bay area print and broadcast stories. For each story, Grade the News determines the newsworthiness, number and expertise of sources, thematic approach, number of people affected, fairness and other traits. The end product is a letter grade for the newsroom -- anywhere from A to F.

Guerrilla News Network
Guerrilla News Network is an underground news organization with headquarters in New York City and production facilities in Berkeley, California. Its mission is to expose people to important global issues through guerrilla programming on the web and on television.

Independent Media Centers
The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration for people who continue to work for a better world, despite corporate media's distortions and unwillingness to cover the efforts to free humanity.

Independent Media Institute
IMI attempts to empower people with independent journalism, information and media tools to change the world. Its current projects include: the SPIN Project, WireTap, and Alternet.

Independent Press Association
The IPA amplifies the power of independent publications so as to foster a more just, open and democratic society by helping its 600+ member magazines and newspapers to learn from each other, reduce costs and reach a wider audience.

Index on Censorship
For the past 31 years, Index has reported on censorship issues from all over the world and has added to the debates on those issues. In addition to the analysis, reportage and interviews, each Index contains a country by country list of free speech violations.

Institute for Public Accuracy
The Institute for Public Accuracy seeks to broaden public discourse. With systematic outreach to media professionals, the Institute provides news releases that offer well-documented analysis of current events and underlying issues.

Media Access Project
MAP's work is in the courts, the FCC, and in active outreach as a coalition builder among other public interest organizations. It is the only Washington-based organization devoted to representing listeners' and speakers' interests in electronic media and telecommunications issues before the Federal Communications Commission, other policy-making bodies, and in the courts.

Media Alliance
Media Alliance is a 28 year-old media resource and advocacy center for media workers, non-profit organizations, and social justice activists. It promotes media excellence, ethics, diversity, and accountability in the interests of peace, justice, and social responsibility.

Media Channel
MediaChannel is a media issues supersite, featuring criticism, breaking news, and investigative reporting from hundreds of organizations worldwide. As the media watch the world, we watch the media.

Media Education Foundation
The Media Education Foundation produces and distributes video documentaries to encourage critical thinking and debate about the relationship between media ownership, commercial media content, and the democratic demand for free flows of information, diverse representations of ideas and people, and informed citizen participation.

Media Geek
This site serves as a guide for mediageeks, looking at how the media functions, both systemically--the political economy of the mainstream, independent and underground media--and practically--how you can put media making tools to work.

Media Refrom Information Center
A collection of internet resrouces with a wide range of topics including: Media Reform Groups, Election Coverage, Articles/Books, PR/Advertizing/Commercialism, The Media Monopoly, Radio, TV/Cable, Internet, Alternative Media, Investigative Journalism, Progressive Media, Progressive Book Publishers, Mainstream Media, and other.

Media Tank
Media Tank works to provide communities with tools to understand and participate in critical decisions about our nation's media system. Its community education and national organizing bring together media arts, education and activism in new ways to broaden the movement for media justice and reform as a key strategy for social change.

Media Tenor International
Academics, politicians, managers and journalists discuss the impact of media on business, politics and society. Media Tenor has developed a unique and extremely detailed methodology based on communication science, which can measure media trends without interference from subjective bias and opinion. Recent studies have focused on the presidential elections 2004 in U.S., the coverage of AIDS/HIV, the portrayal of ethnic and racial minorities, country images, anti-Americanism in foreign media and more.

Media Transparency
MediaTransparency.org is dedicated to news, opinion, analysis and investigative data related to links between conservative philanthropies and the organizations and people which they fund, and their influence in the media.The heart of Media Transparency is its free, searchable database of grants made by major conservative philanthropies since 1985. The database presently contains over 21,000 grants totaling more than $1.25 billion, and is searchable by an array of criteria, including funder, recipient, grant purpose, and date(s).

Media Watch
Media Watch strives to challegne abusive stereotypes and other biased images commonly found in the media. Started in 1984, it distributes educational videos, media literacy information and newsletters to help create more informed consumers of the mass media.

Mental Engineering
This is the website of the critically acclaimed television series Mental Engineering. Mental Engineering's vision is an America where commercial speech and the techniques of media persuasion are balanced by public awareness; where every citizen has both the ability and inclination to ask good questions. Mental Engineering promotes a healthy society by supporting citizens in their exploration and understanding of the media messages embedded in commercials and aimed directly at each one of us.

Moving Ideas - Culture and the Media Page
Moving Ideas Network (MIN), formerly the Electronic Policy Network, is dedicated to explaining and popularizing complex policy ideas to a broader audience. Their goal is to improve collaboration and dialogue between policy and grassroots organizations, and to promote their work to journalists and legislators. Moving Ideas posts resources from leading progressive research and advocacy institutions, as well as promotes high-quality websites and publishes original content

Muckraker: Center for Investigative Reporting
The Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to exposing injustice and abuse of power through the tools of journalism. CIR is organized along three functions: as a journalism venture fund, investing in promising investigations at their early stages to give them a chance in the increasingly competitive news marketplace; as a documentary production house, producing investigations for television and radio; and as a publicity firm, maximizing the impact of the best investigations from the journalism community by promoting them to decision makers, citizen groups and our journalism peers. Together, these activities equip citizens with the information they need to participate fully in the democratic process and bring about needed changes in laws, regulations, and the operations of government, corporations, and institutions.

National Organization for Women (NOW) Foundation
Devoted to furthering women's rights through education and litigation, the NOW Foundation appears before the FCC, conducts feminist surveillance of advertisements, and instructs women on becoming media activists.

OutFOXed
Outfoxed:Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism is a fim that examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, have been running a "race to the bottom" in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public's right to know.

The PressWise Trust
The PressWise Trust is an independent media ethics charity that provides advice, information, research and training on all aspects of media policy, practice and law.

Project Censored
The Mission of Project Censored is to educate people about the role of independent journalism in a democratic society and to tell The News That Didn't Make the News and why. Project Censored is a media research group out of Sonoma State University which tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media.

Reclaim the Media
Reclaim the Media is a coalition of independent journalists, media activists and community organizers in the Pacific Northwest, promoting press freedom and community media access as prerequisites for a functioning democracy. It encourages noncommercial media, local media, and community involvement in media production and distribution.

Rocky Mountain Media Watch
Rocky Mountain Media Watch, through its studies of local TV news content, has documented the formula of excess found in local TV news across the country. Its purposes are threefold: To expose media excess, help citizens and the media understand and visualize what constitutes better journalism, and teach activists and community groups to improve their media skills and increase coverage of their issues.

The Strategic Press Information Network (Spin Project)
The SPIN Project provides media technical assistance to nonprofit public-interest organizations across the nation who want to influence debate, shape public opinion and garner positive media attention. SPIN offers public relations consulting, including comprehensive media training and intensive media strategizing and resources to community organizations across the country

Take Back the Media
This interactive site offers links, stories, polling and the ability to submit such information in a grassroots effort for media equality and accuracy. TBTM also houses its own progressive radio program.

Tell Us the Truth Tour
Tell Us The Truth Tour is a multi-city music and education trek that will put issues of media reform, economic and environmental justice and democracy at the top of the American political agenda this fall. It promises to be the loudest, angriest, funniest and most effective challenge to corporate domination of public discourse in recent history.

Television: Opiate for the Masses
An article provided by Familyresources.com, this page explains the ills and negative history of television watching while providing embedded links to further resources.

Third World Traveler's Media Control Resource Page
This page offers links to articles, books, and websites concered with the role of popaganda, media, and democracy.

Kill Your Television
Supported by TurnOffYourTV.com, Kill Your TV offers commentary, information, poems, and other resources on the ill effects of television

U.S. Public Interest Reserach Group - Media Ownership and Concentration
U.S. PIRG offers answers to why the FCC is wrong in giving a few media moguls and corporations powerful television monopolies and what you can do about it.

The Video Activist Network
The VAN is an informal association of activists and politically conscious artists using video to support social, economic and environmental justice campaigns.

Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press
The WIFP seek to democratize the communications media by expanding freedom of the press (which includes its modern day electronic forms) to enable all people; rich and poor, male and female, to have the equal opportunity to speak directly to the whole public about their own issues and concerns.

Workers Independent News Service
Workers Independent News Service provides news about the issues and activities of working families and their unions in an effort to bring balance to radio news coverage.