2005 Media Follies!

By Geov Parrish, AlterNet. Posted December 27, 2005.

The 10th annual list of the year's most overhyped and underreported stories.

As one would expect in a year when one of the underreported stories was our government's covert propaganda campaigns, there's plenty to unravel: stories that should never have been stories, stories whose reporting largely missed the point, and stories barely told at all in mainstream US media.

The good news is that, more than ever, mainstream media is no longer the last word in journalism. Foreign media, now universally available in English on the Internet, often tells a completely different (and usually more accurate) story than what we see, read, and hear here. So-called alternative media--which has been way ahead of the mainstream media on any number of issues--has repeatedly shown its relevance, to the point where the Internet is rapidly becoming the preferred news source for many Americans.