There is a feeling that the Internet is full of junk and it is, but it is also full of free-thinking and spirited debate about the issues that affect us all. Even though much of the Internet has come under the watchful eye of the dominant corporate media empires, that free-wheeling and vigorous exchange of ideas and values is ongoing; the media magnates have not figured out yet how to stifle the obvious groundswell of people who are just plain angry about watching our world sliding into a toilet and who are increasingly convinced that everyone is lying to us about it.

Why should the media care? Because the people who are filling the Internet by writing all those news pieces and opinion pieces and publishing research and parsing the truth out of the lies or semi-lies spouted by government are doing the job that most mainstream media long ago abdicated.

This is not about the awful things occurring in the world; anyone can see that. It's about the abysmal failure of the media to help us understand what is going on around us, to show us the truth, to point the blame and sing the praise where it is warranted, to challenge the comfortable lies we have come to accept as our reality.

Maybe it is naïve to think that television and newsprint and radio can ever hope to provide honesty and integrity; in these days, they rarely even make the attempt...