Sites such as www.alternet.org have seen huge growth since September 11th with a five-fold increase in traffic in the week following the attacks. Alternet aims to provide non-commercial, comprehensive coverage with a combination of breaking news, analysis and activism resources.
The Independent Media Centre (www.indymedia.org) is a similarly well-established international collective of journalists and campaigners. Indy Media's website has developed into a highly-organised network of global campaign sites and now provides a central point for co-ordination of the anti-war movement.
The objectivity of the mainstream media is a frequent topic of debate on independent media sites. Contributors claim that commercial goals and political compliance take priority over accuracy and comprehensive reporting. David Edwards and David Cromwell of indy news site ZNet (www.zmag.org) are critical of mainstream news coverage: "Journalists take it as read that their job is to echo the government's lines, not to read between them."
Urban75 (www.urban75.com), one of the UK's most popular campaign and discussion sites with around 500,000 individual users per month, also operates on a non-commercial basis. "Urban75 is strictly non-commercial and carries no money-making banners, adverts or sponsorship deals. We do not want urban75 to be used as marketing tool for someone else's products."
Indy Media, Counterpunch (www.counterpunch.org) and Urban75 also rely on volunteer staff and donations.
The UK Ministry of Defence raised the stakes this week with the launch of MoD Oracle (www.modoracle.com), a new site for military personnel that provides a central news and discussion resource for the UK's armed forces.
As the military continues preparations for war, independent campaigners are intensifying their protest, organising demonstrations in major cities around the world on 15 February (2003).
Independent sites - news and campaigns related to the Iraqi Crisis:
http://www.indymedia.org - Independent Media Centre
http://www.counterpunch.org - CounterPunch
http://www.alternet.org - Alternet
http://www.zmag.org - ZMag
http://www.schnews.org - Schnews
http://www.adbusters.org/debate/iraq_war/ - online debate on the Iraq situation
http://www.fair.org - Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
http://www.debka.com - DEBKA
http://www.mwaw.org/ - UK Media Workers Against War
http://www.ceip.org/files/Iraq/index.htm - US Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Comprehensive stories, links and analysis
http://www.cfr.org - US Council on Foreign Relations - Foreign policy debate
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