Danny Schechter provides a useful roundup of news sources who don't toe the official line

The Envelope Please: It's Time to Honor our Media Heroes -- by Danny Schechter

Cue the music, the models, and the melodrama. The award season has begun. An anthropologist from another culture—or planet—would find our obsessive need for validation through statuettes, plaques and trophies amusing.

There are awards expanding. amoeba like, in every field and every flavor. No wonder the awards business has become an industry in itself spawning armies of event planners, bookers and publicists. Spectacles ‘R Us! Our increasingly entertainment-oriented media obliges with fawning footage of grinning actors in borrowed gowns and jewelry strutting on contrived “red carpets.”

The Academy Awards is the mother of all awards shows. Oscar’s™ value is assessed by movie moguls more in terms of box office impact than artistic achievement Many run expensive marketing campaigns to lobby for and snag them. It’s all about the marketing, not the meaning.

When TV programmers can't think of what to do, they come up with an awards show. Stay tuned for the Home Shopping awards for an award for the best imitation jewelry and toilet cleaner. The mainstream media has the Pulitzers and TV programmers have the Peabodys. But in this age of the decline and devolution of journalism, something new is needed to honor courageous truth-telling by gutsy reporters and analysts.

With some chutzpah and conscience I would "nominate " a new award -- "The IZZY" -- in the spirit of the late (gone but not forgotten) IF Stone who knew a thing of two about speaking truth to power.

Mediachannel.org gave its first Truth in Media award to Helen Thomas, the Dean of the White House press corps, who has been denigrated by the Bush Administration for asking too many embarrassing questions. In accepting the award in New York on December 13, Thomas observed:

"The great journalism we have known is in a state of demise. And even more unfortunate is the timidity and lack of nerve on the part of reporters these days to call them as they see them. No reporter with eyes and ears wide open could have mistaken the fact that President Bush wanted to go to war from the moment he stepped foot in the White House and nothing would stop him...

"... I believe the press could have stopped the mayhem before it started by not defaulting on its one weapon-skepticism. It would have called on reporters to demand every day news conferences to pin the president down and to show how bereft his reasons were to go to war. But reporters were holier than thou caught up in the intimidating – and for some exciting- atmosphere of patriotism and then war itself"

If there was an "Izzie," Helen Thomas would be a logical candidate for its lifetime achievement award.

THE "NOMINEES"

Some other categories and nominees that come to mind:

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING:
Seymour Hersh (who has been doing it longer and better than most) but there are many others. Bob Parry of Consortium News, Russ Baker (Tom Paine.Com), Josh Marshall, and Greg Palast,

MEDIA CHAMPIONS OF DEMOCRACY
Bill Moyers (In a class by himself)

MEDIA CHAMPION OF WORKING PEOPLE
Studs Terkel (Still doing it in his 90's)

MEDIA GURU
Noam Chomsky with 81 books to his credit.

MEDIA WEBSITES
FAIR, Mediachannel.org, Media Reform.net, Media Matters for America, Spin Watches in the US and UK, Project Censored

MEDIA REPORTING
Editor & Publisher (Greg Mitchell), CJR.org, Media Lens (UK), Center for International Media, John Nichols (Nation)

THE DEBUNKING OF JUDITH MILLER AWARD
Alexander Cockburn (Counterpunch), Michael Massing (NY Review of Books); Jack Schafer, (Slate); Russ Baker (Tom Paine.com), Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post)

NEWS AGGREGATORS
BuzzFlash.com, Common Dreams.org. The Daily Chimp, Information Clearing House, WilliamBowles.info, The Geeze

OP-ED COLUMNISTS
Norman Solomon, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, Robert Scheer, Clarence Page, Barbara Ehrenreich, Rami Khoury (Daily Star)

WEB-BASED NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Daily Kos, TruthOut, Sam Smith's Progressive Review, Asia Times, TheNation.com

IRAQ COVERAGE
Dahr Jamail, Riverbend's Baghdad Burning Blog, JuanCole.com, IraqProject.org, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, Electronic Iraq

MIDDLE EAST REPORTING
Robert Fisk (Independent); Ha'aretz (Israel), Al Ahram Weekly, Egypt, Mosaic (Link TV), Arab News (Saudi Arabia)

AFRICA REPORTING
AllAfrica.com, RAIN, Mail & Guardian,

TV NEWS WITH AN EDGE
Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, International World Television (Emerging), Free Speech TV

INNOVATION IN JOURNALISM
Oh My News (South Korea) for citizen journalism; Wikki News for interactive news; The Daily Show for comedy News; IndyMedia.org (and roving IMC reporters like Scotland's Paul O' Hanlon) for news with an edge

RADIO REPORTING
Amy Goodman & Team (Pacifica), Larry Bensky (KPFA); Dennis Bernstein (KPFA) Between the Lines (Indy), Lara Flanders (Air America). Peter B.Collins.

BLOGGERS
Brad's Blog, Media Are Plural, Daily Kos, Direland (Doug Ireland), Tom Dispatch.com, et.al.

THINK TANKS
Center for American Progress, Center for Public Integrity, NACLA, Media Center at the American Press Institute,, World Association of Newspapers

WORLD NEWSPAPERS OF CONSCIENCE
Le Monde Diplomatique, The Guardian Weekly. The Indypendent, La Jornada (Mexico), Liberation, (France;) L'Unita and L'Manifesto (Italy)

THE CHALLENGE FOR THE FUTURE
I am sure I left out many worthy candidates. No slights intended. As I prepared this tentative list of award categories and potential nominees, I thought back to Helen Thomas's insights this past week on our contemporary media culture:

"Reporters obviously are under pressure to play ball. But if the goal is access all they will get from this administration is spin. It is amazing to me how gullible the press has been, how stenographic they must see their role. How sad..."

This is why we need to celebrate the media we believe in and thank our own role models. Add your own favorites. Even in an age of media decline, we have many of our own heroes and sheroes to honor. The independent media tradition is fragile but getting stronger with our help. Our obligation as readers: 'If we want our say, we have to pay' -- to help fund indy media.

I will give Ms. Thomas the last word: "... I do not believe all is lost. But I do think that journalism is the last line of defense and the protector of the peoples' right to know. We cannot continue to fall down on the job as we have. We have too much riding on us to follow the truth wherever it leads us.

"So ask now for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for all of us and let's give peace a chance and let it begin with us."

(News Dissector Danny Schechter is "blogger in chief" at Mediachannel.org with two new books, "When News Lies (Select Books) and "The Death of the Media". See www.newsdissector.org/store.htm. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org)