What does the term "independent journalism" mean? To left-wing elites, it implies brave anti-corporate progressivism. For example, Monday’s New York Times ran film critic Alissa Wilkinson on “A Profile and a Celebration of Independent Journalism.”  The online headline named the admired journalist in question: “In This Film About Amy Goodman, Independent Journalism Is the Real Star.” Wilkinson gushed over the politically radical Goodman and her radio program Democracy Now!, hosted on the far-left Pacifica Network. Yet the paper has spent years ignoring or mocking right-leaning “citizen journalists.” They're not "independent." They're apparently capitalist lackeys. Nowhere in this brief tribute does Wilkinson address how Goodman and Pacifica are "independent" even though the five Pacifica Radio stations have long received (combined) about $1 million a year in federal funding through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...until recently. Wilkinson began:  Stop any random person on the street, and I’d wager they’d agree — no matter their spot on the political spectrum — that America needs a lot more independent journalism. It’s easy to see that the consolidation of media ownership by a handful of corporate conglomerates since 1996, when the Telecommunications Act deregulated the industry, has not been good for the press. The Bill Moyers-style handwringing over “corporate conglomerates” aside, there are far more media outlets today then there were 30 years ago, thanks to the internet, which lowers the cost of starting up new small enterprises like independent journalism. ….The new documentary Steal This Story, Please! (in theaters) is ostensibly a profile of one such reporter: Amy Goodman, the investigative journalist who hosts the progressive news program Democracy Now! Yet the directors Tia Lessin [a longtime Michael Moore collaborator] and Carl Deal widen the film’s frame, making an impassioned argument for opinionated journalism that operates outside corporate media structures. …. Goodman’s career is fascinating on its own merits, and the film is full of footage of her doggedly chasing down politicians and sources who clearly would prefer to control their own story. But more important, the movie gradually explores the fundamentals of journalism that she believes in and passes on to colleagues — for instance, as one collaborator puts it, “Speak to the people at the target end of the bomb.” In other words, look for the story that challenges the official narrative, and tell that one. ….Steal This Story, Please! makes a strong case that a plurality of independent outlets and more journalists, not fewer, are vital to a healthy democracy — and that without a revitalization of the independent press, we may lose the ability to discern the truth altogether. That’s a sweet message, but hugely hypocritical coming from the Times, whose respect for alternative media voices is highly selective – the Times has none for right-leaning journalism outlets, certainly not independent outlets. It isn’t delivering Goodman-style encomiums to independent conservative media voices like Ben Shapiro, Sharyl Attkisson, or for that matter, iconoclastic journalist Glenn Greenwald. Nick Shirley, who got the ball rolling on Somalia-dominated fraud in the Minnesota daycare system, was described dismissively by the paper as one of the rabble of “self-described citizen journalists” by Ken Bensinger and Ernesto Londoño in December 2025: Equipped with little more than iPhones, Mr. Shirley and other right-wing YouTubers and livestreamers zigzag around the country — and overseas — in search of politically charged footage. In many cases, these digital activists pick up on themes that have circulated for months, or even years, but still generate online outrage and action from a government primed to jump into the fray.” Amy Goodman was treated with far more respect when she was “doggedly chasing down politicians and sources.” The paper has no patience for right-leaning journalism outlets, however big or small. Besides the usual bashing of Fox News and its local rival the New York Post, the Times goes out of its way to denigrate authors of influential conservative journalism that appear in smaller outlets like Compact magazine as amateurs (“a ticket scalper and frustrated screenwriter”). Former Times tech reporter, now tech podcaster, Kevin Roose was notorious for nudging social media platforms toward anti-conservative censorship and was delighted in 2020 when a gay Marxist from a billionaire family was able to censor the YouTube channel of conservative comedian-commentator Stephen Crowder. Veteran reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg in 2022 accused the conservative Washington Free Beacon of “racist undertones” for a scoop that committed the sin of making the Biden Administration look cartoonishly liberal -- by funding crack pipes to drug addicts. And the paper has often used the strongly anti-Chinese Communist Party newspaper, The Epoch Times, as a right-wing punching bag.