Et tu, “alternative news”?

Oh cripes!

Raw Story — which I usually check before going to any newspapers or U.S. media sites — claims it is written for ” an audience seeking news underplayed by the mainstream media.”  Certainly, it’s less obnoxious than sites like “Huffington Post” (which thinks articles written by movie starlets and P.R. hacks is “cutting edge journalism” I guess) and more in-depth than the superficial “The Daily Beast” (short on news, long on entertainment coverage) or the plethora of “alternative” news sites that are more focused on how news is presented than what happened (“Crooks and Liars,” “Firedoglake,” etc.)– but it isn’t writing anything that I can’t find in the “mainstream media” about Latin America, or Mexico specifically.

US President Barack Obama began his first summit of North American leaders in Mexico, with the economic crisis and swine flu on an agenda overshadowed by Mexican drug violence. Hours before the summit began on Sunday, an armed commando shot dead a lawyer known for her work defending suspected drug smugglers in north Mexico…

WTF??? I’m not sure what a narco-lawyer being bumped off in Monterrey has to do with the  event being covered.  We have to read seven paragraphs before we find that out:

“The purpose of this summit is for the president to have an opportunity to speak with his counterparts about issues of mutual concern, like H1N1 (flu) preparedness, economic competitiveness, security and also global climate change,” White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told reporters on Air Force One.

If this is the “alternative” then what’s “mainstream”?