It is funded by individuals and contents is created by journalists who are fed up with the system and who come from many different horizons. The tone is clearly anti-establishment and it has been labeled pro-Mélenchon although it is mostly pro-workers pro-migrants and other minorities. lemetiadtv.fr started with a 8 o'clock news program and now has a lot of other political programs, including long interviews, debates, on subjects that never appears or always with the same commentators in other media. It is free to access 100% of its contents.
Another media is la-bas.org, created a long time ago by a public radio journalist who was irregularly fired a few years ago (we don't do "politics" here, we do "culture", he was told then, he eventually won his trial and was awarded 300,000 euros a few weeks back). His program was long interviews of the "sans-voies", the little people who are never in the news except as helpless victims or crowds of protesters. Now with a group of journalists he has a semi-open media with free contents and "subscriber" contents (for as little as €24 a year).
There are also web "papers", like Mediapart.fr or even older Le Monde Diplomatique at monde-diplomatique.fr that was the first in France to offer contents on the net back in 95 when the web was just starting.
All started (except for le Diplo, because it was created when the State still funded an independent press, it is now close to 100% funded by subscriptions and has translations in 2 dozen languages) because they analysed the state of media funding as not allowing critical views and because Internet offered them a way to reach out at a relatively low cost.
I was not able to find anything like this in Japan, and I'm not even sure things that exists in the US: pro-grade web media with mainstream journalists that have enough independent funding to actively work against the establishment with a clear non chauvinist pro-worker "bias".
Does the lbo crow have any links ?
Jean-Christophe Helary ----------------------------------------------- http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune