My approach in seeking to find what is *really happening*, is to search for supposedly non-biased reporting, and also look at both partisan sides of an issue. I am not endorsing all the info in all the below links, but if you want to know what people are thinking it may help to browse their news sources.
bbc news
New York Times
UN News Center
Independent Media Center Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.
Op Ed News Daily News from a progressive perspective.
http://www.alternet.org/ AlterNet is a progressive news magazine fighting against the right-wing media machine. AlterNet aims to inspire citizen action and advocacy on the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, and health care issues.
http://www.truthout.org/ Online news group founded after the 2000 election, which seeks to expose the true stories that MSM (Main Stream Media) ignores or distorts.
http://commondreams.org/ Breaking news & views for the Progressive Community
aljazeera in English Largest Arab news network.
Middle East Times (Egypt) Find a round up of views from the Arab press here.
The Jerusalem Post an Israeli newspaper
Ha'aretz Daily a Hebrew Newspaper, English Edition

http://www.fair.org/ Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, a watchdog group, exposes media distortion.
Peace News an antimilitarist magazine, written and produced by and for activists, campaigners and radical academics from all over the world.
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
An international media development charity, IWPR is led by senior journalists and peace researchers, with staff drawn from established media such as the BBC, The Guardian and Reuters. They give on-the-job training and practical collaboration between international and regional journalists to transfer skills of fair journalism for the long term. IWPR supports peace, democracy and development in societies undergoing crisis and change.
http://www.accuracy.org/ Institute for Public Accuracy: news releases with well-documented analysis of current events and underlying issues.
Centre for Research on Globalisation is an independent research and media group of progressive writers, scholars and activists based in Montréal, Canada.     Some articles of interest:
The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan preceded the Soviet Invasion
Who is Osama bin Laden? CIA's support and training for the jihad against the Soviets, and CIA connections with heroin trade in Afghanistan.
Z Magazine
Z is an independent monthly magazine dedicated to resisting injustice, defending against repression, and creating liberty. It sees the racial, gender, class, and political dimensions of personal life as fundamental to understanding and improving contemporary circumstances; and it aims to assist activist efforts for a better future.
counterpunch.org a bi-weekly muckraking newsletter with a radical attitude, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair.
http://www.salon.com a chatty and personal news site with some great articles.

Center for Nonviolent Communication a global organization which teaches a heart-connected communication method developed by Marshall Rosenberg. CNVC now has regional teams of trainers and organizers in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Western Europe, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, and several countries in Latin America.
M.K. Gandhi Institute a Peace Institute in Tennessee, USA, founded by Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, Arun Gandhi
War Resisters' International and their "Nonviolence Programme":

• promote nonviolence within the new social movements, especially the movement for global justice ("anti-globalisation movement"), and the wider peace movement.
  
• raise awareness of the connection between corporations and militarism, promoting the analysis that war profiteers are a cause of war through a new WRI campaign.
  
• educate the WRI network and the wider peace movement about the issues raised by the movement for global justice, deepening the understanding of the connection between militarism and economics.

Veterans for Peace Working Together for Peace & Justice Through Non-violence.
Vietnam Veterans Against the War
Veterans Against the Iraq War
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Gold Star Families for Peace, founded by Cindy Sheehan.
Military Families Speak Out is an organization of people opposed to the war in Iraq who have relatives or loved ones in the military.
The School of the Americas Watch provides news about the ongoing protests against the SOA. Now renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” it is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia. Did you hear about the 16,000 protesters who went there on Nov 21, 2004? Including Susan Sarandon and Martin Sheen? There was an AP article on it but many newspapers chose not to report it.
Nebraskans for Peace The oldest statewide Peace & Justice organization in the country; they publish a lively newsletter, and the "Cat Lovers Against the Bomb" calendar as a fundraiser for peace projects. They note a high correlation between cat lovers and peace lovers.
Not in My Name a Jewish Peace group sympathetic to Palestinian self-rule. Many links to other Jewish Peace activist groups.
Jewish Peace Fellowship a nondenominational Jewish organization committed to active nonviolence, founded in 1941 to support Jewish conscientious objectors to the military.
Gush Shalom is the hard core of the Israeli peace movement. The primary aim of Gush Shalom is to influence Israeli public opinion and lead it towards peace and conciliation with the Palestinian people.
A Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is a San Francisco grassroots organization dedicated to the human, civil and economic rights of Jews, Palestinians, and all peoples in the Middle East.
BAT SHALOM is a feminist peace organization of Israeli women. They work closely with the JERUSALEM CENTER FOR WOMEN on the Palestinian side. Palestinian & Israeli women peace activists in agreement: "We work toward a just peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors that includes recognition of a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel and Jerusalem as the capital of both."
http://www.searchforjustice.org Search for Justice and Equality in Palestine/Israel believes that justice for Palestinians and security for Israeli Jews are not mutually exclusive, but interdependent. They are working to improve American media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict by disseminating information about the issue and by urging journalists to cover the conflict accurately and to support a just peace in their editorials. Visions of Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine is a alliance of Jews based in Boston USA working to promote a lasting peace ...
"We envision a peace in which Jews and Palestinians share the land of Israel/Palestine and its resources, acknowledging and respecting each other's rights as equal citizens and neighbors, free from violence, and able to develop their own futures with full respect for human and civil rights."

Middle East Links some Jewish, Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic perspectives, some working together building peace, others very opposed.
Links to uncover history of the region, and U.S. foreign policy.
Photos and voices from Afghanistan
Afghan Women's Mission afghanwomensmission.org
RAWA: Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan http://rawa.org
Their goal is to struggle against the Taliban and their foreign masters, and to establish freedom, democracy, peace and women's rights in Afghanistan.