Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Do You Choose a News Source? (csmonitor.com)
Obfiscator writes: Journalism has long had potential to change the world. The latest elections in the United States demonstrated new dimensions of this, with the rise of "fake news" and "echo chambers," as well as a president who has few reservations in expressing his thoughts of the media. The Christian Science Monitor has been a favorite news site of mine for years, due to their objective and balanced reporting, as well as their tendency to avoid "breaking news" and provide detailed analysis a few days later. Very few stories are going to impact my world to the point where waiting a couple days to read about them will make a difference. Despite the name, the vast majority of articles have no religious context (they address this in their FAQ). CSM has recently switched to be completely behind a paywall, as well. In their words, "We hope the Monitor Daily addresses both those trends. It is pushed to where our readers are and offers this pact: We will deliver our distinctive view of the world and you support financially our ability to produce that news." Is this the next trend: moving away from advertising revenues? Will this create more balanced journalism, as there is no need to attract clicks? Or will it deepen "echo chambers?" How do Slashdotters choose their news sites?
My choice basically boils down to the stuff I reflexively type in mindlessly in temporary semi-subconscious distraction, as I unthinkingly consume one of a very limited number of news site that grabbed my mind share at one point. After that it's turtles all the way down, as I keep typing in the same urls like a laboratory crack monkey seeking its next hit from the lever. These patterns last years or decades.
Nice choices. :)
To answer TFA's question:
I don't, I come here to talk about last week's news
...watching MSNBC & Al Jazeera and splitting the difference.
That's half facetious, but the reality is that if you get all your news from a single source, you're guaranteed to get a biased view of reality, no matter what the source. The best thing you can do is to get information from as many different sources as possible, and when there are differences, do a little digging through meta-analysis sites to try to figure out where the truth lies.
If you don't have time to do that, your only choice is to accept that you will always be at least to some degree uninformed, hope that it doesn't matter, and don't worry about it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Then I watch Fox News because Jesus hates Muslims too.
I'm not a THC fan. I'll get drunk with you though. I'm a friendly drunk, not a violent one.
Mostly random stuff.
In order to be informed one must digest many news sources- even when their bias is not your bias. Even foreign sources.
Then... you ruminate. Let the information sink in. And make the best call you can about what is true.
At the moment much of journalism has lost it's value. But in my opinion, the bright spots are easy to spot when you ignore your own ideology and start matching facts against stories.
Just make sure you have a real understanding about what a "fact" actually is.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Just don't necessarily believe it.
Especially if there's some sort of emotional resonance or if it seems especially convenient to someone's worldview.
Daily Mail seems OK. And factual financial news is rarely biased to the point of uselessness. Tech news can be ok.
Also, read stories about what happened, not stories about what might happen, or stories about what it might mean to someone, or stories about someone reacting to what happened. Facts, not "meaning".
And remember the news isn't about you.
use the following phrases in story titles and subtitles: ...number [x] will leave you.. ...you've been waiting for ...you should...
1. Here's what you need to know about...
2. Everything you need to know about...
3.
4. This is how...
5. The science behind...
6.
7.
8. [x] (silences|schools) [y] with one [z]
If you are looking for just one metric, a good one is to avoid corporate or state-sponsored news. God knows there will be a lot of dross still but it won't be supported by a huge propaganda machine that can manufacture consent. The Christian Science Monitor has always had a unique non-profit model (which may not be workable anymore but has resulted in some excellent reportage for a long time) and similarly, so does ProPublica.
Sorry bout the stupid caps,
I use feely and skim them all. Since all are crooked liars I figure reading a bit of all sides is my only chance at "truth".
Google News is a distant second.
I got to this post from feedly.
Slashdot. News for Nerds. Stuff that matters!
I shy away from MSNBC because they're 99% video and that drives me nuts. I don't want 20 minutes of video just to get to a few salient details. I steer clear of Fox News because I know a corporate shill when I see it. Not that CNN doesn't do a fair amount of shilling...
Besides that there's the BBC if I want something more or less objective, but it's getting harder to act objective when half the country is is objectively nutso. That's kinda the trouble with CNN: They give nut cases a platform in the name of objectivity...
Finally there's youtube and a few left wing political sites (MotherJones, Politico). They tend to have less obvious fake news because their readership tends to call them on it when they do (and if the readership doesn't you can damn well bet the other side will). It's the difference between right wing media which has billions of pro-corporate dollars and left wing media that gets buy on hawking hipster junk to Millennials.
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Read a wide variety of news. Reuters feed, AP feed, news channel sites, newspaper sites. Compare them to each other, and research the claims.
The truth is not Fox, or CNN, or The Times. It is somewhere in the middle of the bunch. And parts of it are scattered all over.
I generally rely on a mix of NPR, CNN & NY Times, but I actually go to Fox just to see their slant on the news. It can be pretty amazing... headline stories on the other sources literally don't exist on Fox. I read an interesting article that said that Fox had perfected altering the news cycle:
1) bad story comes out on trump
2) Fox instantly headlines some conspiracy theory (like about the murdered Clinton aide) to divert attention, and buries the real story.
3) To close the loop, Fox claims that the bad news about Trump is the "fake news" that's being used to divert attention from the "real story" that was hatched on some conspiracy website.
Whenever a good news portal hides itself behind a paywall the the caravan/customers move on to a less good news portal.
In the end we will all be using breitbart, sputnik and al jazeira because everything else is behind a pay wall. Those who are not looking forward in generating monetary profit will simply outlast everybody else.
Dont blame the customers, blame the companies.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
If they have a slant it isn't really greased by the same powers here.
Most news is corrupt and sold out
The thing that gets me is how many people want from 'Don't trust corporate media' to 'WTF I love corporate media' almost overnight just because Trump said some bad things about the media. Don't misunderstand me, I think the guy's an asshole, but considering how many times the 'legitimate' news outlets have been caught being deceptive or outright false, he's not wrong about that one.
Can you pass an Idealogical Turing Test? Seek out news sources that promote the idealogical side that you are less versed in.
Not because of the right-wing sensate headlines at the top. But because of the source links at the bottom. Where else can you find Agence France-Press, BBC, Tass, Pravda, and New Republic on the same page? Saves the trouble of book marks. Really.
Tracy Johnson
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BT
As long as you don't read the editoral section or even one of the comments, the WSJ has great news. In part it's because they try to provide analysis. What does this news mean to you. The washington post is doing something similar but they are a lot more hyperventilating than the WSJ.
But for the love of god do not read the comments section. It will make you weep for humanity. Nothing but kneejerks, tards, and flambait. And the editorial section is pretty hilarious because they appear to have built a firewall between they editorail commentary and the news analaysis such that very often their news analysis flatly rejects the basis of their own editorials. Fairly rabid editorials.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Never trust a single source to be unbiased or even true. Use multiple sources, as independent as possible, from more than one country. This is FAR easier to do on line that via any mass media source. Most mass media news sounds like they are reporting a sporting event than things that have true life of death import.
Oh, come on, really?
There is only ONE authoritative source of well-researched, verified, informative, objective news reporting and that is The Daily Mail!
Fantastic, hard-hitting news without all the fakery that drives so many click-bait sites these days
</sarc>
I season my variety of domestic news sources, which includes newspapers, television, radio, and the internet, with reporting from outside of the United States. The BBC is the first, and probably best, source that comes to mind, but Australia and India also provide English resources for news not biased by American ideology.
Choose? There is no Choose. Only read or read-not.
Maybe back in the day there was but today it isn't news, it is entertainment, They all lie. They are all biased. None of them can hold a consistent logical position.
Or they use polling like it is some hard scientific fact that should dictate policy.
Or refuse to criticize their team.
When people discuss "Facts" I always ask how do you those "facts" are real and aren't manipulated. The answer (regardless of party) is always the same because a) my news source doesnt lie or b) it came from some government website (BLS, FBI stats, etc). And then I know they are brainwashed.
I'm conservative, but I like to read VARIOUS sites. I read overseas, domestic, conservative, liberal then, form my own opinion, based on my own belief.
I'll miss the hearing-aid ads.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I just don't care and am one of the most well adjusted people I know. Weird maybe, but not neurotic or stressed.
Watching "news" 18 hours a day does not contribute to this. To everybody else, enjoy your medicated sanity.
Just give me something-something I can use
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry
Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry
Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down
If you think Fox news is the only news outlet with an agenda, I have a bridge to sell you.
Literally everything is now politicized. In today's world, our feelings about politics are used to steer us toward one version of events or another; but if you believe either version is unbiased you're part of the problem. People think there is a "right version" and a "wrong version" but there is really just a "left version" and a "right version." Believe either one and you're just partaking in the echo chamber.
I ask myself, "Does this news source give all viewpoints, including the ones I disagree with, including the unpopular ones?" I judge them first by the subjects that I'm most familiar with myself (primarily medicine and biology). Classroom example: Does a story about abortion give both (or all) sides? http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...
In my freshman year of college, even the engineering majors had to take a humanities course. The most valuable book they gave me was John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. http://www.bartleby.com/130/2.... Mill summarized it himself:
So I look for a news source that gives me as many ideas as possible, so I can evaluate them myself. A special case is the journalistic rule: Whenever you attack someone, you have an obligation to give him a chance to respond. I worked as a journalist myself, and any journalist can tell you that when you get the other side, it often turns the whole story around.
The one newspaper that did the best job (more than the New York Times) was the Wall Street Journal. For example, they did a story on a welfare work program in California, and interviewed everyone from the governor down to the welfare recipients. (It seemed clear to me that the program wasn't working, but you could come to your own conclusions.) Some of their best reporters were socialists. Their page 1 editor was gay, contracted AIDS, wrote about his treatement with AZT, and got a Pulitzer Prize for it. http://www.pulitzer.org/winner... They wrote about the successes and failures of the capitalist system. The WSJ made their reputation when GM told them to kill a story, threatened to cancel all their advertising if they didn't, and the WSJ told them to fuck off.
But best of all, they gave me ideas every morning that I disagreed with, and I had to figure out whether I was really right.
Then Rupert Murdoch bought the WSJ and destroyed the best newspaper in the world, by placing right-wing political commissars over the editing process and censoring liberal ideas. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12... .
So it's back to the New York Times, even though they have an annoying habit of pandering to their advertisers and to the neo-liberal establishment. (I noticed this when I was following auto safety engineering, and the NYT basically followed the auto industry line that seat belts and air bags were too expensive. The auto industry is in the top 2 or 3 newspaper advertisers.)
After that, the best news sources that I read are in the professional journals. Science magazine actually does get all sides. I also read the New England
Most of the comments so far are opinions on how to find or interpret news. Answering the question is more to the point. I listen to the NPR hourly news summary for breaking news, otherwise it's a scan of google news for topics of interest, then off to the specific interest sites (lots of science for me) that the submitter didn't really mean.
Google news just collects stuff, then you can choose which article to read about the given subject. Comparing a few sources is easy, and really highlights the biased stance of each publication.
Being well informed is now a matter of taking the time to slog through the simplified or biased sources with a seriously skeptical eye. As long as the local grocery store is open and I have enough money to shop there, I'm happy to watch it all go by. I absolutely participate in the things I feel passionate about, but Thank $DEITY that most of the stuff in the news is somewhere over there and not in my face.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
- The new service must have bureaus and fully paid journalists on the field.
- News must heavily outweigh opinion. When opinion is presented, it must be backed by quantitative analyses, not mere rhetoric.
- Must regularly publish original studies, analyses and visualizations.
- The opinions they present must be from well-known experts in their fields - well-known, not because they often bloviate, but regarded well by their scholarly peers.
- Entertainment sections and cute stories must be at an absolute minimum. No click baits. Focus on serious issues that impact the world - economy, science, wars.
This generally means I gravitate towards big media in print. No outlet is perfect in everything, all have their biases - a combination can smooth things out.
My perspective may stem from timing - most of the recent ugliness and arguing online over recent events started around the same time I returned to school, so I was relearning to argue at the same time I was learning to site sources for college papers. That being said, it made it easier to weed some of the truth, as well as shape said perspective.
While it's not a perfect system - it doesn't weed out anything leaning towards a particular slant - it does verify that something is legitimately true. It's too easy to get wrapped in something that's a lie - and with everyone want to steer you in their circle, even something as simple as my system is still better than nothing. The trick isn't to rely on one news source - especially if you're worried abut the topic, or will argue about it. Instead, if you can't find the source or something unedited, treat it like your professor expecting your final paper.
Despite the name they're fairly objective and have won numerous Pulitzer prizes for reporting as well as a Peabody award. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
It first helps to gain a basic knowlege of the subject area. If you care about global warming, read a scientific study. If you care about politics, become familiar with liberal, conservative and libertatian schools of thought. For the later, I would recommend Cato institute home study course. Then, if you see something that contradicts established body of knowledge, you will be in the best position to research further. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Other than that, pay news sources independent of ad revenue are good to add to the mix. There is nothing wrong with New York Times. The best subscription deal I could find was on Google Play Newstand, but your milage may vary.
I don't choose a single news source, I choose many, and when a topic interests me I search for as many points of view as possible
And as for how I find those? Various search engines, comment suggestions, aggregators, podcasts, etc, compiled over time
Twinstiq, game news
In the decades of yore, I've only ever had two subscriptions: The Economist (late nineties) and, briefly, the Toronto Globe and Mail (early nineties). After 2000, why bother? Once the internet really kicked off, I just found stuff. Mostly I rely on highbrow aggregation sites like edge.org and aldaily.com. TED talks were good initially, and I also used to check out Science Daily if I was bored.
These sites often make passing mention to current events (something that's happened in the last three years) and I'll just Google many things mentioned in the articles I read that are interesting or don't smell right. So eventually I catch up with the news cycle, but on my own terms. I prefer to read at a 1- to 3-year remove from the fracas anyway. More perspective, less noise.
Here's one good example. I never paid an iota of attention to Three Mile Island, until they actually finished sawing the failed reactor apart (this took years). Inside, what they finally found bore little resemblance to the official report, which was basically just politicized micro-mea culpa Quaalude bullshit. Meanwhile, billions of nerve cells protected from cubits of crap.
Here's my entire mental file on OJ: there was a police chase, and then something about a glove. The story wasn't ever actual news. Filter set to 99.
For a long time, I ignored a lot of MSM coverage of the Middle East. Then one day I grabbed a copy of The Terror Years: From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State by Lawrence Wright (2016), and bypassed dozens of hours of belligerent talking heads.
For technology, I scan the Slashdot headlines and paste articles in my notes, under heading ==Inbox==. For example, I've presently got ten mostly-unread links to Uber malfeasance, should at some future point I decide to give a shit about Uber's extensive adolescent rap sheet. This plus mounds of partially digested material on machine learning. Uber is only interesting to me in the first place as an end-run around entrenched interests (way overdue for a mud fight).
For the Trump administration—which I rank up there with the Cuban Missile Crisis and 9/11 as a potential bifurcation-point on civilization as we know it (Trump basically promised this at every rally)—I decided to try something new. I just instantly Google every name that comes up in the daily/hourly news cycle, and make a page in my peg-board wiki. About half a dozen times so far, I've filed a name on the periphery of the story which had a very strong spin in the first source, then weeks or months later seen the same name resurface in a different context with a very different spin (for example, a person such as Alexander Rovt). Interesting to notice, but it's also a hell of a lot of wiki farming.
I also consume a lot of information-heavy podcasts (EconTalk, RadioLab, Hardcore History, HowSound, Talking Machines, the O'Reilly Data Show are my current rotation) and then use the good ol' Google-grapnel to on-board associated material by the barge load. The ultimate trick is engagement, curiosity, attention, and excellent note-taking skills. 90% of my knowledge base is motivated bycatch.
Cognitive currency. Ultimately, you get what you pay for.
At this point, I'm not even sure searching by publication-venue reputation is a top-five discrimination signal in my implicit sorting algorithm (this signal is way stronger on the other side: do not click here—in practice, it's basically just a shit list).
CSM has recently switched to be completely behind a paywall, as well.
Just now I went to csmonitor.com, with JavaScript enabled in my browser. On that web page, there are some links to Monitor articles. Near the bottom of the page, there is a grey "Show More" button. If you click it, more links to articles appear at the bottom of the web page. I clicked that button 3 times, then clicked on a link to an article. This article appeared. I was able to see the entire article. So I don't think you have to subscribe to the Monitor to read its articles.
I just wish that in their articles (like the one that I referenced), they'd use responsive web design, and put in more than one column if the screen's width is large enough to be a laptop.
I read last decade's history textbooks. If it was important, it'll show up there.
If they don't allow comments, I tend not to visit them as often. Despite the spam, partisanship, and personal attacks, comments sections are valuable to me as places where journalistic spin can be called out. I've lost count of the number of times I've read news articles linked to scientific studies, and the author is totally BTFO by a commenter who actually took the time to read the research paper.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
I have no problems with paying for a news source. I'ld rather pay myself than having some advertiser pay it for me.
But there is one point I am no longer willing to compromise: any news source I pay for must offer me a full text RSS feed.
I read about 400 news items per day. With several sources I get a decent balancing. But this is only possible if I get full text RSS feeds. Otherwise the workflow kills me.
same here. i only read slashdot and eurekalert. scientific news are really news, all other sources are just controlled leaks of info from different interest groups - who bother.
They have all gone to hell.
That is all spiced up with salacious and gory images from nowhere in particular. Just as visual eye-candy to attract gawping readers / viewers.
So far as news goes, there is very little that I need to be informed of - and even less that has a direct, personal, effect on myself or those I know or love. Most "news", on most days that is immediately important comes down to the weather forecast and the traffic reports.
I do like to be kept up to date on what new laws will impact on my life, new scientific discoveries and developments, the occasional IT disaster, major currency movements and up-coming events. I find that a weekly local news summary and a weekly magazine subscription is all that is needed to satisfy those needs.
All the rest, the 24-hour rolling news, the hourly news summaries on radio and longer bulletins on TV seem to repeat the same few stories (see above). And at weekends, they barely change from Friday evening through to Monday morning unless there has been some sort of major disaster - which their weekend staff generally fail to provide any coherent information about.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Disclaimer: My main news sources are BBC and LSM. I am liberally inclined.
0. Obviously avoid any “made up news” sites. If you have no idea what the publisher is, either consider it made up or dig up sources.
1. Avoid media that confuse option with facts. Easy to spot, since they use emotive language. Compare “swarm of immigrants” with “thousands of asylum seekers”. If they are the only ones talking about seemingly important issue, chances are, they are blowing things out of proportion. And just because you intellectually know that that is just rubbish, doesn't mean that it is not effective. Ask yourself, how many people or groups of people you hate because someone else you listen to hates them? Same goes for propaganda media, like RT. Just because most of the material is ok, the occasional blatant lies are not worth it.
2. Every news organization will get facts wrong. What matters is how they handle it. If they mess up daily, drop them. If they issue erratas, odds are that they are more trustworthy.
3. Don't follow breaking news unless they impact you directly. At the beginning nobody knows anything, after about 6 hours some sort of clarity is expected.
4. Don't live on the facts alone. If the news says “GBP has fallen against EUR by 2%”, this alone doesn't answer “Why has it fallen?”, “What will be GBP rate in the future?” or “What does it mean for UK economy/households?”. Any news organization worth their salt will get experts who can shed light on the matters. If they bring in quacks, that is not a reputable news organization.
5. How to spot a quack? If you have some expert knowledge of the topic, it's easy to spot those. If a news organization tends to invite such quacks, I wouldn't trust the “experts” in the fields I don't have good knowledge in. Resist the Gell-Mann amnesia!
6. From time to time read some opinion pieces and discussions between highly opinionated so called experts. I personally wouldn't trust them on anything or believe that I have gained any insight, but it helps to have some idea on what people believe, some of which can even be valid and be worth your time digging into.
I use the ABC here in Australia as a source of news, both the website and the broadcast news.
They don't spread FUD and BS or "fake news" (as far as I have seen anyway), they dont intentionally lie or twist the truth, they dont have to answer to advertisers or commercial interests and keep them happy and they are one of the few news outlets in the country still doing proper investigative journalism (4 Corners being the best example)
I also watch the PBS News Hour over on SBS as well as SBS World News.
On the other hand I refuse to go anywhere near ANY news outlet owned, run, controlled or influenced by Rupert Murdoch.
The way he uses his newspaper empire to influence politicians and the voting public disgusts me and I wont have anything to do with it. I also will not subscribe to any Pay TV or streaming offerings owned or controlled by Mr Murdoch.
Last week's news hasn't got here yet.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've long since stopped spending time and energy trying to actively follow the 'news'. If something is truly newsworthy you will hear about it whether you want to or not. And only then if there is an interesting piece of real news, do I start digging for more information. The rest I just don't care about any longer..
There's an old Japanese proverb, if you believe everything you read you had better not read.
Any mention of the Daily Mail makes me think of that. A copy of the DM and it's equally contemptuous counterpart, the Sun usually find their way into the break room daily. The Daily Mail is like eating a bag of chocolate coated crisps, no nutritional value and the flavour combination is terrible. The DM is openly biased towards the extreme right however most of their articles are celebrity trash that makes E! look like quality journalism.
The Guardian is only slightly better than the DM or Sun because they use more elloquent language creating a minimum intellgence level required for readers. The DM targets the lowest common denominator.
Now I choose my news sources (read, multiple) based on a few factors. 1. Are they frequently sued for libel/slander. If yes, discount source.
2. Do they issue retractions for incorrect articles. if no, discount source.
3. Do articles present referenced, verifiable fact or opinion. If opinion, discount source.
4. Do they use emotional languages and through terminating cliche. If yes, discount source.
5. Who is funding them.
The Sun and DM fail the first four of these standards.
The last question is complex. I tend to avoid subscription and pay to read services as they have an extremely vested interest in giving their audience an echo chamber at the expense of fact and reason. Advertiser funded are a little bit more trustworthy as they need to maintain a larger audience to make money hence cant afford to be too obviously biased. Government funded are either very trustworthy or completely untrustworthy, the latter which are usually government mouthpieces like RT are easy to spot. The former tends to have a mandate to produce good content.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I assume you're talking about TV news reporting on national and world events, and I'd agree with that opinion. However, local TV news is still a pretty good way to keep up to date on local current events and matters of local relevancy across the spectrum (be they political, crime-related, traffic, weather, sports, etc.) all in one place. The Internet has yet to supplant this and I expect it won't any time soon as the relative market shares are too small to incentivize a lot of competition and the local TV stations have a pretty big head start with their own web presences anyway.
Relying on a single source is generally a very bad idea. Consider aggregating several. For instance, here in the UK, I skim:
All are decent for international news (esp al J and BBC World Service) I avoid the Mall, Express and the so-called "red tops" for anumber of reasons, but mostly because they are basically shite, and hugely annoying to read.
I have stopped watching TV news altogether (even in the UK there are complaints about TV news bias, even though impartiality is supposed to be regulated by the agency OfCom).. I'll hear some radio news occasionally but I don't search for it. I don't do talk radio, for much the same reason If I want to look at US news, I skim
I will from time to time scan twitter for trends, then go look at them on the news sources I use to get some kind of cross-section of opinion. Relying on a single point of truth in news reporting is, in the modern era, a mistake, I think it wiser to spread your attention.
It's not you: I'm just this horrifically socially awkward with everybody.
My twitter feed has probably 30 news sources in it from MSNBC to Fox and everything in between. I just read the feeds and develop my own conclusions.
I don't tweet much myself but using twitter as a news aggregator works pretty well for me.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
The only way to get a decent view of what's going on is to check multiple sources. I prefer to get my US national news (as opposed to local news) from foreign sources. DeutscheWelle, the BBC, are ok, but Russia Today is one of my favorite sources lately. There are usually a couple of blatant pro-Putin propaganda articles there, but ignore over those, and you get a lot of unbiased recounts of things that actually happened in the USA... not a load of pointed conjecture, or opinion-posing-as-news.
Where's the CowboyNeal option?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I use CNN for convenience (easy to type) but the BBC is pretty good too. Then again I don't live in the UK, so UK people may have a different opinion of it.
My best friend honestly believes that Fox News is the only news source that is, as they claim, "fair and balanced". He's pretty conservative and he bases this on the idea that they have like one commentator who is liberal and 2 or 3 who aren't crazy wing nuts. He thinks CNN is as about as far left as it gets. His head would explode if he knew the kind of stuff that MSNBC has, which makes CNN almost look conservative. I admit to being disappointed in CNN since Trump became president. Their fact checking is way down and they have a rather large number of online columns from a guy who truly hates Trump. So much for them being objective any more. But at least they do cover stuff that isn't positive about Trump whereas Fox News pretends that anything negative never happened. At any random time compare the headlines online between the two and the difference in what each thinks is important is rather surprising.
I have another friend who more than 20 years ago immigrated from the USSR with his parents to the USA and his mother gets all her news from notorious propaganda source RT. She believes everything they say. She panicked him by calling him and telling him that there was a nuclear bomb dropped in Ukraine because RT said so. Yeah. I had to calm him down by telling him that no other news source reported that. But he's a real momma's boy and she calls him multiple times a day and is always filling his head with some nonsense she sees on RT and neither him nor her will ever stop believing it. People are just going to believe what they want to if it meets their pre-conceptions.
My "basic" news source isn't Fox News, it's Fox Business News. Not all the cable/satellite folks carry it, but I find it to be more reliably conservative and a better source of the factual information rather than the slanted information. For the most part (not always) they do a pretty good job, and they're pretty good about making sure it's obvious when their are opinion pieces on one side or the other.
More broadly I have to listen to what I've got as I'm heading into work. In the canyon where I live I very rarely can get AM radio, so my options are an '80s rock station, George Noory (Coast to Coast), or NPR. I usually switch between NPR and CtC if it's an interesting show, and I certainly the find the terrible NPR bias an interesting source of thought.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
It wasn't what Trump said. The entire media narrative about polls and his chances of getting elected should have clued you in that the rest of "professional journalism" went the way of Fox News.
When have journalists ever NOT botched a story you had any independent knowledge of.
If you're lucky, you get the half of the truth they want you to know that supports their narrative. If you're unlucky, it's a total fabrication.
The last election cycle just made it a lot more obvious. So have a number of stories afterwards. The "Russian hack" narrative is just the cherry on top of the flaming pile of poo.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You're only laughing at Breitbart because your corporate master told you to.
If you're only paying attention to one particular narrative, then you're a chump. Doesn't matter what that narrative is. There is really no way to choose "A" news source. You have to pick several with opposing narratives.
Even Al-Jazeera will cover what American liberal media chooses to gloss over about a liberal President.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
We're not talking about "opposing views" we're talking about alternative half-truth's that fit different narratives. Modern journalism is NOT about giving you the facts. It's about creating stories and pushing an agenda. Facts and events that don't fit the editor's world view simply will not be presented.
If you haven't gotten past that yet, you're still just an idiot being influenced by mind control towers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Last week's news didn't show up this week. It'll get here on Sunday.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
...as do most people who crave a dose of reality with a side of THC.
Everybody could use a side of THC with their reality these days. Have you seen the numbers on how many more adults are using marijuana today than when Obama took office? Or even the few presidents before him? Surely this is causal. We obviously smoke pot because of Trump.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
You're only laughing at Breitbart because your corporate master told you to.
"Laughing at" is inaccurate. "Disgusted by" is more accurate. They've been involved in several of the big conspiracy theories including the Birthers & Pizzagate. I don't see that kind of behavior from CNN. Buzzfeed maybe. Here are some of their more notable headlines.
If you're only paying attention to one particular narrative, then you're a chump. Doesn't matter what that narrative is. There is really no way to choose "A" news source. You have to pick several with opposing narratives.
I agree with that, but you need credible news sources. Breitbart exists at the very fringe of being considered "news".
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I choose many news sources, from different global areas and different political agendas.
But the alternative is a flood of 'news' I cannot tolerate. It's been at least 40 years, maybe 44, since the 'mainstream media' has been anything close to fair or honest. They have favored one political ideology over the other since then, for whatever reason, and both the intensity and breadth of that favoritism has only increased over time, so that now I see an overwhelming amount of 'news' favoring that one ideology, and only Internet blogs, activist group outlets, and a very free (one?) mass media outlet offering even minimal amounts of information fairly presented, not slanted against the other ideology.
I cannot easily stomach anything from the Washington Bleep, both because it is predictably slanted, and they paywall mercilessly - so I have been stripping off feeds that reference that recently, unwilling to read 1.5 paragraphs and get the 'pay up' message. They can get their money elsewhere.
The Times and a variety of former print behemoths similarly, I just can't justify the time to get more of the same bias. I want more.
And I avoid as best I can the outlets that parrot each other. Bleagh.
This morning,though, hitting my aggregator/reader page, I saw AdBlocker nailed 696 ad instances. On one page. Really? It reads up 16 sites, only 9 of which are active. I need a new page. One of the news sites I hit gave me 86 ads for opening the home page. thanks, boyz. /. only gave me 30-something. Oh, 31.
SO I really have a hard time finding reliable, honest news sites. Even the ones that come close end up publishing self-aggrandizing articles of no value regularly, and some repeat the news over and over (Wired, I'm lookin at ya), hoping I'll open it a month later. I know they need the clicks cause they finally priced me out of the paper version last winter, and my collection ended then. No one cares about having every issue of anything Wired any more. And I was getting their web articles before they could get me the paper in the mail. I still can read everything, and now it's for free ish.
Since I'm a political radical, I won't offer any specific sites. You can figure those out. But the popular stuff is a wasteland, and has been for a long time. I can now only read it for hilarity.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It wasn't what Trump said. The entire media narrative about polls and his chances of getting elected should have clued you in that the rest of "professional journalism" went the way of Fox News.
I love this narrative that since they incorrectly predicted the results of a poll about a single topic, they are therefore wrong about everything ever.
Nice that you love it, but you're wrong about it being the narrative. You glossed over the bit about "When have journalists ever NOT botched a story you had any independent knowledge of." If you've been paying attention, you should have noticed that this has been going on for a very long time. You should be asking yourself a very simple question: if the news organizations are consistently wrong every time they report on a subject about which I actually know the truth, why should I take them at face value on subjects about which I don't know the truth?
I haven't bothered reading CSM for years.
Have they changed their policy with regards to health related news? Or are they still virulently anti-science on that subject?
Reading something called the Christian Science Monitor for health related news makes as much sense as reading the Catholic Herald for abortion advice.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you are a working person with a family and a mortgage and a car payment, you aren't reading ANY of those news sources. You're lucky if you can find 30 minutes to watch the late show.
More and more of us are in this position as the economy favors some and shits on others. We struggle to survive and when we can't find income we are too worried to pay attention to world affairs. Juggling multiple jobs, trying to keep expenses low, eating bad food, sleeping poorly and not having enthusiasm for good exercise cuts into our quality news exposure. So we vote for Trump and hope he will improve our situation.
In my case, I'm retired and have the luxury, for the first time in my life, to be fairly well informed.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Exactly why I don't take any news org that hires Christiane Amanpour seriously.
... of Real News are: PBS NewsHour and The Economist magazine. Period. Everything else is a sad mash of pop-culture, controversy-whoring and mindless blather.
I'm sure the Catholic Church had a FAQ explaining that they don't condone molesting children at one point, too. That doesn't mean shit. You can't trust a Christian, EVER. Even if they are one of the few with genuinely good intentions, they are already too far gone and corrupted to be taken seriously. These people suffer from a rather debilitating mental disorder that allows them to completely disassociate from reality. That is not an acceptable trait when it comes to a news organization.
As a non-American I never look to US based news sources, it's all biased one way or another and full of editorial or advertising posing as news. Actual news reporting is dead in America.
I wish I had a lawn.
... and then again on Thursday.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I find that most if not all news in the US is falls under 2 or 3 world views. What is on the left, right, and center. People have a tendency to read sites that share their world view. The big debate with President Trump, right now, is what is actually fake news versus real news. You may think that its easy to spot but not everyone shares your world view. If you are a liberal, you will probably watch CNN or read the NY Times. If you are conservative you will probably watch Fox News or read the Wall Street Journal. Either way you will accuse the other of being less reliable or fake. The best alternative is to take a collection of news sites from around the world and periodically read stories from the viewpoints of people in that region.
I know that in the Middle East, for example, Al Jazeera is considered reliable while people in Egypt find CNN's coverage laughable. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle between all these extremes. I make it a habit of reading stories on CNN, Fox News, Washington Times, France 5, BBC, Al Jazeera, Xinhua (Chinese State Media), RT (Russia Today) among many others. Some are state sponsored and some are independent. By studying and reading what others think you learn the facts of the stories but you also learn how others interpret that knowledge and what the bigger picture is. It will also make you more rounded as a result.
I don't see that kind of behavior from CNN.
Except when they're cheerleading for more war
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I get most of my leads from Google News (which leans towards the left) and the Drudge Report (obviously right wing). I like the overall coverage that I see that way.
If you're too incompetent too many times, I ignore you.
If you're too biased too many times, I ignore you.
If you're too lightweight in your choice of stories, I ignore you.
If you're too Orwellian in your choice of words or structure of sentences, I ignore you.
Whoever is left after all that,I pay attention to.
Pretty slim pickings, of late.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
When Google Reader died off ( https://www.google.com/reader/ ) I built my own snews.eu where I added Slashodt and other news aggregators. When there is something interesting I follow the links and that way I find other sources. I add them to my aggregator and when crappy articles start popping up I remove them... Takes time to build the portfolio that suits you but then you are rewarded with great articles every day.
Now I don't add news sources that often but time to time somebody posts on Slashdot or elsewhere some really interesting source...
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.