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?
...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.
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..."
Slashdot. News for Nerds. Stuff that matters!
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.
As I wrote elsewhere here, I used to be a WSJ fan, until Rupert Murdoch bought them up. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12...
Ironically, their greatest coverge was about the WSJ takeover attempt itself. During the Murdoch takeover, they had stories every day giving the background and details of Murdoch's journalism career, and the Bancroft family. They did it with their usual freedom to write about anything they thought was important, even if it meant airing the family secrets of the publishers.
It turned out that the reason why the WSJ was such a great newspaper was that the Bancroft family had a commitment to great journalism. It was quite profitable and they were willing to accept those profits. The next generation of Bancrofts weren't willing to accept those profits. After I read that series, I understood for the first time how a newspaper works. (Basically, rich publishers do whatever they want. If they want great journalism, they can get it.)
They also exposed Murdoch as an unethical, criminal scumbag. The worst thing he did was to agree to censor news of human rights violations in China, in return for getting his cable networks into China. They also catalogued the promises that he made and broke, in case anybody believed his promises to preserve the WSJ's editorial independence.
The WSJ didn't submit either of those series to the Pulitzer Prize competition.
You can't really blame the companies either. Real journalism requires an investment of both time and money that sensationalist bullshit doesn't, and on top of that important stories aren't always amenable to clickbaity titles.
That means real journalism both costs more and generates less (advertising) revenue. Alternative sources have to be found if they intend to keep operating while retaining some modicum of journalistic integrity.
I mean in a sense you can blame the companies for not changing their business model to "unverified partisan rants" like Breitbart, but that doesn't really help us get real news and while it may be financially good for any particular news outlet, it would be a significant detriment to the world as a whole and really shouldn't be something we encourage.
The only other option is to convince people to be critical of what they read/hear/see but that has continually proven itself an impossible task. Most people are happy living in their comfort zone and really don't want to leave, especially if it takes extra effort to do so.
Unfortunately this puts us in a worst-of-both-worlds situation: Doing the best thing journalistically is somewhat mutually exclusive with doing the best thing financially.
I don't know if paywalling is the solution to this dilemma or not. I suspect it won't be, if for no other reason than because most people won't want to (or more likely just can't afford to) subscribe to more than one or two news services and end up in just a different kind of bubble. But at least they're trying to do something beyond just selling out and, at least for a little longer, the world can retain a few outlets that attempt to peddle real (and verified) news rather than just partisan rants.
Last week's news hasn't got here yet.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."