Ask Slashdot: How Do You Choose a News Source? (csmonitor.com) 275
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?
i do not choose (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i do not choose (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed.
Take the union of fox news and CNN.
The result is the news.
Sometimes the result is the empty set.
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Take the union of fox news and CNN. The result is the news. Sometimes the result is the empty set.
So, it's more of an intersection than a union.
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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.
We all live in an operant conditioning chamber
:)
An operant conditioning chamber
An operant conditioning chamber
An operant conditioning chamber
We all live in an operant conditioning chamber
An operant conditioning chamber
An operant conditioning chamber
An operant conditioning chamber
Is that you mean by "turtle"?
I would suggest... (Score:5, Insightful)
...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.
Re:I would suggest... (Score:5, Insightful)
Watching TV news is a horrible use of time. TV news has negative value -- if you consume it, your life will be worse than if you don't. And your net knowledge of the world ("net" meaning information - misinformation) may go down.
Re:I would suggest... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agree to this and parent.
I monitor online newspapers in the US, Canada, Australia, UK. I visit NPR, as well.
TV is dangerous.
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Disagree by a long shot in the UK - TV news such as BBC, ITV, Channel 4 are far, far superior to print media here.
We were dependent on them to break the Jimmy Savile scandal where print media absolutely failed for example.
Print media in the UK is an absolute farce. There's barely a single publication that's worth the paper it's written on - even the more moderate papers like The Guardian and The Independent spout some incredible shit sometimes.
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Watching TV news is a horrible use of time. TV news has negative value -- if you consume it, your life will be worse than if you don't. And your net knowledge of the world ("net" meaning information - misinformation) may go down.
I generally agree with this, but there are certain things that can be conveyed much more clearly through television, such as body language, tone of voice, sarcasm, among others. These can help you make judgment calls about a person's credibility.
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These can help you make judgment calls about a person's credibility.
I can't imagine caring enough about someone's credibility one way or the other for it to be worthwhile. Do you have an example of when this judgement was needed?
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I can't imagine caring enough about someone's credibility one way or the other for it to be worthwhile. Do you have an example of when this judgement was needed?
Credibility is everything. And body language and delivery conveys credibility.
Example? Just about every stirring speech.
- It's one thing to read "I have a dream speech". It's another to listen to it, and it's yet another to watch it.
- Obama's careful and thoughtful delivery of his policy, conveys that he understands it.
- Trump's emotional delivery conveys that he understands the "common man".
- It's why people are called into court to testify, rather than relying on a written statement.
I'll add that
Re: I would suggest... (Score:4, Insightful)
Witnesses are not called in to court to be viewed, they are called in to be cross-examined.
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It's one thing to read "I have a dream speech". It's another to listen to it, and it's yet another to watch it.
Too bad he told black folks to all vote for one party. If they split it up more, black folks would have 2 parties trying to appeal to them in different ways to get their votes. Versus now, where they have one answer, and the D party spends it's time trying to scare them into voting, while the R party tries to scare others into voting the other way.
Obama's careful and thoughtful delivery of his policy, conveys that he understands it.
"If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. Period."
Trump's emotional delivery conveys that he understands the "common man".
I'm sure he will tell "the common man" it's the other side's fault when he fail
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How about local TV news? (Score:2)
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I'd much rather people watched a 15 minute BBC bulletin than nothing at all... In fact the BBC used to do a 60 second summary on BBC 3, which while shallow was actually pretty informative and reached a lot of people who would otherwise pay no attention.
Wall street journal (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Wall street journal (Score:5, Interesting)
As I wrote elsewhere here, I used to be a WSJ fan, until Rupert Murdoch bought them up. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12... [nytimes.com]
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.
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...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.
And if you like those, try TYT on YouTube instead of MSNBC. Basically anything with Cenk is pretty decent.
Re:I would suggest... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, with Al Jazeera you're ahead of the game.
Al Jazeera was founded by BBC reporters, with the Sultan of Qatar paying the bills. The Sultan was pretty tolerant of controversial coverage, but he did have limits.
So Al Jazeera has good western-style journalism, with fact-checking and getting all sides. They have lots of interviews with pro-Israel sources, for example.
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I noticed in their recent coverage a massive anti-Kurdish bias; basically following the Ankara line.
But I notice this because I have some Kurdish acquaintances online, so the dictum that you need multiple sources remains true.
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Yet despite of that, they sometimes manage to have far more comprehensive facts and analysis than anyone else. They pay proper attention to some stories that Anglo-American media gloss over.
if you're discounting any source, you're just demonstrating what part of your personal political bias you don't want challenged.
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Re: I would suggest... (Score:2)
I came to say this. I read the Telegraph and Guardian and - like you say - split the difference.
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For the benefit of our foreign readers, a quick overview of British newspapers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I do a cross correlation of news sources and routinely and regularly adjust news sources. Some sources are particular unreliable at this time, all US main stream media and all UK main stream media and I generally ignore them. A headline grab through some of the others RT etc. and any particular story I have an interest in, I'll search and pick up a couple of sources. Comparing those sources, writing style, external sources, links, can generate a general change in news sources, for a time, it is now a consta
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That's how I do it, too. On the net, I'm checking BBC, Al Jazeera, the Washington Post, Nytimes, local German news site tagesschau.de, and sometimes also obvious crap like CNN, Fox "News", and RT. Taken in combination, these provide a fairly good picture of what's going on. If I'm interested in a particular news story that seems fishy to me, I sometimes Google more information for my own fact checking, which involves encyclopedia articles, statistics from scientific sites and scientific articles but may als
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Taking whatever Fox News and The Daily Mail say and assuming the exact opposite works just as well, and is usually more entertaining.
Simple... I ask "What would Jesus choose?" (Score:3, Funny)
Then I watch Fox News because Jesus hates Muslims too.
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Let the flame wars begin!!!!
One must graze in the field.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:One must graze in the field.... (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Exactly. I am not at all conservative and like watching Fox News occasionally for the lols. Even conservative talk radio. Rush made me laugh harder than any stand up comic with
I don't understand how pollution is even possible. It comes from the earth, and goes back to the earth.
Re:One must graze in the field.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup. I have a folder in my bookmarks - it has a bunch of wide-ranging sources, "professional" and "amateur", libertarian to socialist. I right-click, "Open All in New Window" and go through each one, closing each tab with a new angle.
Being informed is hard work, unfortunately.
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At the moment much of journalism has lost it's value.
Compared to when? Since the election, reporters seem to have started to grow up and take initiative.
The white house press corps has always been used to spread propaganda from the white house. There would be tough questions, sure, but the responses would be at most "uh, uh, uh, uh, lemme get back to you on that next question." It was never "crap, you win, we were being evil there." With the current administration, I think plenty of people are realizing real answers aren't being given in the press room. P
Read whatever (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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Daily Mail seems OK.
Very funny.
Not sure if serious? (Score:2)
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 tra
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Avoid news sources with editors who (Score:5, Insightful)
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]
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You forgot "The top [x] [subject] ...."
Non-profit news (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Non-profit news (Score:4, Interesting)
The CSM is an excellent news source. Despite the name it is a secular news source that does good investigative reporting. I pay for this as well as a few other news sources which I believe do real journalism such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic and NPR. The Wall Street Journal is also good, though I strongly disagree with much of their commentary.
The obvious choice? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: The obvious choice? (Score:2, Funny)
The Onion - America's Finest News Source.
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Reading at -1 for the full, uncensored fact feed!
Bit of CNN (Score:2)
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
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"there's the BBC if I want something more or less objective"
You're making "more or less" do quite a lot of work there. The BBC has an official policy of providing balanced coverage, but being a state-run organisation has a natural bias in favour of state-run organisations. It is also almost entirely staffed by metropolitan liberals, whose personal political viewpoints colour a lot of their coverage. (Note: this is a bias not a conscious agenda. I know several BBC employees and they are all well-meaning and genuinely think they're being neutral; but they shudder at t
Re: Bit of CNN (Score:2)
It could be that trump and brexit are objectively bad.
Choose them all (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: Choose them all (Score:2, Insightful)
Lots of people in these comments are falling for the golden mean fallacy. The truth is not the middle ground between opposing reports. Consider how easily you can be manipulated by having a bad actor merely spout out the opposite of whatever it is they don't want getting out.
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By all are you including sources like Breitbart and Infowars? I mean you did say "all" or is there a limit to "all"?
Actually I would include them. Reading something from Infowars and automatically thinking the opposite will likely get you closer to reality than most news sites will.
variety of news sources (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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The same thing just happened to me. I saw this [youtube.com] on CNN, so I looked for it on Fox and couldn't find it.
the caravan moves on (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:the caravan moves on (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
BBC (Score:3)
If they have a slant it isn't really greased by the same powers here.
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If they have a slant it isn't really greased by the same powers here.
Except for the wars where the British follow the American lead. But, yes, I think the BBC is generally a good source. When looking for a news source that is relatively unbiased on a particular issue (the best you can reasonably get), look for someone who doesn't have a strong reason to care about the outcome. Thus, foreign media can provide impartiality (if not detail) on domestic news. International news is trickier since the US has it's fingers in so many pots.
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If they have a slant it isn't really greased by the same powers here.
The BBC is good because lefties think that it's right leaning and righties think its left leaning. If it keeps the two extremes confused, they're doing it right.
The BBC has one issue where the UK govt has neutered their ability to report of some things the UK govt does, it hasn't turned them into a mouthpeice like Russia Today. I prefer the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) because they've fought governments in Australia who've tried to gag the media (most recently the Abbott government) and they
Idealogical Turing Test (Score:2)
Can you pass an Idealogical Turing Test [wikipedia.org]? Seek out news sources that promote the idealogical side that you are less versed in.
HAVE A GOOD BS FILTER (Score:2)
Only one source! (Score:5, Funny)
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>
Look at the news from several sides (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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Choose? (Score:2)
Choose? There is no Choose. Only read or read-not.
There is no such thing as news (Score:2)
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 governm
Re: There is no such thing as news (Score:2)
I don't follow ONE source (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll miss (Score:2)
I'll miss the hearing-aid ads.
The rise of fake news and echo chambers (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Dirty Laundry (Score:2)
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
Does it give all sides? (Score:5, Informative)
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... [nytimes.com]
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.... [bartleby.com] 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... [pulitzer.org] 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... [nytimes.com] .
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
Answer the question (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
These are some of my desiderata (Score:2)
- 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 substitute for using your head (Score:2)
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 [youtube.com]. 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 indepe
I choose many news sources (Score:2)
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
post Post processing (Score:2)
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
CSM isn't behind a paywall (Score:2)
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 [csmonitor.com] 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 artic
If they allow a comments section (Score:2)
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.
Full RSS Feed (Score:3)
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.
I have given up (Score:2)
They have all gone to hell.
No news is good news (Score:2)
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 co
Some general priciples that come in useful (Score:2)
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 o
ABC Australia (Score:2)
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 o
Re: (Score:2)
Just one source? (Score:2)
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 comp
i choose them all... (Score:2)
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.
WTF? (Score:2)
Where's the CowboyNeal option?
People just pick by pre-conceptions (Score:2)
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
Re: Most news is corrupt and sold out (Score:2, Funny)
Nice choices. :)
To answer TFA's question:
I don't, I come here to talk about last week's news
Re: Most news is corrupt and sold out (Score:5, Funny)
Last week's news hasn't got here yet.
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Last week's news [wikipedia.org] didn't show up this week. It'll get here on Sunday.
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... and then again on Thursday.
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I'm not a THC fan. I'll get drunk with you though. I'm a friendly drunk, not a violent one.
Re:Mod +5 funny. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [rollingstone.com] 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".
Re:Sorry, Drudge (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yea, they do have a tendency to ignore the mostly left slanted news. A new business model for them would be for them to have a Drudge Right and a Drudge Left. Somewhere in between should be the answer everyone is looking to find.
Re:Poor example publication choice (Score:5, Interesting)
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/... [wikipedia.org]