Where do you get your news?
 

i did a few searches and couldn't find anything on where everyone gets there news from, so i thought i would ask?

im finding it harder almost everyday to find any news on tv that i really care about, i mean who really cares what brittany spears and lindsey lohan are doing on a daily basis? so ive been trying to find good place online for a while now and found a few places that are decent like digg and usnews. i still watch MSNBC and FOX cant really get into CNN, but i know there has to be better places around so if you know of any i would like to know.

I feel like if I hear, watch or read one more "F'ing" Brittney, Paris or Lindsey story I'm going to jump out the nearest window. I guess it's good I live in a single story home.

If Fox tilts any farther to the right I think it's possible the earth may spin completely off it's axis. It seems like there was a time they made more of an effort to be more covert. Now they openly, IMO, tilt right. MSNBC seems to be getting more liberal by the day. But after 7 yrs. of Bush and Co. I much prefer Oldbermann's spin to that of Chris Wallace. But they're both spinning, simply in different directions.

I've been watching more and more BBC and CBC (Canadian) lately. I've tried C-Span but that's kind of like watching paint dry.

BBC online is my news of choice. Firefox has a drop down button with links to their most recent news articles.

For general news services on the web try

• United Press International
• Reuters
• Associated Press International
• Breitbart.com (part of Reuters)

These are usually where the networks pick up their stories. Out of the 20 or so news items seen on TV each day, several hundred other stories come through these sources every day. TV news is targeted for audience demographics, marketshare, ad revenues, etc. Basically info-tainment.

Beyond news stories, The Drudge Report has links to several well known columnists from all political stripes.

Well said.

www.Democracynow.org
www.huffingtonpost.com/
anything Host has posted on TFP
www.ap.org
english.aljazeera.net/HomePage
online.wsj.com/

The Onion.

It's about as reliable and unbiased as most other news sources nowadays.

i read the morning newspaper, watch the morning local and world news on television, and watch the evening local and world news on television. basically it's the same stuff AP and UPI feed the internet sites. i then use my brain and my life's experiences to formulate what opinions i have on current events. i have absolutely no desire to get caught up in the o'reilly/coulter/van impe/limbaugh world of weirdos and whack-jobs...

I've tried to break my cnn.com habit, especially since it just has way too much trash on its front page .. but old habits are hard to break.

I use their rss feed. Wired Magazine Top Stories has a good rss feed too.

i read www.rawstory.com

www.digg.com and digg will take me all over the place.

I get about 90% of my news from reading articles right here. I rarely listen to the news on radio and even rarer do I watch TV. The only time I sit in front of the TV is to watch a dvd, vhs or watch a TV show that I downloaded, so I get no direct feed TV.

I also don't read print news unless there is a paper lying around, then I will generally glance at the first 3 pages or so.

I read the local paper on the bus on the way into town and I parse the Toronto papers via Google News.

I rarely watch TV news anymore, though if I do, I watch BBC World rather than Channel News Asia or CNN.

i dont regard american television as an information source--i see it more as an ideological relay, an opinion management tool that is particularly seductive and problematic because the footage broadcast gives the illusion that the infotainment you get is derived from, comments on and feeds back into a world that is coherently presented to you by way of that imagery.
but it is obvious at every point that there is NO depth to it.
there is no context---and without context, there is no meaningful information.
24/7 cable news outlets oscillate between being-reactive and providing interpretations that are about aligning the range of "acceptable" opinion with the superficiality of the content presented. this so that you can assure yourself that by reacting to a reactive medium, you are "staying informed" enough to keep you watching through the infotainment segments until the commercials come. and it is self-evident that in a commercial television context, what matters are that commercials.

say something big blows up--you know, explodes. like a building or a city block. if you want to see the hole, television can help you. if you want to understand why it happened, and if the explanation for it runs beyond "a sewage line exploded" or some such, television won't help you. and if you are trying to figure out a political action, it actively gets in the way.

american television is a joke.

this is a choice.
there's money to be made and chumps to be had.

i operate at a lag.
depending on the issue, i will cruise around within a matrix of sources.
for running infotainment,

www.guardian.co.uk
www.lemonde.fr
www.liberation.fr
www.washingtonpost.com
www.nyt.com

for deeper coverage of political questions, le monde diplomatique is quite good.
i sometimes listen to bbc
there are some other radio shows i'll check out from time to time.

beyond that, what i read is a function of what the issue at hand happens to be.
it helps to know how to research: it speeds things up.

BBC, NPR with a grain of salt in recent years, Pacifica News, U of Penn radio. TV "news" is a total loss, all show biz and advertising driven. I scan the Philadelphia Inquirer and NY Times and from all these sources I try to piece together what to believe.

I still use fark.

hey,
I found the TFP there, so it's not that bad.

I've pretty much stopped caring whats in the "news" because 99% of it is crap. 1 or 2 things may slightly interest me on my ISP's home page that i customized to block out a lot of the crap.. so unless its a natural disaster or something major like that its blocked out. I dont care what britney spears or hillary clinton did today.

oh hey.. did you hear? hillary clinton and chelsea went to the same church?! zomg!

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/
http://www.peakoil.com/forums.html
http://www.peakoilstore.com/forum/index.php
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
http://cryptogon.com/
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/
http://www.prisonplanet.com/

I do not believe everything from all these sites. But there is more there than the usual CNN,BBC news site

I read the local paper, but really is for *local* stuff only.

I watch the ABC news (http://www.abc.net.au), that would be in Australia, before you think it is that other ABC :). Government owned like the BBC in UK - fairly balanced news with a fairly distinct lack of whatever Paris Hilton is doing (though getting put in prison was still deemed newsworthy...)

I read the Sydney Morning Herald online, but I have to say I spent more time in the sport section than anywhere else (c'mon I'm an Aussie - sport IS life). http://www.smh.com.au

I do not watch television news at all anymore. I get my news from the internet: BBC & MSN chiefly. And I read The Economist when I can afford it.

I swear by this source:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/forumdisplay.php?f=38

...for true stories difficult to find anywhere else.

I avoid these sources:

www.foxnews.com
www.washingtontimes.com
www.worldnetdaily.com
www.cnsnews.com
www.newsbusters.com
www.politico.com
www.salem.cc

The Beeb for world and British news.

The Star for local Toronto and Canadian news.

Occasionally CNN for disaster reporting a la Katrina, tsunami, Operation Fuck the Middle East, etc.

on tv, local cable news. read the local papers on-line.
pretty much avoid the news. too depressing.

Interesting but expected how many pick the news sources that match their ideological flavor.

Perhaps it should be better asked, 'Where do you go to hear what you want to hear about as news' because thats what it has become.

I've gone from a news junky to a 'did we bomb anyone and did anyone bomb us today' sort of caring. Dow Up Dow Down, teaches fucking their students, doom and gloom, blah blah blah. Oddly not much has changed in my life since I gave up my news junky nature, nor the world.

Being informed is great, everyone should be informed, but there is a limit to its usefulness and obviously in some its become unhealthy, the religion they are lacking.

When I find something that interests me intellectually or has some potential direct effect on my life, I use pretty much every source available.

The mainstream American press tends be a bit vapid and lacking in detail. On any technical story you can tell the person writing has very little knowledge of the subject matter, they were told the information, wrote it down, and made mistakes along the way. The European press seems a bit more detailed, willing to give longer explanations but the bias in the European press tends to be unabashed. I focus on the UK publications as they are oddly easier to read for me. If its political and in the Guardian, its going to be a left wing slant pretty much every time, at least when I've looked, likewise if its in the Telegraph, its going to be a right wing slant. There isn't the blurring of bias we demand in the US, its right in front of you there.

As such I try to find as many sources as I can (the power of google) and I'll even go into other forums and blogs. Often you can get better insight from someones blog or a university publication, than from the 'official' news.

But the key as always is to work out what makes sense, but not be so arrogant in your interpretation that there isn't wiggle room, you weren't there after all. In my limited dealings with the press in my life, I'm always amazed on just how wrong they get most of the stories I've been a first hand witness too. I have been given little faith that this trend isn't true to the industry as a whole. Sloth, incompetence, stupidity, and getting it in on time seem to be the golden rules, and they can find an "expert" to say just about anything so you can only trust yourself. Sadly some people shouldn't trust themselves so it can get complicated. Most of those people tend to post about their opinions on the news.

So for today, I don't know anything that happened in the world outside of who won the football games, I don't know where Britiny Spears is or what crazy thing she did, I don't know what little minority girl was left to freeze to death in Chicago somewhere by her mother, I don't know about just how horrible THIS cold spell was over the last one, and I feel fine.

When I need to know I can find it all a lot faster on my own, without the wise looking male anchor, the hot looking female one, the proper minority ratios in the news room, and with the ability to sift through the bias of the editor.

I "Come here to shoot the shit."
 

I "shoot the shit" with people to get news....

Sorry, inside joke for myself. I started this new job last week and its just one catch phrase that stuck out that my boss says all the time (I thought about adopting it)

Funny enough also, there is this girl at my job that logs on to that perezhilton website... and... yeah, who does... she does... why?

I actually asked - received an answer of "I think it's hilarious" - I want to ask again today at work. As for me, I have been ready to move for the past year, sold my TV, and have watched probably a total of 10 hours of TV in 2007.... wow!

when i wantto get 'the other side' i go to www.whatreallyhappened.com

i also use www.newstrove.com as a search engine which will give you many articles from many sources about a particular story

i think its important to go and read both sides of the story. that way a balanced story wont get you leaning either way.

ive learnt from experience that going to certain sites can skew your view on how you view news.

As if there were only two sides ...but I think I know what you mean and I agrree with the concept. On important issues I like to get the extremes from the right, the left, and then a couple from the middle and piece together my own mosaic of what's up. I keep change in mind ...e.g. I'm thinking about Al Jazeera shifting from the margins to the more conservative mainstream due to pressure from the Saudis.

I read the New York Times every day. I read the online edition when I don't have access to a paper copy. I also read my local newspaper daily, and the Oregonian every couple of days. I listen to NPR when I'm in the car and at work.

As for television, I admit to enjoying Wolf Blitzer's "The Situation Room" on CNN, mostly because it's primary/caucus time.

Also, I'm really glad that "A Daily Show" and "The ColBERT Report" are on once more, haha. I missed Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
—King Solomon (1000–931 BC), Ecclesiastes 1:9-14 NIV


* * * * *

I get my news from CBC Radio 1, on the half hour from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday.

The Globe and Mail newspaper every morning. Ustwo is right that many of us seek out what we want to hear but I find the Globe has a pretty good balance of columnists.

For breaking news I'll flip around between the usual gang of TV news until I get the gist, and then wait for the Globe the next day for a more indepth exploration.

TV news in the US seems to follow a very tight order of stories:

1.) Shocking Video! (disaster, scandal, youtube etc...)
2.) Presidential election campaign footage
3.) Sensational Legal proceedings.
4.) Medical Breakthrough or Diet advice
5.) Sports
6.) Weather
8.) Funny Video. (Cute animals and or children)

EDIT: On second thought, weather usually comes before Sports.

I don't usually go searching for news. I learn about it when I see it being discussed or if it appears on my iGoogle page. It's not a big deal to me anymore... because I know I'm never going to get the full story.

I read newspapers - several of them. Local, national and community. It's amazing what I run across. I hate the internet for news because you just don't run across things like newspapers. Don't get me wrong...I think the internet is great for information when you know what you're looking for. Just not general news becasue there's to many flipping computer pages which isn't like skimming a newspaper.

I get most of my news from the internet or Time magazine (yes, I'm that kind of nerd)

drudge
breitbart
gunnewsdaily.com
topix.net
officer.com
fark

and any number of message boards I hang out on on. The best news sources usually come from the same average citizen that we all are instead of some politically connected corporate conglomerate.

ustwo: there is no objective information. anywhere. ever.

given that, you make choices about what is important--for me, the priority is more rather than less information, more rather than less context.
the more you know about the world as it is being referred to, the easier it is to control for political viewpoints.
conversely, the less information, the less context, the more information tends to be knit into political a priori--the american conservative press is full of tis sort of thing.

so i dont know: it seems to me that you can choose to move in a number of directions in terms of information gathering, but some political positions, and the information that originates from them, hamstring you more than others.

so even if you were right about political "biais", you'd still have trouble at the level of quality and amount of information--IF you rely on us conservative press outlets and major television for your infotainment.

btw i don't say this as an argument--it's more just a rationale for why some sources are more useful than others regardless of the political viewpoints of the editorial staff and maybe of the writers.

and i forgot to mention the economist.
that i read. i have no real problem with saner conservatives on this order: i just disagree about alot. but i don't mind disagreement with interpretation if the information makes it worth wading through that.

More crap is still crap, and just requires more shoveling.

I get the digest emails from BBC and NY Times every day, as well as reading my school newspaper (sure, it sucks, but they have some AP articles). I often look to CNN or BBC to stay current on some major event still in progress.

ustwo:
so what you're saying is that if you know the politics of the source or writer, everything they write is therefore worthless?

are you serious?

I also read Le Monde Diplo. This is roachboy's fault. Still, I find it gives a perspective that often contrasts sharply with most English sources.

I'll also read Reuters, BBC and The Toronto Star. As I don't turn on my television for anything other than hockey, televised sources don't really work for me. The internet fills the gap admirably.

I used to read the local paper for news close to home. Then I realized how little of it is actually meaningful. Now I don't bother.

My news interests are varied, and my sources are:

1. The local county weekly - gotta know which couples are filing for divorce, which land tracts are being traded, and which county high school football team has the best chance next year! Plus, they give a great view of the county farm report.

2. The Tennessean - for wider news, not necessarily better written or more accurate. Their Corrections sections are often a whole two columns, six inches.

3. WSJ - when I can get it.

4. Fox/CNN/MSNBC - equal quantities of both. Perhaps I'll get a more well-rounded idea from all three?

5. BBC Online - for another take.

6. Japan Times and Bangkok Post - both online: for news of places I've lived and to keep up on the goings on there.

7. International Herald Tribune - for broader Asia news.

I use google search to keep up on current crimes and trials (a big interest) and also I just love Fark. Egads, can't get enough of some of their stories!

I think you are focusing too much on my bias line (shocking if you don't know the guardian is biased but thats another topic)

ok.

and i know about the guardian, dont worry.
i was just trying to figure out what the conclusion was from your post.

i'm interested in how people sort information.
it's a kind of quirk.

Back when I was more into this, I'd go to more contrary opinion publications than those I agreed with. Only after that would I look at sources that agreed with me to see how it all 'gelled' with each other.

Claim, vrs explanation, and see which made more sense, and which claims were ignored.

Maybe I'm naiive for asking this, but don't we all view "news" through the lenses of our own world view? If we are more left leaning in our beliefs, don't we view Fox News with a bit more skepticism? Likewise if we are more right leaning, don't we view MSNBC and CNN with more of a jaded eye?

Since when did our news outlets become so biased? Are they truly biased, or are our views so deeply entrenched that we cannot see "lack of bias" if it hits us in the face?

Sorry - that's not very intellectual. But it's something I've been wondering.....

ustwo: actually i do the same thing. i read conservative press outlets--not very day, but i read them. probably for mirror images of why you do it.

this might explain the ongoing stalemates in arguments, though.
chess matches played in which it is ok to sneak behind enemy lines,so to speak. makes it easier to play if you already know before you write anything what the opponent is going to say, more or less.

Since you asked, my opinion is that the present state of affairs was launched around the time of this speech:
I think that the US news media most closely approximated the journalistic "climate" described above, during March. 2003, as the US invaded Iraq. It was a low point in journalism, and a high point in stenography, fronted as journalism....

The press, especially the white house press corps, have allowed themselves to be used as stenographers, and that should not be a liberal vs. conservative, or partisan vs. non-partisan issue:

Here is a recent distortion, and it is another example of my reacting to criticism that the press has a "liberal" bias, as if I'm hearing it from someone from another planet:

Compare what the president said to mainstream news coverage of his speech, and this was superior, "in depth" article, but it totally distorted recent fiscal history and increased debt accumulation, almost as much as the president did in his remarks in Chicago.
In depth reporting might have included the following:

The deficit is only part of the measure of mounting debt, especially using an historical comparison, as President Bush referred to. The "deficit" refers only to the difference in the amount budgeted for federal spending in each fiscal year, ending on Sept., 30. The amount of surplus social security, collected in payroll taxes each year is spent by the federal government as it is received, and is added to total US treasury debt, but it is not factored into the annual deficit, and neither are supplemental appropriations spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the fiscal year ended Sept.30, 2000 four months before Mr. Bush took office, there was no budget deficit. There were no supplemental appropriations, and only $18 billion of surplus social security collections was spent:

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPD...application=np
Fiscal year ending date: ____________________________ Total US Treasury Debt

01/21/2008 __________________________________________ $9,190,316,700,166.26 $242 billion=(new debt added in last 16 weeks)
09/30/2007 __________________________________________ $9,053,975,146,155.95 $546 billion
09/30/2006 __________________________________________ $8,506,973,899,215.23 $574 billion
09/30/2005 __________________________________________ $7,932,709,661,723.50 $553 billion
09/30/2004 __________________________________________ $7,379,052,696,330.32 $595 billion
09/30/2003 __________________________________________ $6,783,231,062,743.62 $545 billion
09/30/2002 __________________________________________ $6,228,235,965,597.16 $424 billion
09/30/2001 __________________________________________ $5,807,463,412,200.06 $133 billion (Includes May, 2001 $70 billion Bush tax rebate)
09/30/2000 __________________________________________ $5,674,178,209,886.86 $18 billion
09/30/1999 __________________________________________ $5,656,270,901,615.43

http://www.treas09/30/2000__________...ebt_histo5.htm
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/r...ebt_histo4.htm


So, if you simply listened to the president's remarks in Chicago on Jan. 7, and then read the AP "news" descritpion of the CBO data on the deficit, it would seem like a small amount, and it would not contradict the president's claims in his speech. where he also stressed the misleading assertion that his tax cuts had "increased revenue", and that making them permanent and adding even more of them, would be a responsible thing to do, because "the deficit", compared to historcial "norms", is reasonable. The facts are that, at the end of his presidency, a year from now, with luck, the total US Treasury debt that Americans owe, increasing only $18 billion between 1999 and 2000, will have increased from $5,674 billion to $9,500 billion, or $3,826 billion, in just 8 years.

If you favor tax cuts, favor making existing cuts permanent, support this president, you like the news coverage, it sounds reasonable, doesn't it? When....it's actually a debt crisis, a fiscal disaster of a presidency.


Here is another example:

My apologies - I shouldn't have asked the questions I did.

Intense1, I included examples of poor journalism by news sources which a good many pre-judge as having a "liberal bias".

The point of my examples is, that it is that there is no such thing that can be pre-judges about the reporting of the white house press corp members who work for the major "on air" networks, or who work for the Washington Post, NY Times, or for the Associated Press.

The notion of a "liberal bias" was drummed into people's perspectives, as in my first example, in the 1992 speech given by Brent Bozell III. His organization labeled the major media as "liberal", and then did "research" that tracked every instance where, in it's determination the media displayed liberal "bias". This "Op" had several effects...income for Bozell's"projects", as he was able to sell his "research" to the media and to aligned political and PR outlets.

The media reacted by moving more in a direction of operating simply as "stenos", writing or filming "he said", "she said" "news pieces", and filing them as "stories"....."reporting".

A segment of the population who were sold on the idea of "liberal media bias", turned away from suspect major news media sources for news, toward sources "filtered" with a conservative, ideological bent, an alternate, but smaller information universe, where it exists today. Brent Bozell developed his own presence in this universe, www.cnsnews.com . Drudge was an early and significant player in this transition.

What seems to be missing in these conservative niche offerings, is what Glenn Greenwald at the salon.com link in my last post, described and supported so well. The NY Times and WaPo both pay "ombudsmen", or "readers' representatives" to serve on their news staffs, and to investigate and respond to criticism of biased and inaccurate reporting. In addition, the two newspapers issue retractions,and actual apologies for failing to "ask questions",for accepting comments as fact from "unidentified senior government or military officials". They question reporters' editors in an effort to challenge them to set a higher journalistic standard for the minimum "proof" they will accept from a reporter before a quote or fact is allowed inclusion in a news piece.

The things that Greenwald described, are not about liberal or conservative reporting, they are designed to make reporting as accurate as possible.

Did you read the critique of the AP article segment, in the lower part of my last post, about the reporting on president Bush's TANG service, in the early 1970's? If you could get past the subject matter, and regard the questions that the AP reporter should have asked, as the critique pointed out, a much more accurate article, or one less equivocal, could have been crafted and distributed, as REAL reporting to AP member newspaper's readers.

This is the problem today. Basic tenets of journalism are not followed. If an article is supported by "the WHITE HOUSE SAID", then it is not reporting. I can go to whitehouse.gov each day, and retrieve that kind of PR, myself.

If we could all try to take an article apart, as the Bush TANG service articleis taken apart, it does not really matter where we seek out our news. All of us using the same criteria would lead us to all abandon the sites that offer more filtered material and opinion, than information obtained by journalists asking challenging questions, and writing with a bias towards the most consistant and plausible sources and explanations that they are sincerely able to obtain.

I picked the examples I used in my last post, because I don't find articles by ombudmen working for other news sources, and I don't find examples of journalists unfairly reporting in major news media outlets, the details of the war, the president, or the growing federal debt, in an unfavorable way.

No one at the NY Times or WaPo is reporting that paying off the national debt and reducing taxes were the two cornerstones of the president's platform in the 2000 campaign, and now he is irresponsible to continue to promote one without the other, or that the war correspondents at the NY Times have long and troubling histories of reporting what government officials tell them is happening in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

If it were not for the NY Times readers representative, and my own knowledges of "national debt", aka "US treasury debt", vs. budget deficits, news sources would have me convinced that we can have permanent tax cuts, added to new tax cuts, fight a long war, and still cut "our deficit" in half, much sooner than architects of the deficit cutting plan, predicted.

If that is the news that you want to let into your world, that may be suitable for you. You and I, though, will have nothing to discuss, because we are not on the same plain, as far as what we "know", and where and how we seek and analyze information.

But as far as I can see, nobody wanted anyone's take on which media outlet was liberal or conservative - the topic of the thread was "WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR NEWS?"

I apologise for my thread-jacking question. Please, carry on!