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Ah no! If you want good, thoughtful news I suggest the Atlantic or the New Yorker (society, culture, politics), Talking Points Memo (politics only), or Propub
by mediaobserver45 8y ago
Ah no!
If you want good, thoughtful news I suggest the Atlantic or the New Yorker (society, culture, politics), Talking Points Memo (politics only), or Propublica (no breaking news, just investigative). All of those four are controlled by journalists and have a more slow-news, news analysis focus. Add a local newspaper, just not one that is owned by a hedge fund or rightwing billionaire.
If you want to listen to audio, there are a lot of great podcasts, many from the above publications. (People in the rigthwing media bubble will complain that the above four pubs are liberal, but frankly: reality has a liberal bias in 2019, and all the above are truth-first, and thus VERY different from rightwing pubs like WSJ, Fox, Daily Caller, etc.)
As for NPR: it is really a terrible example of our current 'both sides', conservative-influenced media. NPR sounds fair, but the NPR news production is strongly controlled by its individual member stations. Because of that station control, NPR is highly susceptible to whining from the right, and so they end up presenting "both sides" of many issues, even when only one is true. It's sad. (Example: NPR refused to use the word "lie" to refer to DJT's statements even as late as Dec 2016, when the NYT had come out with a usage of "lie" to great hoopla in Oct/Nov 2016). The NYT is better than NPR, except for NYT politics coverage: don't read its politics coverage and if you can, skip its headlines. For some reason NYT editors and politics reporters are strong believers in the both sides, fact-second religion.
- _bxg1 8y agoI've found NPR to usually present "no sides", which exactly what I want. Simply facts. Minimal analysis or hypotheticals. Just, "X happened." The "both sides" mentality presumes a conflict, and implies that the content either lives in the sphere of opinion or includes "alternate facts". I've no interest in it from my news source. I do end up finding myself on The Atlantic fairly often through links. It has some good opinion pieces, but I don't really think of it as "news" so much. Or at least, not the stuff that I've read.
- killjoywashere 8y agoThe funding for NPR says a lot. I suspect if you asked them in confidence, the staff would be fairly liberal, but the GOP hasn't defunded them because they realize the threat of defunding is more valuable than actual defunding.
- lifthrasiir 8y agoPresenting only facts is not same to having no sides, as the media can always control whether to present some facts or not. If you don't want to be manipulated by news, simply do not read news. By subscribing to the news stream you should constantly evaluate the possibility being manipulated.
- krastanov 8y agoI appreciate your insight and I even agree on most of it, but the imperative (even bossy) tone of your comment feels offputting to me.
- arkades 8y agoAs regards propublica: I’ve a great deal of experience in the healthcare field. Their recent series of work on healthcare has been amazing and amazingly bad: they’ve chased down data, analyzed it thoroughly, and apparently not bothered to speak to actual experts in the field to contextualize that data. Particularly where that would interfere with their agenda. The result is, as they say, noise and fury signifying nothing. In honor of the gell-man effect, I couldn’t in good conscience use them as a source for a field I’m not an expert in.
- myself248 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect AHA! Thank you for giving a name to a phenomenon I've talked about for years!