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I would be willing to pay an amount for better quality news than what can be found for free, however news outlets always seem to lean one way. I want somebody t
by ferros 6y ago
I would be willing to pay an amount for better quality news than what can be found for free, however news outlets always seem to lean one way. I want somebody to just report and not tilt it in one direction.
- actuator 6y agoI think it is incredibly hard to not tilt one way. After all, organisations are run by humans and we all have our own leanings. It is very much possible when we hire people those leanings bias us towards a certain ideology and we may hire like minded individuals. Also, people who don't fit the ideological tilt might feel left out and may leave on their own. So, over time a media organisation will come to represent one side more. This all in addition to the biases that can come from the owners/company bankrolling the media house.
- ferros 6y agoAgreed. Even if you get past the first layer, which is to create something that sells. You’re still left with organisational biases. Then after that personal reporter biases. It would take a large conscious effort to get past all of these.
- ivanjovanovic 6y agoOne reasonable way to deal with that would be to subscribe to several sources which lean in different directions and then explore the situation from various angles.
- fredley 6y agoPay for quality, but understand the tilt. If you really want to, pay for two services with opposing tilts, but equal (high) quality.
- iso1631 6y agoIn the UK I subscribe to "The Week", which covers stories by reporting what different newspapers report. You don't get much in depth, but you do get a good cross-section of how stories are reported, and you get to remove headlines which is the source of 96% of the world's troubles.
- alfiedotwtf 6y agoWow, that sounds wonderful. I hardly read Australian news, but I would subscribe to something like that for Australian News!
- iso1631 6y agoAustrailian version shut down in 2012, when it was attracting 28k issues a week. UK version does fairly well, 3rd after Private Eye and Economist. They do a junior version for I guess 8-13 year olds too which is doing well too, so that's good. Friend of mine runs a magazine aimed at people who like horses (typically well-to-do female over 35s) with c. 25,000 copies a week pre-covid. It was about 70:30 subscription. Subscription is up a little since covid, but newsstand sales are way down.
- bitwize 6y agoWhat can I say, mate? Reality has a well-known left-wing bias. So do "the better angels of our nature".
- hootbootscoot 6y agoamazing that the truth gets flagged. shame be upon the flagger. objectivity speaks :D Interestingly, both sides of the subject of an attempted "neutral" reporting will report bias against their side. It would appear that humans avoid seeing their own implicit biases. But objectively speaking: when one political party literally rejects science, facts, and logic on a given topic, you can say that reality will be biased against them. This fact is nothing to debate, but is the intention (implicit or explicit) of such a stance. Trumpkins objectively can be said to be painting the sky green rather than admit that the sky is blue. We often go to great lengths to justify our beliefs. Ask any prison psychologists about the rationalizations they have heard for various acts their patients have committed, etc. Additionally, when "decency" and "compassion" have expressly been abandoned by the global right-wing, you can call them left-wing values by default. This is akin to Trump calling anyone he doesn't agree with "far-left" but it's expressly defined by the rights expressed divergence from these values that created this "left-wing bias". Downvoters are not using their logical brains, just knee-jerk reacting from a position of political tribalism. I'm objectively correct, as I'm merely describing the SELF_EXPRESSED DELIBERATE SELF POSITIONING OF THE RIGHT WING when they portray THEMSELVES as mean ruffians. Complain some more about people taking one at ones own word whydontcha
- HPsquared 6y agoI'm not a fan of the left-right dichotomy; it's a kind of shorthand derived from historical reasons, which encourages tribalism. Even to take it at face value, 'left' and 'right' are only directions, not absolute positions. There is no objective centre.
- SenHeng 6y agoThat sounds like the 'Reality has a well known liberal bias' joke. > Colbert then mocked Bush's sinking approval ratings: > Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32 percent approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in reality. And reality has a well-known liberal bias ... Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, [...] because 32 percent means it's two-thirds empty. There's still some liquid in that glass, is my point. But I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash.[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_at_the_2006_White_House_Correspondents%27_Dinner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_at_the_2006_Wh...
- op03 6y agoI use twitter for that. Don't follow journos/news orgs. Just follow topics and saved search terms.
- rvz 6y agoOn top of that, multiple sources from social media and news organisations paints the real picture of what's really going on and exposes a particular narrative and who is omitting information. The real danger is getting your news from a single social media or news org source.
- lambdadmitry 6y agoThe FT should serve you well.
- Clomez 6y agoThis is what i have concluded too. I was in similar position where i found that what ever i read it always seemed biased. FT has been very good.
- rvz 6y agoIndeed. The FT is probably the only pay-walled source I would be happy to pay for at this point.
- evgen 6y agoIt is sad that the WSJ sold out to the Murdochs and lost their way. It used to be the case that financial papers would have an agenda on their opinion pages, but when it came to making money people needed/wanted the truth or something as close as possible to this -- the market did not care about spin and believing spin that differed from reality would cost you money. I was a decades-long subscriber to the WSJ print edition and as long as I ignored the last few pages of the first section I was a happy camper. I cannot imagine what possessed Murdoch to engage in such value-destruction, but the FT and Economist are now my go-to sources for getting news that is as low-spin as possible.
- lm28469 6y ago> I want somebody to just report and not tilt it in one direction. No one on this planet is 100% unbiased. It doesn't matter if it's free or $100 per article, it's still written by a human being with personal opinions, experiences, prejudices, &c. The easiest way to get close to the "truth", which is subjective in many cases anyways, is to read from many sources and cross check the facts between them.
- raxxorrax 6y agoEven if that kind of neutrality is not achievable it has been practiced by journalists for the longest time and they tried their best. Should we forego every trial because no judge can be impartial? The argument is lacking. That impartiality doesn't lead to economic success and sustainability for outlets is another story of course. Cross checking is required even if journalists wouldn't be as active in framing stories of course.
- armada651 6y agoThe real problem is that for-profit news reporting will always start copying the biases of its readers, because that's how you'll sell more papers to them. Only state-funded news sources are imune to that, of course they have perverse incentives of their own.
- jhanschoo 6y agoPresent day, for local news, you can still get quite close to this compared to your perceived past standard. You can get as close as you can to this ideal on world news as your perceived past standard if you limit yourself to Reuters, AFP, AP. But many find these sources unengaging since they report events as they occur and do not contextualize them in media narratives to the extent that more commonly popular news outlets do.
- kasey_junk 6y agoNeutrality in reporting is a relatively new concept and was brought about by the wire services so that they could have their content bought by the broadest reach of newspapers. You will still find unbiased reporting in the wire services themselves: Reuters, AP, etc. Individual news sources have almost always been biased. This is why most cities had at least 2 major newspapers until relatively recently. You could get the liberal one or the conservative one (or in some places dozens of wildly politicized papers, anarchist papers from the early 1900s are great). Consolidation has lead to a removal of voices from most local newspapers and the market has spoken when it comes to television: people prefer partisan news sources. The internet has gotten us closer to that 1900 view but then Facebook/Google became the arbiters of news for most people.
- goto11 6y ago> I want somebody to just report and not tilt it in one direction. This is unfortunately not possible. Even if an outlet only providing objective, verifiable facts there is some angle or bias in what facts you chose to report and what issues you chose to investigate.
- quietbritishjim 6y agoOne compromise is to find a news source that is at least open about its bias. The Economist is a famous example of this: it will openly declare support (and opposition) for particular political candidates and policies.
- MattGaiser 6y agoThe Economist at least seems to be good at giving its opponents space within its pages (for those of us who still subscribe to the print edition). So while they have a bias they acknowledge, it isn't a "beat them into submission" type of bias.
- chrisweekly 6y ago"Transparency is the new objectivity."
- FranzFerdiNaN 6y agoWhat is unbiased? If you were a late 18th century french reporter writing a report about the death of king Louis XVI, would you write "King Louis was murdered", "King Louis was executed", "former king Louis executed by means of guillotine for high treason", "citizen Louis Capet beheaded on the order of the National Convention" or something else? All of those descriptions can be considered true and yet none are unbiased.
- tremon 6y agoWhat's the bias you see in the statements "King Louis was executed" or "former king Louis executed by means of guillotine for high treason"? Both the terms "execution" and "high treason" are objective descriptions takens from the proceedings.
- brongondwana 6y agoSure, but that assumes legitimacy of the proceedings, which "was murdered" does not.
- corty 6y agoNo? Treason is in the eye of the revolutionary judge. The trial was never a fair one, the outcome was clear from the start. And from an unfair trial and an unjust judgement you can't lawfully execute someone, you can only murder him execution-style.
- quietbritishjim 6y agoTo me, "executed for high treason" has the meaning that the person or organisation that killed him considered him to be guilty of high treason, and that they considered themselves to have the authority to decide to execute them, not that the paper with that headline necessarily agrees with either of those things. Similarly, a modern newspaper saying that someone "was executed by a gang for theft of their drugs" doesn't necessarily mean that they actually did take the drugs, that taking the drugs did constitute theft, or that the killing wasn't murder. So I think does count as objectively true.
- dvfjsdhgfv 6y agoThis could be possible some 20 years ago, maybe. But these day even if you choose to just describe bare fact, you will still be criticized for the choice of words, such as "riot". Moreover, if you describe facts in full, including some background details, you will be crticized by people shouting "How is this relevant?!"
- sul_tasto 6y agoThe FT is good, as is stratfor.com
- marmaduke 6y agoYou can aggregate across news sources, eg factr.com
- lvs 6y agoThis is called "false balance." Reality doesn't have sides.
- uoaei 6y agoThe point is not to advocate for both sides, but just to tell the part of the story that both sides use to conjure their slants.
- specialist 6y ago"Objectivity" in journalism does not mean unbiased, or The Truth. Simple recipe to follow: - Show your work. - Cite your sources. - Corroborate. - Sign your name. - Admit your mistakes. Voila, you're a journalist.
- throwanem 6y agoYou want something you can trust absolutely and not have to engage with critically at all. It's a reasonable desire, but one much more likely to be fulfilled in the realm of religious faith than that of news or any other human activity.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoReuters is pretty good (at least for US and world news; I don't know how they are for UK). AP seems to me to be fairly reasonable (not dramatically slanted one way or the other).