For me, I have relatively few pages I trust.
- www.factcheck.org : Seems to hold itself accountable with a listing of sources accompanying each article.
- news.google.com : I trust Google to be biased towards google news, but if an issue is up here, jumping to the full list of articles and reading from a variety of sources seems like a good procedure.
What biases do you recognize in media, internet or otherwise? Any recommendations? Discouragments?
I trust none of the cable news sources. CNN and FOX both have agendas, and seem to cater more and more to a specific demographic.
ReplyDeleteOf the big three, I trust NBC news the most because Tim Russert and Brian Williams seem to be able to ask tough questions without using loaded qualifiers.
ABC is good with George Stephanopolous, but my main complaint with GS is that anytime he wants to bring in a conservative viewpoint he'll just defer to George Will.
I'm sure other people will have dynamic or novel sources to bring up, but I love to comment about the established media.
I forgot PBS, very good! Nothing but straight information. It will bore you to tears with their monotonous delivery of facts. I LOVE that. Jim Lehrer gets upset whenever someone attempts to subtly put a partisan jab in (either direction).
ReplyDeleteNPR has some news programs that seem to be fairly bias free.
ReplyDeleteI agree though that getting your news from a variety of sources seems to be the best way to go. In addition to the standard U.S. sources, I also include BBC's world report, and to throw in some middle east flavor I frequent english.aljazeera.net and www.arabnews.com. The latter site can be really hit or miss on the quality of the articles, but occasionaly you get a quality article that presents a different way of thinking about an issue than we're used to. Often their main articles contain more opinion statements than I like, and most of the time their opinion articles are way out there. Scott Ritter( former UN weapons inspector) is a frequent opinion article contributor to www.arabnews.com and after reading many of his heavily anti-american musings I'm inclined to question the objectivity of the UN weapons inspections in Iraq.
Occasionally I'll even listen to the very liberally biased Pacifica Radio Network's "Democracy Now". They were covering the turmoil in East Timor a good 6 months before the mainstream media saw fit to do so.
I forgot to make my point in regards to the comments about Scott Ritter's opinion articles. There is information to be gained from news sources other than the news being presented - In this instance, the demonstration of bias from an individual in presenting their opinion has proved informative in an unintended way. To my knowledge, his articles are not syndicated in the major media outlets, so only by going to a less reputable foreign source was I exposed to them.
ReplyDeleteNPR is pretty hit-and-miss. I think All-Things-Considered seems pretty unbiased, but where I went to college, Democracy Now was on, which makes little pretention at being unbiased.
ReplyDeleteuberfreki has a good point about less reputable news sources often having greater coverage of events that are overlooked by broader media. I remember Thomas having mentioned Amy Goodman's interview with Clinton on several occasions, and having listened for a while, I find I do value their reporting.
.. which begs a different question: Is the ideal to have all unbiased news? (Obviously there is some bias in content, but assuming you could divide by subject area without bias) The argument from this and uberfreki's post seems to be that there is.
To clairify: Should the ideal be that all news sources be unbiased? Our two posts point to 'no.' How does the Daily Show fall? Comedy is almost always biased, but usually inconsistently. Is inconsistent bias better than consistancy?
ReplyDeleteTo continue my posting conversation with myself, after musing about this subject for a while on my drive home, I have come to a rather unimpressive conclusion.
ReplyDeleteNews analysis is inherently biased and it seeps into the area we think of as news reporting in the form of editing - the decision of what is news worthy. We respect and trust those news sources such as NPR or NBC or Fact Check because they are aware if this inherent bias and take steps to try to rectify or at least reduce its persuading effect on us, the listener.
Yet these sources still cannot tell us everything. In fact, some of that information is, "what is the other side thinking? What assumptions are different?" Thus, the value of seeking out other news sources.
My conclusion: all news is valuable, but it's awfully nice to have some sources that you trust to give you enough information to make your own decision. I told you it was an unimpressive.
I guess I'll stick to my NPR + Google News method.
pl,
ReplyDelete"Democracy Now" is produced by the Pacifica Radio Network, not NPR. It is fairly common for a local radio station to air programs from both networks, but they are in fact unrelated.
Aside from that, I agree with your final conclusions. I'll also add that perhaps media bias to a certain extent fosters a healthy level of suspicion. Perhaps in a world without biased media we might slack off on questioning what were told - which would make us vulnerable.