| Apr 1, 2007 @ 6:02 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news
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acslim
Posts: 372
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i'm just curious -- what do you think is a good source for unbiased news? A lot of people when debating stuff are always challenging where u get your facts from. I'm assuming every thing you see on TV is slanted garbage. So that leaves what ?? Newspapers? Websites? Word-of-mouth? WHat? ( I assume before they invented media people got their news at the town tavern. Heck that's still my main source  )
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| Apr 1, 2007 @ 8:41 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news |
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Martin666
Posts: 2,142
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Source of unbiased news?
That's a great question, one of the best I've ever heard asked on the forums...
I think getting unbiased news is more a process than simply going to an "unbiased" news site and reading whats there, because I don't think such a site exists. Anything that shows up as news in a public forum of some type has gone through a series of editorial filters already just to get there. After all, if 10,000,000 things happen in the US each day, news is only going to select a handful of them to air. Filters are applied.
Once things get selected for publication, they can be spun to varying degrees, either consciously or unconsciously depending on the reporters conscious agenda or the reporters inability to understand they have an unconscious agenda.
To sort all this out requires effort and a plan to keep from being a "news victim."
Maybe a few suggestion:
1) Get as close as possible to the actual event. So if Fox News is reporting that Sen. Tommy Higginbottom came out today and said that President Smith was a knucklehead, go online to various places and either view a video or get an exact transcript of what the good Senator said, and examine the various contexts within which he said it. Go straight to the horses mouth...
2) Read from multiple sources. This is inescapable. A person will never understand an issue if they depend for their news from only one or two sources from the same country. Identify at least twenty, and read them everyday even if you have to get up an hour earlier than usual or stay up later. This is probably the single most important thing a person can do.
3) Read across the entire political spectrum. Don't just chose sources that support your existing political beliefs. Force yourself outside your comfort zone. Left, right, middle...
4) Discount the far ends. You may want to listen or read what the far, far right and left is saying, but no reasonable person could allow them to set the tone for a worldview. Both are by definition biased against reality. Things are almost never as extreme as they say.
5) Identify or question the slant before reading the first word of an article. Does one of the participants have a dog in the fight? For example: a traffic accident involves Driver A, Driver B, and an uninvolved witness who just happened to be standing nearby but who saw the whole thing. Driver A Blames the wreck on Driver B, and Drive B blames it on Driver A--but both have a dog in the fight and aren't really expected to be impartial. But the witness, with no connection to either driver and nothing to win or lose by the outcome of the investigation, has the greater ability to relate events impartially to the cops.
6) All understanding is temporary. There's no such thing as permanent knowledge. What is known today is proven wrong tomorrow, or is recontextualized so much that the meaning changes. It's almost never "here's what happend..." but rather "here's what's happening now..." Hang onto understandings of issues as if they were hot potatoes--if you hold it too long, you get burned.
7) Know the difference between news and commentary "John hit Joe with a bat" is news. "This is another example of our failed school systems" is commentarial spin to that news. If a statement describes what happened, it's news. If it describes why something happened, it's commentary.
8) Universities sometimes have objective info. Universities can sometimes function as impartial witnesses in certain types of car accidents. For example, Product Manufacturer A has a dispute with Consumer Watchdog B. The manufacturer says they have a great product. The watchdog says the product causes cancer. A university or other scientific group can do an "objective" study to determine which is the more accurate claim. Disclaimer: all knowledge is temporary, not all universities are objective, and there's probably no such thing as definitive truth.
9) People adopt their own world view as a function of personal morality. Each news consumer brings an existing world view to the process, and at the seat of that world view is a set of moral values. A worldview that says: "The US should instantly retaliate against it's enemies and kill them all" is ultimately a moral statement about how that person views life. Morality--or that set of statements about what is good and what is bad for us to do personally-- helps drive worldview.
A news consumers responsibility is to take "objective" news and spin it in such a way that their response is morally compassionate: to take a dry fact and make it morally relevant. Otherwise, the simple collection of "unbiased" news is purposeless without such spinning. Compassion is at the heart of moral values. A person who's only response to a world crisis is to "nuke 'em all" is morally adrift.
Or at least, that's the way I spin it.... :)
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| Apr 1, 2007 @ 8:47 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news
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12knots
Posts: 6,400
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BBC has the healthiest reputation of being most unbiased although it doesn't mean it isn't.
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| Apr 1, 2007 @ 9:17 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news |
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eastham
Posts: 6,317
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Yes the BBC is very good.
To add the numbers10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 to Martin's post...
10. Be very wary of news reports which use other news reports as one of their sources. In the "good old days," reporters were required to have 3 sources for their news stories. If you read and watch the news carefully enough, you will pick up that a news report is just using other news sources and not doing their own work. Now I'm not talking about a local newspaper in Vermont printing an AP wire story about a fire in Colorado, I'm talking about CNN and Fox feeding off of one another.
11. Learn the editorial policy of your local newspaper. My mother's daily paper, once a Pulitzer Prize winner -- in the 1930's and it's still on their masthead -- routinely puts commentary throughout the paper. As they have few of their own reporters and they buy lots of commentary from newswires, it is no longer located on the editorial page, but bleeds throughout the first section of the paper.
12. Take a second look at your editorial page. Is there a balance? For all of the crap flung at the New York Times and the Washington Post, both have employed staff editorial writers across the political spectrum. The conservative Washington Times does not.
13. Look at news programming with a jaundiced eye. Examine the pedigree of panelists on a talking heads show. Conservatives have done a far better job than liberals of cultivating a speakers' bureau for these shows -- Pat Buchanan, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter. None of these individuals were ever news people. Although liberals are cultivating a new generation of spokespeople, like Rachel Maddow, they are still playing catch-up. So what did these shows do? The brought on reporters to debate the conservative pundits. What this did was to reinforce the notion that the news reporters were liberals.
14. Network newsprogramming is no longer considered a public service, but a moneymaking stream for the corporation. At the end of the day, remember that the mainstream media in this country is not liberal. It's not the American Prospect or The Nation. Those publications are decidely liberal. Read them and compare them against the mainstream media. When was the last time you remember an NBC expose on nuclear power safety? You won't see it, NBC's owned by General Electric the leading manufacturer of nuclear power plants. The ratio of column inches in the so-called liberal New York Times in favor of NAFTA and opposed to amendments to free-trade agreements by so-called liberal labor and environmental groups was about 100 to 1.
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| Apr 1, 2007 @ 11:37 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news
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irish20835
Posts: 1,224
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what do you think is a good source for unbiased news? when ya find one let me know
BBC yes the favroite news source of socialist liberals around the world
that would like saying newsmax.com is fair too
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| Apr 2, 2007 @ 3:54 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news |
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stormbay
Posts: 695
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“ Where to go for unbiased news”
All previous posts have the right idea, all their suggestions make sense.
But what is unbiased. Is it getting all the information then making a decision, or getting all the information and not making a decision. Or not getting any information and making an assumption.
It's all relative, after all most public history is written by the victor or controlling ideological influence. It's only when you look deeply into any occurrence that you can get close to seeing the reality. I doubt anyone can be unbiased in obtaining news and distributing it. Everyone sees things from a different perspective, so bias is a individual fact. All you can do, is get as much different information you can and then decide without adding your emotional or ideological outlook.   
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| Apr 2, 2007 @ 4:33 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news
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MusicMonster
Posts: 2,954
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I think you have to avoid the known radicals on both right and left, get as close as you can to independent viewpoints, mix it all together, and spit out what seems to be skewed in some way, for any reason. A lot of it is a judgment call. The more diverse places you hear something, the more likely it probably is close to reality.
I believe most of the Newspapers however usually have a partisan slant one way or the other. It's imporant to weigh everything with a bit of a skeptical approach. If you read them knowing that, you can sort through much of it.
-MM 
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| Apr 2, 2007 @ 11:17 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news |
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12knots
Posts: 6,400
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EXCELLENT Post Storm
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| Apr 2, 2007 @ 4:37 PM |
Where to go for unbiased news
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Bj864
Posts: 3,110
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I find that you can oftentimes find out more about what is going on in this country if you read papers from other countries.
Some of you might not believe this, but our government (and the media) keeps a lot from its people, that you might want to know. Even the Guardian has more about some things in the U.S. than the New York Times or other large papers.
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| Apr 2, 2007 @ 7:07 PM |
Where to go for unbiased news |
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stormbay
Posts: 695
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EXCELLENT Post Storm
Thanks 12 knots.
Some of you might not believe this, but our government (and the media) keeps a lot from its people, that you might want to know. Even the Guardian has more about some things in the U.S. than the New York Times or other large papers.
You are very close to the truth there, but I think you may find that in most countries, it happens down here in Aus a lot. Considering most main stream news outlets are owned by the same corporations, who are very closely aligned to the ruling elite, then you would expect they would censor out what they don't want people to know. Luckily we now have the internet with a wide range of ways to become informed.
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| Apr 3, 2007 @ 1:21 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news
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steveemac
Posts: 2,336
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Well, FOX News is best-or you can just listen to Rush Limbaugh, Savage Nation, or the many other similar programs on your radio or television.
Just ask Diamond Rain or MarysPlace-I'm sure they'll back me up on this.
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| Apr 4, 2007 @ 1:30 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news |
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theobono
Posts: 2,111
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I don't like the way FOX bashes anything that isn't of the conservative nature. Their Interviewers don't let their subjects speak or answer their questions unless they subscribe to the Bush administration.... but then again THIS has been a biased opinion based on my own observations 
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| Apr 4, 2007 @ 1:36 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news
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Novalite
Posts: 3,009
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Stratfor reports and impartially analizes as their job is to report and analize for business rather than political polarities.
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| Apr 4, 2007 @ 9:30 AM |
Where to go for unbiased news |
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steveemac
Posts: 2,336
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theobono-I think you missed the facetiousness of my post there...
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