• Welcome to the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.

Where do you get your news?

steve_bank

Diabetic retinopathy and poor eyesight. Typos ...
Joined
Nov 9, 2017
Messages
16,641
Location
seattle
Basic Beliefs
secular-skeptic
I do not have a TV, so during the day I listen to a news radio station associated with a local network TV station. I also listen to public radio/NPR. Public radio is biased to the progressive side, but they do a fair amount of objective reporting and analysis with a much broader topic scope of issues than any cable outlet. For global news I listen to the BCC hour on public radio. The kind of international reporting not seen anywhere in the USA.

To me FOX, CNN, and MSNBC are equally useless and given over to ideological ranting. CNN is consumed with a daily parsing of Trump to the exclusion of other important issues.

When I am in our exercise room I will scan cable news and local TV news while I'm on the bike.
 
The Guardian, BBC and Al Jazeera, but I mostly just skim the headlines. Daily news usually isn't important or interesting.

I don't watch any TV news, and I don't read the newspapers.

steve_bank said:
Public radio is biased to the progressive side, but they do a fair amount of objective reporting and analysis with a much broader topic scope of issues than any cable outlet

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” - Stephen Colbert.
 
I subscribed to The New York Times a few years ago, and for a while would be informed by an RSS Feed and Twitter, but lately I actively avoid the news. Eventually I figured that the overwhelming number of journalists have no idea how the world actually works, and that if something was important enough to me personally I would hear about it.

If you remove yourself from how normalized reporting is, a lot of news is very strange and irrelevant - these people died, this bad thing happened, this celebrity did a thing. It's like a chaotic, smattering of facts that we've been tricked into believing is important for some reason. I even took issue with most op-eds I read in the New York Times - I don't think there is that much that's accurate, relevant, and interesting to say, that often. It's all for profit and social sharing.

Last fall I left Twitter and soon realized that I wasn't getting the latest news, as it happened, pretty much at all. It would take me a while to find out about things which was a new experience for me. And honestly I didn't feel much of a loss. It was an added benefit that I wasn't having the latest catastrophic global warming thing flashed into my brain on the hour, every hour.

So like the Simon and Garfunkel song says, 'I get all the news I need on the weather report'.
 
I don’t understand: reporting is normalized?

I know how it seems to outsiders under these horrible reign of terror that is Trump, but a free press is essential to a free and Democrats v nation. Why do you think Trump is always trying to convince that the media is fake?

Don’t get fooled by Trump!
 
I don’t understand: reporting is normalized?

I know how it seems to outsiders under these horrible reign of terror that is Trump, but a free press is essential to a free and Democrats v nation. Why do you think Trump is always trying to convince that the media is fake?

Don’t get fooled by Trump!

Originally newspapers were the only way to know about anything. If you wanted to know if the mill in the next town had shut down or not, you had to subscribe to the local newspaper. If you didn't subscribe, you wouldn't get necessary information.

Nowadays we're born into a world where we're constantly intaking enormous amounts of information every day. On TV, on the Radio, on the Internet. To an outside observer with a critical mind an overwhelming amount of that information is useless, but because we've been exposed to these formats our whole lives, it feels natural and normal to consume them. Hence normalization. We never really question why we feel it's necessary to tune into public radio every day, and hear the latest 8 random sound-bytes. That's just what the world offers us, so that's what we do.

I agree that a free press is important, but I also feel that nearly everyone does a horrible job of engaging with the free press critically, and I'd also add that the free press as it currently exists does a horrible job of informing people of anything. Yea, Trump is fucking terrible, that much is obvious, but other, more nuanced topics rarely get a proper treatment, and are usually constructed to maximize profit.
 
I just listen and watch local news stations, flicking through the networks and watch until it goes to commercial and then on to the next station.

Why do you think Trump is always trying to convince that the media is fake?

He’s mostly right on this. The MSM is pretty much nonsense. Journalism is such poor quality now. For the first time ever, I happened to tune in to Anderson Cooper last night, fucking dreadful. It’s not need, it’s propaganda I suppose.

As an example of just how bad it is at Teh Gruaniad, they are running an “exclusive” on some comments UK race commission head Tony Sewell made 30 fucking years ago.
 
Last edited:
The Guardian, BBC and Al Jazeera, but I mostly just skim the headlines. Daily news usually isn't important or interesting.

I don't watch any TV news, and I don't read the newspapers.

steve_bank said:
Public radio is biased to the progressive side, but they do a fair amount of objective reporting and analysis with a much broader topic scope of issues than any cable outlet

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” - Stephen Colbert.

And as we know Colbert has no personal agenda and is objective and balanced. Like Tucker Carlson.

People quoting celebrities' and pro athletes is abysmal. Demonstrates people are pretty much sheep.
 
The Young Turks clips on YouTube, Huffington Post, CrooksAndLiars.com, also see some links to various news from people I follow on Twitter n Facebook. Say Raw story, NPR, BBC, and links posted here of course.
 
NYT, WaPo, scanning FB for other stories.

BTW, if you sign up for NYT email reports, they drop the nag screens on their stories online.
 
In the news, a NYT editor resigned over story bias and lack of issue diversity in paper.
 
The Guardian, BBC and Al Jazeera, but I mostly just skim the headlines. Daily news usually isn't important or interesting.

I don't watch any TV news, and I don't read the newspapers.

steve_bank said:
Public radio is biased to the progressive side, but they do a fair amount of objective reporting and analysis with a much broader topic scope of issues than any cable outlet

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” - Stephen Colbert.

And as we know Colbert has no personal agenda and is objective and balanced. Like Tucker Carlson.

People quoting celebrities' and pro athletes is abysmal. Demonstrates people are pretty much sheep.

It was a joke, steve, from a comedian who was doing a parody of people like Carlson. Get a grip.
 
I watch local news in the morning, flipping between the local FOX and NBC affiliates, mostly scanning for weather and traffic, although I don't need to worry about traffic these days since I rarely leave the house. During the day I use Flipboard on my phone, which aggregates news stories from a variety of sources, and I also peruse online articles from Apple News, NYT, WaPo, and Reuters on my computer. In the evening I watch the NBC Nightly News. But of course, I get my most important news coverage from The Daily (social distancing) Show with Trevor Noah ;)

ETA: Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I occasionally tune into CNN just to remind myself why I no longer tune into CNN.
 
NPR, Washington Post, NY Times, BBC, CBC.

Cable CNN or MSNBC is really only useful for live actually breaking news. MSNBC's website sucks. CNN is better with their updating feed.
 
I do wonder, what is the main problem with journalism today? The journalist or the consumer?
Why do you think Trump is always trying to convince that the media is fake?

He’s mostly right on this. The MSM is pretty much nonsense. Journalism is such poor quality now. For the first time ever, I happened to tune in to Anderson Cooper last night, fucking dreadful. It’s not need, it’s propaganda I suppose.
Care to define "MSM"? There is cable news, there is print news, there is internet news. Saying "Journalism is such poor quality now" is actually biting way too much to chew. Cable news commentary is bad. But Cable News coverage of news isn't as bad. Newspaper coverage can vary by paper and certainly isn't in the same gutter as cable news. Yes, journalism is strained by the market with the Internet existing making distribution easy and money collection next to impossible, but to write off "MSM" is just broadbrushing without defense.

As an example of just how bad it is at Teh Gruaniad, they are running an “exclusive” on some comments UK race commission head Tony Sewell made 30 fucking years ago.
Citing British newspapers as why journalism isn't as good as it was is a very uncompelling argument, as British newspapers are worse than US cable news, and have been a long time.
 
In the news, a NYT editor resigned over story bias and lack of issue diversity in paper.

If you're referring to Bari Weiss, I'm pretty sure that she was an editorialist, not an actual reporter. There was one editor who was fired because he allowed Tom Cotten, ( I think ) to write a stupid opinion piece, and I do agree that cancel culture has become insane, but I still love the NYTimes and Wapo, to a lesser extent. Opinion pieces are just that, a person's opinion. Nobody should take them too seriously, and I have no problem with allowing people who I disagree with to write opinion pieces. But, the Times has both liberals and conservatives who write opinions.

One of the things, I like most about the Times, is that it has extensive world news, business news, as well as lots of very in-depth reporting. Plus, the Times will actually admit when a mistake has been made in its reporting.

I also read the Atlanta Journal Constitution to a lesser extent so I can keep up with what's going on in my state. Sometimes the AJC does some excellent investigations. For example, a year or two ago, they investigated the high number of doctors in the state that have sexually abused or harassed female patients.

I watch Lester Holt on NBC evening news every night just to see if anything new has happened during the day. I watch MSNBC, but that's more of a punditry than a open minded source of news. Still, it's far more accurate compared to Fox or any of the far right so called news. But, it's more like entertainment that actual news. I don't watch it in the evening.

I admit it. I'm a news junkie. I like to know what's happening all around me, which country is doing what, what are big name cooperations up to, what are the latest economic reports, who is running for certain offices, what are the numbers of COVID cases, and I even sometimes read the less serious news, like entertainment etc. I like the beautiful photos, videos that are used to support claims, science news, ( yeah I know there's a difference between scientific studies and news ) health news, etc. No reporting is perfect as no human is perfect, but imo, it doesn't get better than the NYTimes. Unfortunately, I could spend all day reading it and never finish all of the stories. I love that stories are updated all day long, as new information becomes available. Since news is online, it's never stale like it was when newspapers were published just once a day, sometimes twice a day. How will people know what's going on in the world if they don't read the news?

The fact that Trump hates the NYTimes means that he doesn't want people to learn the truth. :)
 
I get my news from The Economist, NPR or PBS, the BBC (on line) and sometimes the NYT. I prefer written news reports over spoken or visual ones.

I find the notion that MSM is useless to be a canard pushed by Trumpers and their dupes.
 
Back
Top Bottom