News Sources - Reliable Global Sources

[Rhea]

In the thread on Yemen, someone mentioned that Al Jazeera is not a reliable news source.

So what is?

Regarding Al Jazeera, I had understood that while they are not a sanitized fact machine, they are nevertheless a good way to find out without overwhelming propaganda what is happening in the middle east and also globally from a non-US perspective. That they are a good addition to a plural news source diet.

Thoughts on Al Jazeera in particular and other useful media outlets in general?

 

[steve_bank]

At least in the 90s when I actually looked at Al Jazeera I thought it was actually balanced on mid east issues.

I also looked at English language media in the region including Egypt. Egypt was actualy balanced and more like western mainstrem meda than I exected.

Israel had diverse polical voives, over here we only heard the conservative Netanyahu party line. There is dissent in the Israeli media.

Palestinian mediaas expected was full of anti Israel hate speech. I found some Nazi like anti Jew material on Iran media.

A few yereas ago Amerixns working on Russian media in the US quit over being told what to report.

It came out a few years ago FOX news affiliates around the country were being sent scripts to read on air, so we are not immune. FOX had a couple of high profile departures over content control.


During Trump CNN put out an endless stream of hearsay as fact, they have little general credibility with me. They have become propaganda like. Hyper dramatization. Heavy on self rightiuys on air personalities.

I used to watch Fareed Zakaria on CNN. He had people on without the political commentary who were experts on issues including pepole from around the word dispassionately providing analysis.

Who do you trust? Tata certainly is the age old quetion. What is truth?

The ting I leaned to do when I lichen to somenody in the news I ask myself what is his or hers agenda, what am I being sold. I am no expert but after listeng to news and analysis for a lkng time I could pick up the shadings. Tone of voice and facial expressions. Choice of wrds to describe facts.

I don't have cable and use an antenna. On digital broadcast TV I het news showsfrom France, Japan, BBC world news, and a station called NEWSY which is 24/7, A lot of soft human interest along with some analysis. NPR is clearly biased on the left but they do provide objective analysis o issues.

There is a radio show Intelligence Matters by an ex CIA guy who has people from the intelligence community providing generally apolitical analysis.

There are what I woud call more reliable sources if yiu look for them, keeping in mind we all have a bias.

REliable Sources was or is a CNN show. Some commenaotors say those people are not telling the truth, but I am.

 

[Politesse]

Media sources everywhere are compromised by an array of factors - the clear commercial value of sensational events and portrayals, state propaganda and censorship, flawed stereotypes guiding their interpretation of international events, the political sympathies of their stakeholders, lack of funding or demand for embedded local reportage, and many others. If you're looking for a major news outlet that is not compromised in these ways, you're out of luck. It does not exist. Even if it did, they would still be compelled to report on what other news outlets and political entities were claiming, thus re-introducing those same biases. I think it is more important to come to an understanding of particular sources and their biases, and if you have the time and energy to do so, look at reporting from a variety of sources.

 

[Toni]

Except----Several days ago, I did something I really never do: I looked at a TX Fox News station and learned, among other things, that according to Trump's former doctor, Biden is showing clear signs of dementia, among other tidbits. These are not things that are reported or even hinted at on any of the news outlets I consume.

I rarely--and I mean rarely--watch local news or CNN, etc. Only if expecting a major weather event, if I know that someone I know is on the news (very rare) or for CNN or other major national news outlets, if there is something very, very important going on. In fact, I've only read about Ukraine, not watched any news outlets. Last night, we did watch a tiny bit of local news and spent most of the time talking about how the newscaster appeared to be 14 years old--15, tops, and then googling enough about her to discover that she's probably 24. She doesn't look remotely close to 24. She does not look old enough to drive a car or to vote or to consume alcoholic beverages. She sounds even younger. She has a fairly impressive resume but boy does she look young enough that it was very distracting. I have zero idea what she said in her tiny, little girl voice.

As for national news outlets: I really avoid them because so much that is supposed to be news is really just political opinion. I don't care what Rachel Maddow or Chuck Todd or any of those people whose names I have not bothered to learn think about anything. I really just want the facts, the story. The rest is really just....masturbatory. A while back I thought it was important to see more conservative news....and it's way way way worse. Which I did not think was possible.



Typically, I read news (NYT, WaPo and sometimes others but those I subscribe to) or listen to NPR. Sometimes, I read Al Jazeera or an international news site.

 

[rousseau]

Books are the most reliable source for genuinely understanding global events. They just take much more money, time, and effort.

Somewhere along the line news went from a useful tool to understand your community, to a mass marketed commercial enterprise. People believe it has value but the best thing I've ever done in my life was tune it out.

I do like a splash of Al Jazeera, because the world doesn't actually revolve around Europe and it's descendants.

And I followed local news until the Ukraine war started. Then it became too depressing.

 

[Rhea]

I should clarify, for me, personally, I am asking EXCLUSIVELY about text/print materials. I want to read about things. I do not watch any news show of any kind; broadcast or internet. I find them too slow to consume. I can read 4x as fast as they can talk.


The thread was generalist, though, for any reader here or member. So many thoughts are welcome, just clarifying my personal interests.

 

[Rhea]

Books are the most reliable source for genuinely understanding global events. They just take much more money, time, and effort.

Though they suffer from being not current the moment they are written, as well as being written months before they are published. If one is looking for updates on current events. I do like to read histories, they just can’t explain today’s world efficiently.

Blogs that use history books to support their commentary are fun, though.

I do like a splash of Al Jazeera, because the world doesn't actually revolve around Europe and it's descendants.

Yes, that’s why I like to use them, also. It has a perspective, and it’s one that’s different from US-based news.

And I followed local news until the Ukraine war started. Then it became too depressing.

My local newspaper does not have much Ukkraine news at all. It’s all state and local stuff.

 

[Bomb#20]

Television is to news as bumper stickers are to philosophy. - Richard Nixon

 

[Rhea]

Television is to news as bumper stickers are to philosophy. - Richard Nixon

Agreed.

 

[rousseau]

Books are the most reliable source for genuinely understanding global events. They just take much more money, time, and effort.

Though they suffer from being not current the moment they are written, as well as being written months before they are published. If one is looking for updates on current events. I do like to read histories, they just can’t explain today’s world efficiently.

Blogs that use history books to support their commentary are fun, though.

I do like a splash of Al Jazeera, because the world doesn't actually revolve around Europe and it's descendants.

Yes, that’s why I like to use them, also. It has a perspective, and it’s one that’s different from US-based news.

And I followed local news until the Ukraine war started. Then it became too depressing.

My local newspaper does not have much Ukkraine news at all. It’s all state and local stuff.

It really depends on what you're looking for. I'd argue that it's difficult to understand any current event without knowing the history of the region deeply, and the patterns that have unfolded there over time. You can get a minute by minute analysis of what's happening today, but without the background you have no context.

A lot of 'current events' are really just ongoing blips over top of a deeper pattern. What I've seen is that most people are transfixed by the news ticker but don't really understand what's actually happening. Even many journalists.

But if you're just looking to know what's happening right now you can't really escape some level of bias. And without books it's very likely that people will fall prey to that bias, even sometimes in subtle ways.

 

[Toni]

Heather Cox Richardson is worth following. I do it on FB but there’s a substack as well. Lots of current events with ties to history—US not world

Also I follow Your Local Epidemiologist for good, fact based info on the pandemic. Also found on Facebook

 

[steve_bank]

Television is to news as bumper stickers are to philosophy. - Richard Nixon

And of course Nixon represents truth. A common bias tactic in media and politics is to quote out of context especially from the past.

The press hounded Nixon much as it hounded Trump. When he resigned Nixon said the press would no longer have Nixon around to abuse, much like Trump whined about the press.

I would nether quote Nixon nor Trump on the media.

The post resents how things get twisted and distrted in the media.

 

[steve_bank]

I should clarify, for me, personally, I am asking EXCLUSIVELY about text/print materials. I want to read about things. I do not watch any news show of any kind; broadcast or internet. I find them too slow to consume. I can read 4x as fast as they can talk.


The thread was generalist, though, for any reader here or member. So many thoughts are welcome, just clarifying my personal interests.

Read books. Even good history can bee biased in interpretation of events. I found you have to read several authors at times to get a clear picture. I read three histories of Islam.

In the 90s I would walk through a large Barnes and Noble bookstore and pick books as I walked around.

There is good information on the net but of course it is always suspect. There is always the library. I think there is access to the Library Of Congress digital archive. It is where people go to do research.

There is The Gutenberg Project. It has digitized books for which the copyright has expired. Free.

If you live near a university the bookstore is a source,

There are foreign policy journals and papers from think tanks. It depends on how deep you want to gp. I was a full time e engineer abd I had limted bandwidth, what I wanted was a general overview of politics and history deep enough that I could wade through events and reporting and make sense of it.

One of the best books I read was Diplomacy by Kissinger. You may not like him, the book gave me an overview of pre war international diplomacy and politics. It is not compressed a geat book, but it gave m a picture of how things were and geopolitics.

It made me realize how historic NATO and the EU is.

I do get fooled sometimes.

 

[Patooka]

Thoughts on Al Jazeera in particular and other useful media outlets in general?

I make a distinction between Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera International. The international part of Al Jazeera knows they have a bullseye across their back and make certain all their stories are verifiable. The Al Jazeera stories targeted to a Saudi audience for example have a slightly different tone.

As far as international news goes, DW rarely disappoints.

 

[ZiprHead]

There is The Gutenberg Project. It has digitized books for which the copyright has expired. Free.

I've read several books from there.

 

[steve_bank]

Another suggestion.

I used MIT Open Courseware for technical things, but they have a humanities department. I image oter major schools have similar online resources. You can look at the texts used for classes.

The are reading assignments, course notes, and classroom video.

This is one on the mid east history.

Readings and Videos | The Middle East in the 20th Century | History | MIT OpenCourseWare

This section provides citations and links to the course textbooks, and to the readings and videos assigned for each week of the course.

ocw.mit.edu

UCLA

Search MOOC Free Online Courses, Video Courses and Lesssons

Free video lectures, free Online courses, Video Tutorials, University Courses, Youtube, Lecture notes, School Video Training, assignments, Classes, IIT, MIT, Stanford, yale, NPTEL

freevideolectures.com

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Also I follow Your Local Epidemiologist for good, fact based info on the pandemic. Also found on Facebook

Yup, she is good. You can get her Substack newsletters for free.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Thoughts on Al Jazeera in particular and other useful media outlets in general?

Al Jazeera Media Network - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Al Jazeera (Arabic: الجزيرة, romanized: al-jazīrah, IPA: [æl (d)ʒæˈziːrɐ], literally "The Peninsula", referring to the Qatar Peninsula in context)[3] is the state-owned Arabic-language international radio broadcaster of Qatar.

Back when they were independent they were quite good.

For the most part I consider the BBC good, but as with all large media outlets they'll lean far towards the Muslims on any Muslim-Israel issue. (A matter of eyeballs, and anybody that wants to report from areas controlled by the jihadists had better toe the party line pretty close.)

 

[Ruth Harris]

I am pretty old school when it comes to news. I also prefer print media. My primary source for world news is AP. They may not be the quickest to report, but usually when you read something there it is the truth with very little spin.

I do also read the NYT, Washington Post, and various other sources I find on Google News. I have read Al Jazeera on occasion but not a big fan of most of their reporting.

Ruth