Alternative sources for news and social media

[Roadrunner]

I find fair and balanced to sometimes mean there is never right or wrong and always two sides to a story. Well, sometimes there aren’t two sides of the story. Everybody always invokes Hitler and Stalin. So here you go. Imagine giving airtime to people like them to be fair and balanced? And at their time, they had plenty of apologists. 
 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Roadrunner

[Melissa Louise]

3 hours ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I know what you're getting at, but did have a bit of a giggle at using the word "old fashioned" to describe getting news from a website or email.  Or maybe I'm so old fashioned that I remember getting news at the front door in a print newspaper (and only stopped doing that relatively recently). 

We did get a print newspaper every morning when I was a kid, and I think I only stopped buying print papers maybe 15 years ago? So you're not that much more old fashioned than me 🙂

 

[Melissa Louise]

4 hours ago, historically accurate said:

OK, I like sources, so I went looking. I couldn't find this exact thing (which is quoted, so if you could provide the source, I'd appreciate it). 

I did, however, find this study, printed in 2020, that does say that by studying journalists' responses on Twitter, they found a left majority (vast majority). However, in doing the experiment, they found no substantial differences in journalist's choosing or not choosing to run a story on a campaign regardless of candidate's political party. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/14/eaay9344.full

From the study: In short, despite being dominantly liberals/Democrats, journalists do not seem to be exhibiting liberal media bias (or conservative media bias) in what they choose to cover. This null is vitally important, showing that, overall, journalists do not display political gatekeeping bias in what they choose to cover.

Yes, bias is way more of a problem in opinion and non-news 'news'. Which is a problem, because even traditionally journalistic outlets have an increasing reliance on the cheaper to produce opinion- clicks. Which are highly viral.

Bias also creeps in (to quite well known, respected legacy media) when sources of funding which buy themed coverage over a particular time period are kept from the readership.

Just about all the problems with news - the serious kind, which we previously got from newspapers - are down to the loss of advertising revenue in the wake of the internet. 

That includes loss of local papers, and a journalist-apprentice model, flattening the class diversity in journalism. 

These are all everyday topics if you speak to a journalist with more than a decades experience. 

[Reefgazer]

I trust the National Review and The Wall Street Journal; any of the others get a quick perusal to see what the crazies On neither side of the aisle I thinking.

[SlowRiver]

On 2/28/2021 at 4:50 PM, Melissa Louise said:

Yes, bias is way more of a problem in opinion and non-news 'news'. Which is a problem, because even traditionally journalistic outlets have an increasing reliance on the cheaper to produce opinion- clicks. Which are highly viral.

Bias also creeps in (to quite well known, respected legacy media) when sources of funding which buy themed coverage over a particular time period are kept from the readership.

Just about all the problems with news - the serious kind, which we previously got from newspapers - are down to the loss of advertising revenue in the wake of the internet. 

That includes loss of local papers, and a journalist-apprentice model, flattening the class diversity in journalism. 

These are all everyday topics if you speak to a journalist with more than a decades experience. 

The themed coverage issue is pernicious. A good example being The Guardian accepting money from a particular organisation to publish articles on agriculture. Even if they are identified as part of a series it amounts to lobby groups influencing content, and there is the effects also of what articles about agriculture they might reject because they don't fit what is required or because they don't need more articles on the same topic.

Something that hasn't been mentioned is that media bias along political lines may not always be the best way to understand the problem. How journalists are trained has changed significantly since the 80s. Until then journalism was a career that was open to anyone who could write and included a significant diversity of socioeconomic backgrounds among it's reporters. This is no longer the case, most journalists now have at least undergraduate degrees in journalism and often masters degrees. At a paper like the NYT the majority went to elite universities and they are an even more rarefied bunch, people who can afford to live in NYC on a pittance for several years while establishing themselves.  Strong community newspapers where many used to get their start in many cases no longer exist. 

This has really narrowed the type of person writing in the media.

One way of reading to consider, rather than just looking at different news sources, is to try and follow a variety of really good columnists from a variety of backgrounds and political persuasions.

[Pam in CT]

I differentiate between "orientation" and "bias" -- not at all the same thing. NYT and WaPo have a modest lean-left orientation in their news articles; whereas WSJ, Financial Times and The Economist have a modest lean-right orientation in their news articles. (Their opinion and editorial pages are of course different; and are clearly marked as being opinion or editorial, and in general the orientation is much sharper on those pages.) All five employ actual on-the-ground investigative reporters who actually chase down original stories; all five fact check; all five verify sources; all five scramble to corroborate one another's scoops through their own sources. All of them make errors on occasion -- they are human -- and when they do they clearly correct or retract.

I read and trust all five.  They have slight left or right orientations, sure; but the way I use the language at least none of them are "biased."  Confronted with a story that does not align ideologically with the orientation -- Cuomo's sexual misconduct, Trump's strongarming Georgia election officials to "find the votes" to overturn the outcome -- they do not merely cover the story, they dig in furiously to find more, scoop their competitors, find corroborating sources and run with it.

I read and trust all five. You have to *pay for* all five.

 

We have come to expect and demand that we deserve to get news for free. Well, you get what you pay for.  If we are not paying for something, we are not the consumer: we are the product.  It's not a "bias" issue; it's a business model issue.

Edited March 7, 2021 by Pam in CT
reporters!!

[Melissa Louise]

5 hours ago, SlowRiver said:

The themed coverage issue is pernicious. A good example being The Guardian accepting money from a particular organisation to publish articles on agriculture. Even if they are identified as part of a series it amounts to lobby groups influencing content, and there is the effects also of what articles about agriculture they might reject because they don't fit what is required or because they don't need more articles on the same topic.

Something that hasn't been mentioned is that media bias along political lines may not always be the best way to understand the problem. How journalists are trained has changed significantly since the 80s. Until then journalism was a career that was open to anyone who could write and included a significant diversity of socioeconomic backgrounds among it's reporters. This is no longer the case, most journalists now have at least undergraduate degrees in journalism and often masters degrees. At a paper like the NYT the majority went to elite universities and they are an even more rarefied bunch, people who can afford to live in NYC on a pittance for several years while establishing themselves.  Strong community newspapers where many used to get their start in many cases no longer exist. 

This has really narrowed the type of person writing in the media.

One way of reading to consider, rather than just looking at different news sources, is to try and follow a variety of really good columnists from a variety of backgrounds and political persuasions.

Having just read what happened to the NYT's award winning health journalist, I'd say the class issue is well and truly rearing its ugly head, despite polite readership looking the other way. 

The Guardian is a mess. It's still free local news coverage for me and supplements the national broadcaster but it's not the paper it was (I used to support them financially but stopped after some correspondence on the matter of paid-content from lobbyists).