Seabass wrote:Well Mike, I'm glad Spearthrower was able to get through to you. There's still an elephant in the room though, and its name is RT. I understand wanting news sources that do not have a pro-West bias, but RT is definitely not the answer.
AP News, Reuters, AFP, DW News are some objective, non-biased news sources that I'd recommend. They're all Western based though. Perhaps some others might have non-West recommendations.
Do you think you would be able to let go of RT, or are you too attached to it? When I see people get attached to propaganda like RT, Fox News, Young Turks, etc., from the outside looking in, it almost looks like an addiction.
Over the last four years I've felt at times like I've become addicted to anti-Trump media. I've tried to unplug from it only to find that everyone else is also obsessed with Trump and that it is impossible to remain connected to other humans and not have someone bring him up eventually. I cannot wait for him to be out of office and out of my head...
I agree and would stress it's something we ALL need to be picky and self-aware about.
I think having a background in history really helps me out as I'm primed to look for bias in
any rendition of an event, and I find that once you are aware of the operating biases, you can read past them so you still get to hear varied sources and different (and sometimes valid) ways of approaching detailing events, and the biases themselves are informative. I typically avoid opinion pieces though (the worst in papers which allow for paid contribution style stories) unless the person really is a credible authority on the topic matter.
However, there's still the kind of reporting bias that isn't about what they say, or how they spin, but rather what they choose to report or not report... that's why I find going to multiple sources really useful. Having lived in different countries, I tend to remain interested and try to keep up with events in those countries, so I will read some of the papers from those countries which I've found to be generally credible in the past, and this is really useful because in so doing, I find that they may report events that are at best a footnote in other national/international news organisations.
I would never go to RT, Fox, Young Turks, The Daily Mail (or other British rags), or Breitbart - to name some better known ones - because their spin is practically an art form where every word is curated for most visceral effect leaving little remaining untreated facts. I'm nearly immune to social media thanks to refusing outright to partake in any form of social media at all, including any type of YT 'news' shows, and the only time I ever see it is when it's posted on a forum like this, or someone for some reason emails it to me. I will very rarely view places like CNN or the Guardian because too much of the news is coloured by opinion, and even when I share that opinion, I don't need it reinforced.
As you mentioned, anti-Trump media is frustrating as it just creates the same thing Mike_L was talking about earlier: cycles of anger and frustration. I was quite happy when Stephen Colbert fired up The Late Show as he's a very smart guy and I do like witty takes (I miss Jon Stewart), but it quickly became all about Trump, stopped being funny, and I stopped watching it.
The sources I read weekly or more are: AP News, Reuters, BBC, Al Jazeera, India Times, Haaretz, Bangkok Post, Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, Le Figaro, Washington Post & NY Times (when I can get free articles), The Hill, Politico, The Sunday Times, Forbes, The Economist, The WSJ, China Daily, and a few more national newspapers of countries I've lived in - as much to practice any language skills I may have retained as to get their news.
Many of these are biased in multiple ways, and some of them can generate a fairly large ratio of face-palms to words, but they all offer quite substantially different takes, coloured by obvious, transparent biases, while generally remaining credible and reliable, or at least expository of how a nation views the itself in the world (looking at you China Daily!).
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