objective news sources

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   Freeway Flyerposted 14 years ago

   Where do you turn for news that you consider to be objective? Or do you prefer getting news from sources that share your political ideology?

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      superwagsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      The BBC - the best in terms of non-biased reporting. Though I may be biased. hmmmm....

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         ryankettposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Rubbish, the BBC have got worse and worse.
         
         For example, their refusal to publish or broadcast the Gaza aid telephone number which led to this dispute with Tony Benn:
         
         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E21MdXe3BOQ
         
         The BBC will buckle to any sustained government pressure, in fear of having their budget cut.
         
         In this particular scenario the BBC director general Mark Thompson (still in that position) was a little too pally with the Israeli government.
         
         His wife is Jane Blumberg, a zionist. His father-in-law is Baruch Samuel Blumberg, a zionist.
         
         There are numerous examples of a distinct lack of BBC impartiality.

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            superwagsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Yeah but it's all relative. CNN and BBC are probably the two most respected around the world. The BBC can afford to be impartial because it doesn't have sponsors to please...

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               EmpressFelicityposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               It does have a sponsor - the government.  And being "respected" doesn't necessarily make you right!  Galileo wasn't respected by the Church for his heliocentric views.  But he was right and the Church wasn't.
               
               I too think the BBC is far from unbiased - as I mentioned in another thread, it's very biased in favour of the EU, for example.
               
               Personal story: in late 2002/early 2003 during the build-up to the Iraq war, my other half and I found that we could no longer bear to watch the BBC news because it was so skewed in favour of Tony Blair and his call to war.  Between ourselves, we renamed it the Blair's Buddies' Channel (I would insert a laughing smiley here but it's actually not funny at all )

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                  superwagsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  Then who'd you watch/listen to instead? All news is going to be skewed, but by and large the government doesn't have much sway over the BBC.
                  
                  I just think it's kind of fashionable to criticise the BBC for being sponsored by the govt, when I think it increases its objectivity and other news agencies are far less objective.
                  
                  I mean, look at the evening news from the four other main broadcasters in the UK; Channel 4 has (I think) a noticable left-wing bias, ITN is for thick people, Sky is probably 90% bollocks and definately right-leaning and Channel 5 don't show news in any recognisable meaning of the word.

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                     EmpressFelicityposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                     That's the trouble - I don't know who to go to for real, unbiased news.  So what I've ended up doing is taking bits and pieces of news from all over the place, including the BBC and Channel 4 (left wing as they indeed are), as well as occasionally dipping into the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph!  To provide a third, "outside the British box" viewpoint I occasionally visit sites like lewrockwell.com.  But I sprinkle all of them with a massive dose of metaphorical salt.

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                        superwagsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                        I take the majority of the news synopsis from the Beeb, then if I'm interested in a particular story then I'll take a closer look via the guardian or CNN etc. (I'd take it from the Times too if you didn't have to pay for content now!) It never pays to take all your info from one news source.
                        
                        I'm not sure whther the Mail ever has a view point worth reading about! I hate to sound like a snob, but the tabloids are just opinion peices for the most part.
                        
                        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI

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                           EmpressFelicityposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                           I dunno, occasionally the Mail isn't too bad even though it does parody itself at times, as your video shows
                           
                           But I think that anyone who believes that the mainstream media (of whatever stripe) is going to serve up the whole, unbiased story then they're deluding themselves.
                           
                           The article below is called Where Egos Dare, and is about Noam Chomsky's encounter with the BBC's Andrew Marr.
                           
                           http://www.medialens.org/articles/the_a … omsky.html
                           
                           Now, I know that Chomsky has his own left-wing bias (which I don't buy into personally), but IMO he's spot on about how the mainstream media has almost brainwashed itself.  And that applies across the board, from the Daily Mail to Channel 4.

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                              superwagsposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                              Yeah, I largely agree with that article (Though Chomsky gets on my nerves quite a bit). You're right, you just need to be fully aware that you're not reading a purely objective piece whenever you read anything. There's always a degree of bias. Some of this bias is open and ridiculous, as in the Mail or Fox News, some is more subtle in the case of the BBC.
                              
                              I guess the point I was making with regards to the OP was that the BBC could be considered unbiased in the context of other news sources to a large degree. If the mass media has managed to position itself that it reports things with a bias by default, then that's unfortunate, but also fairly obvious.
                              
                              You just need to look at how some news stories are completely absent from the news because they are considered of lesser importance to observe this skew. Look at Timor, the horrific and ongoing violence in Northern Nigeria, the simmering ethnic tensios in south Sudan and DR Congo and the civil war that the Ivory Coast is almost certain to be embroiled in within the next couple of weeks. Then compare to the amount of coverage that the middle east gets!

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      tony0724posted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I like BBC news alot. They don't have a dog in the hunt so to speak so I know I will get the truth.

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   habeeposted 14 years ago

   I think CNN is probably the most fair. Also, I read/watch news from many different sources and try to discover the truth by doing so, which is sometimes a difficult task! lol

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      KFlippinposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      CNN in times of high troubles across the globe is definitely the station to tune in to, they have a huge staff of folks to get where they need to be, and the political bias seems to be tossed out the door in times of real troubles.
      
      But, in my opinion, when global events are quiet and they need to fill time, they are grotesquely and clearly USA liberal at the end of the day.  I am heartily sick of Candy Crowley (sp?) pussy interviews with liberals, and as well other CNN anchor persons.  But then I am also sick of O'Reilly, and booted even tiny amounts of fast forwarded Beck out of my world months and months and months ago, and wish some broadcast would just show me Dennis Miller highlights!

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   knolyourselfposted 14 years ago

   The truth is my political ideology, where for the most part it can only be gotten on the web, about twelve to two dozen websites that I have ever discovered. One learns the truth by a consistency of facts over a period of years from different sources and from to some extent real experience.

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      Freeway Flyerposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      It's kind of a chicken or the egg problem. Does your ideology lead you to certain news sources, or do the news sources shape your ideology?

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   marketingskepticposted 14 years ago

   I like BBC the best. If it's print media, I usually go with the NYT since they're pretty objective.

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      KFlippinposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Did you just say the NYT's was objective???????????????????
      
      I just do not see them as objective, nor even reliable reporters of the news anymore, as they will not report what they are not forced to by world events, by clear reader demand, such as an earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  The NYT is clearly and irrefutably liberal in their treatment of the news of the USA, IMO.

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         marketingskepticposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Well, the most objective in the US, I guess? What do you usually read?

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   wormdoposted 14 years ago

   I don't believe they're entirely objective, but I turn to the BBC for most issues. I find them more reliable than most American news sources.

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