After the news coverage about the US action in Venezuala I realised how many news outlets that I thought were reasonably impartial are actually influenced by the "official" line rather than investigative journalism.
Does anyone have recommendations on a news source which does not have any strong political affiliation or is influenced by outside forces?
Thanks.
I think we should encourage critical thinking about everything, not just news organisations.
None, they're all biased in some way shape or form. That doesn't stop me reading them to get an idea of what the people who write them think. The trick is to read things with a critical eye and always be asking what I was taught as the 5 W's When was this written? Where was it written? Why was it written? Who wrote it? Who did they write it for?
The trick is to be also critical of news you agree with because it's very easy to believe something you want to be true.
Yeah… That makes sense. Maybe replace that with Reuters, then?
I'm another one in favour of the BBC & the Guardian for news. I sometimes read the Byline Times which is very good for investigative journalism and have a subscription to Private Eye (their podcast, "Page 94", is also very good). Bellingcat and Snopes can be good for debunking misinformation as well. Much of the UK press is quite right wing, it's always funny reading the BBC section on the papers to see how they're spinning things. I wouldn't rely on unregulated sites like AAV or The Canary, they're quite imbalanced I think. Oh, and I wouldn't touch GB News with a bargepole.
News and 'trust' are two words that for me are hard to put together. I usually keep an eye on BBC, Sky, Guardian, LBC & Private eye. Its about finding balance for me but ultimately the more you read the more depressing everything becomes, sadly.
Fox tends to get unhinged with how far they go to make something that's obviously bad seem like it's good. Smh
"Trust" is probably a bit far.
Someone made a good point to me once that the BBC isn't funded by advertising and such, so they're not going to be cutting off their own revenue stream by reporting on something negatively. I'm not sure how it works for things like BBC worldwide, but I'm still fairly confident they would be less biased by such things than other news outlets as a result of the funding model. It's also why I'm happy to pay the TV license. It's not much per year to make sure that stays available and free for everyone in the country.
The thing that affects even the BBC though I think is a lot of things come down click through now. BBC headlines and summaries seem better, but I've still seen clickbait titles from them sometimes. Fewer and fewer people are paying TV licenses so the BBC has to do what they can to stay relevant, and convince people to keep paying the license. It also feels like they selectively enable comments depending how controversial a topic might be. Unfortunately clickbait and controversial content driving interaction keeps people on or coming back to sites.
It would be great to have more investigative journalism, but those articles take a lot of time (and as a result, money).
I think at the momemt the best thing to do is be aware of how biases and such can affect things, and try keep an open mind. Veritasium has an excellent video on youtube adout clickbait titles.
a news source which does not have any strong political affiliation or is influenced by outside forces
I'm not sure how there could be one - any news source will be influenced by whoever owns/controls it and everyone has different political and social views and agendas.
I no longer view any news - too depressing.
The Times
i find the times quite right leaning in its bias (probably due to the reader base) but it is good for non politcal content.
Forbes I had not looked at but the bias seems minimal so I'm going to look deeper into this.
Thanks for the suggestions
I trust BBC
For me the turning point with the BBC was the way they handled the Jimmy Saville case - so much covering up and deflecting over a long, long period. I know a few actors from the same era who told me that the knowledge of what Saville was doing was widespread but he was making them too much positive coverage for them to want it to stop.
This sentiment seems common when you dig deeper into the stories yet the new outlet was heavily controlled on the subject until it was too far out of their control and they had to admit defeat.
Not nearly enough people were prosecuted as a result of the finding about this in my opinion.
You also see lots of lesser bias in other areas such as the Middle East, politics and the police - I can read between the lines with most of this but it has left me with little trust in the BBC for properly impartial reporting.
The Guardian has left wing bias - the way they cover political issues will show this. At the moment the Conservative party is a shambles so there is little need to flog them - they do it themselves. With the other right wing parties it is a little harder to tell because of the extremist elements in these parties. It can be like shooting fish in a barrel.
All the media has bias from what I have seen depending on who owns them, their customer base and their corporate affiliations.
I think the Associated Press may be one of the better ones but they are still slightly left leaning. This may be more due to the slightly liberal nature of journalists in general however.
I trust BBC, Newsnight, Guardian, also recently taken to ITV news as they are not as stuffy as BBC.
I used to be a i reader but stopped due to the coverage of disability benefits which seemed more like the Daily Mail than the i. I subscribed to The New world magazine instead. I do read The Guardian as well as The Canary and Private Eye have some fine journalism.
Aah to be sure, to be sure!
factual information rather than sensationalist hype
Very Irish then to be sure!
I watch RTÉ too but missed putting it in my post. They report factual information rather than sensationalist hype. Its international news coverage reports on important issues that the BBC and ITV omit.
I use bbc with a pinch of salt, but just saw my husband looking at RTÉ, and they have coverage and analysis of Venezuela, but not read it myself.
