What media outlets do you trust?
 

I think media literacy and determining reliability in sources is getting harder even for educated people so I’m wondering who do you trust?

Also, I thought it might be interesting to discuss news articles, not on how we feel about the news but rather how we feel about how this news was presented. Bias, clickbait, echo-chamber, disguised advertising, and so on.

Same with studies, journals, data from government sources - anything

And what does subjective and objective even mean. Is it better if the mirage of objectivity is destroyed and the bias is laid bare? Any of that.

Well, I don't trust most of them. However, BBC World, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg and The Associated Press will generally give me up to date info without undue editorializing. John Hopkins website for Covid-19 numbers. NewYork1 (Spectrum cable channel) for local developments.

And I still listen to the radio. Brian Lehrer talk show, M-F mornings on WNYC (FM) for local stuff and an admittedly progressive slant of national news. Various other radio talk shows (including sports nonsense) up and down the dial. AM radio remains rife with reactionary/"conservative" talk (not discussion, I don't care what they claim) so, other than the Mets or a random gospel show I steer clear. I can remember when listening to AM radio was cool. But I digress.

The New York Times is little more than fodder (even the weekly "Book Review"). The Wall Street Journal almost always seems to beat them to developing events. For national papers I guess The Washington Post is the go to sheet (imo).

Oh, and Smart News, which is almost exclusively local pulp (which has a utility if you want a clue about your homicidal neighbor) I keep on my backup cell. Dip into that every now and then.

Ever see the movie, Roshomon? It's like that with every story, unfortunately. Discernment's in the reading, not the dissemination. Know what I mean? :)

Honestly if I just feel like the source is a human being and not a grifter I'm good. Even if I don't agree withe the person or people at least I'm getting something honest.

Rashomon. Yes. And I speak Japanese (poorly) so please excuse the spelling correction. Also, as great and respected as Akira Kurosawa is, the short story its based on, In a Grove, by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa is even more essential as a work of art and ranks near the top of all the short stories I’ve ever read.

I know what you mean.

Fox News, Newsmax, OAN...

Define “grifter” because I wonder who tf isn’t sometimes

Commentary aside. If they’re reporting a basic event I think it’s fair to assume it really happened.

Someone who I feel isn't giving an honest opinion and is putting on a performance for cash money. Obviously that's subjective but I don't think it's as hard to figure out as it's made to be.

Honestly just moving through the world and talking to people I think the human race is largely incompetent at recognizing grifters and I don't ****ing know why cause it often isn't as hard as people make it. I think it's more that people don't want to accept that civilization is built so closely and profoundly around grifters that people mold their expectations to ignore the obvious to maintain their sanity cause if they saw what was obvious it would be supremely disheartening and demand immediate revolution

The Guardian, obvs. The Washington Post seems to be their U.S. equivalent but The Guardian is the one I read on a daily basis. I don't watch TV so written media and the internet is my source of news.

I also read newspapers from Malaysia (live here), Croatia (from there) and Spain (hubby is from there and plan to live there one day), and in all three cases choose the more liberal, progressive papers.

Hardly. These are (were) the people who constantly pushed Trump's fantasy of voter fraud and basically licked his arse until suddenly they lost the taste and had to rejoin the real world. I wouldn't trust a thing they say. ****s. Just because they're no longer an arm of the Trump Fake News Network, just because he's got even more insane, dangerous, right-right-right-leaning networks to spout his nonsense on now does not make Fox suddenly a trusted news source. They're just a slightly lesser evil now, but still evil.

I suppose a concrete example of what I'm talking about was my late teens/early 20s when I was a full blown libertarian conservative talk radio boor who liked Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, etc. Even then when I was a rabid liberal hater who hung onto their every word I could recognize that these people were exaggerating claims, faking emotional investment, and banging the drum for ratings. It was simply obvious because of how they failed to carry on as actual human beings. I just made excuses why it was okay and correct because it was in service to what I already agreed with. But it still wasn't hard to see the grift.

I know they’re evil but like if Fox News reports there was a shooting at Walmart I take it at face value.

ok

I think of a grifter as someone who wants to **** me out of my money which is basically everyone you’ll ever meet minus about five people

Pardon, but I mostly tune in to this network to see what the popular reactionary spin about the headlines are. Fox News is admittedly an entertainment/opinion channel that ‘adjusts’ facts to suit its message. Good for weather. Otherwise, useless.

:) Knew there was something wrong with the spelling when I typed it (writing is 50% good editing). Thanks. Can you imagine being a copy editor for Fox News? It'd be creative (in theory)! :p:

I take AP and Reuters with a smaller grain of salt than most outlets. Above outlets, I view videos that don't have clear edits as trustworthy but not definitive. There's a bit of a catch-22 where full context is necessary to better understand these videos, but people don't start recording until the situation is halfway played out and if they do it's fishy. Any "true" context that we get is based on testimony that's retroactively influenced by how things panned out.

The best thing the layperson can do is to trace stories to their origin point to see what the real substance is before becoming too dogmatic about what the reporting on the event says. Doing that with every story takes an unrealistic amount of time and when we do research news, it's often painted by the confirmation bias of skepticism or need for validation that made us research the news in the first place.

Idk, it seems impossible to navigate.

I agree with OH that Fox's straight reporting is just as reliable/unreliable as standard reporting btw.

I mean yeah but there's pretty obvious personality traits to recognize even if you can't point to any actual money transactions.

I know what you mean bat

It tickled me to read you went through a right wing stage.

It was short and embryonic and I didn't have a single idea of what I was on about and going through military school and living through physical autocracy really put all my ideas on a short trip to realizing that I just despised hierarchy. I think hating hierarchy is the center of everything I feel about politics. Like "**** you why on earth should I have to listen to you?" should be the litmus test all hierarchy should have to pass .

Church

I think Orwell Ministry of truth is more relevant than ever.

One of the central points in Manufacturing Consent was that journalists primarily use official government press releases and insider access that they’re spoon fed for good behavior making it easy af for most journalists who work for media outlets whose primary purpose is to sell advertising and be complicit in capitalism and never step out of that paradigm or they’d be fired from CNN or the NYTimes or whoever they work for. Even war correspondents just ride around with our military.

That’s one reason I think the US has the most brainwashed population on earth. We are constantly bombarded by the most effective longtime propaganda machine on earth and unlike China and North Korea where compliance is fear based Americans genuinely can’t see through it. Challenging the literally earth destroying status quo doesn’t even occur to Americans, even deep into their most private thoughts.

Church.

Yet peeps defend FOX News. Am I missin sumthin?

By peeps do you mean me?

I believe he's challenging your assertion that Americans are brainwashed by pointing out the political division in the country.

Just because you hate each other doesn’t mean you’re that different.

Catholics Protestants
Sunni Shiites
Democrats Republicans
Hutu Tutsi
Auburn Alabama
Crips Bloods

Not you, specifically. Anyone who follows an outlet that readily admits it's entertainment yet claims to be informed with that as their primary source of information has issues; especially when they see the complicit capitalist paradigm (as you point out) yet keep watching it. Sorta makes them complicit, too, yes?

That's some vague **** that sounds like it has a hidden gotcha embedded.

Are you calling me an ******* or not? I follow stories on regular media outlets. I just keep it in mind what they’re really there for.

Communists, Fascists

Black people cops

^well they both have a reputation for killing black men

https://media2.giphy.com/media/Xnhrfkfiawumk/source.gif

I’m pretty sure non police back men are up about 1000 for every 1 in that contest