Which media is real? Who do you trust?

[mikester]

Seriously, I see banter on this board back and forth regarding any number of topics and it seems that noboy believes anyone else's news sources.

So...

Who do you believe?

I tend to look at as many news sources as possible but honestly it all looks like it comes from the Associated Press.

I get my sources for information discredited by republicans all the time...So...where do you find non partisan honesty? Is there such a thing?

[dd74]

BBC.

[mikester]

I record the BBC World news on a daily basis and I use them as one of my news sources.

They are more objective than the american news media. Though, I still see a lot of the same story with the same info.

[tabs]

I like to watch Charlie Rose on PBS...he gets the principles to be interviewed on his show..so your getting info right from the horses mouth or a$$ as it maybe...However Charlie himself leans left, and sometimes is a bit limited in his understanding of some things.

I can understand your point of view and how and why it works...sometimes he doesn't get it.


Otherwise I believe ALL the media is tainted, some with a Political agenda. But the over riding thing is they don't want to upset the apple cart. The media is either dumb or they won't show you the grisely truth, because it would scare the begeezus outa you. As I have said it before the American people are the fatted calf, and their job is spend their money and consume.

I also know that the truth basically gets out...whether it's the internet, newsspaper or TV. But U have to listen carefully, cause alot of stuff is only said once and disappears.

I generally like the BBC for a different perspective...but am going to review their political agenda and weigh it out....some of our Right Wingers forget everybody is not infatuated with America and has their own perspective on issues that doesn't coincide with our view of ourselves. That doesn't necessarily mean they are Liberals... Like the Bull when he see red he attacks..

Liberals like the collective effort....so a imagine a Picasso done by commitee...independent thinking is frowned upon by Liberals...it's all the hive Baby..someone is to do the thinking for you...you just drone on..

[CamB]

NZ papers (mix of AP, Reuters, Independent (Left wing, UK), Guardian (middle, UK) and Telegraph (righter than right, UK)

[djmcmath]

I'd love to find a source of information that could be regarded as truth. In college, I found the nytimes to be an excellent newspaper -- full of details and good conversation bits -- but I routinely read now about how the information is made up. For a while I thought the CIA could provide useful world information -- now they're accused of basically making up the Iraq/WMD thing. Someone posted a link to a Marine at Abu Ghraib, but his word can't be trusted because he's too deeply embroiled in the situation, and any information that he may get clearly comes from the right-wing conspiracists. Matt Drudge, though he may have some facts, is clearly so far biased as to be nearly unusable. Haaretz is obviously a Jewish newspaper, so while they may not make anything up, there's probably some political agenda which biases what they do and do not report. Washington Post? You may as well read the Pravda. The big three are clearly so far left that I can't trust them.

I'd be amazed if this board could come up with anything like a consensus on the topic. In the meantime, I'm going to go on reading what seems to make a coherent picture of the world.


Dan

[tabs]

You just need to read TABBY thats all....

[MFAFF]

Cam,


Independent is centrist....the Guardian is the Left Wing one....
Daily Telegraph is the Daily Torygraph....

[island911]

I just need to read TABBY thats all....

[ZAMIRZ]

I'll just say one thing; Fox news, fair and balanced MY A$$, MY F***ING A$$. I don't "believe" any news source, but gather information from all kinds of different sources including newspapers like the L.A. Times, magazines, the BBC, USA Today online, etc.

[Overpaid Slacker]

I'm not a fan of the Beeb. Many of the sources I consult frequently either debunk the Beeb or will just cull a litany of anti-US screed from BBC News. Not that everyone has to love the US, certainly, but the editorial policies at the Beeb make the NY Times (aka American Izvestia) look like FoxNews.

I think "fair and balanced" is an overstatement, but Fox (esp. their feature personalities) do make much more of an effort than most other "news" sources to have opposing viewpoints on. OK, maybe they get shellacked, but they've got their 5 minutes to deliver their spiel. Equal time (and equal caliber of opposition) is virtually unknown for the Right in our mainstream media. More often than not, IMHO, I could shellack the lefty spiel and the lefty spiel deliverer at least as well as the Fox host. The Fox hosts tend to get very "State Departmenty" when they've got a guy cornered.

If you guys want to visit a site a few times over the next couple of weeks, try www.mediaresearchcenter.com. It's been frequently pilloried as "Right Wing", largely b/c it doesn't allow our by-and-large liberal (or liberal sympathetic) media to get away with their reindeer games w/o someone calling Bull$hit. I don't think that makes it Right Wing, so to speak (any more than recounting Kerry's innumerable on-the-record flip-flops is "smear") but b/c it's taking certain liars on the Left to task, that's the monniker it's been given.

JP

[fintstone]

When the NY Post runs articles on the Iraq prison scandal on the front page 28 days in a row and the LA Times does it 26 of 28..But barely cover a beheaded american or WMDs found...That tells me that these papers are far too biased to trust as a source of news unless you can verify the info. elsewhere.

[350HP930]

Originally posted by CamB
NZ papers (mix of AP, Reuters, Independent (Left wing, UK), Guardian (middle, UK) and Telegraph (righter than right, UK)

Sounds a lot like my list if I don't count a few of my favorite blogs.

As much as OS may prefer to stoke his bias paranoia with the right wing Media Research Center I much prefer Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting for my media analysis.

http://fair.org/

[dd74]

Smoke signals. Can't go wrong with those...

[campbellcj]

It's all biased one way or the other. I think one has to scan various different sources and meld them into some sort of composite picture to figure out what's really going on...

I do like many of the pieces PBS Frontline has put together.

[techweenie]

There's some really extreme stuff on the web like

911inquiry.org

Propagandamatrix.com

Abovetopsecret.com

and one I found tonight: prisonplanet.tv. They had this:

Terrorists on Ashcroft's 'Wanted List' Already in Jail

May 27 2004

At least two of the terrorists identified by John Ashcroft as part of an 'Al-Qaeda cell' that is waiting to attack America this summer are already in jail.

A respected website that holds databases on terror suspects lists Amer El-Maati as 'incarcerated'.

Likewise, Aafia Siddiqui, a female former MIT student, was arrested in Pakistan over a year ago, according to NBC.

The 'cell' that these individuals are said to belong to doesn't even exist. The Abu Hafs al Masri group was described by the Boston Globe as a 'phantom organization'. Their researchers could find no evidence that the group was real.

Each time a new terror threat is announced or a terror suspect is 'captured,' we discover that they have either already been arrested or they have been dead for a year or more.

Furthermore, New York City and Los Angeles officials told Reuters that they had not been informed by the government of any terror threat, despite the fact that people like Ashcroft and Ridge are all over the media fearmongering about the inevitability of an attack before the election.

[Superman]

Conservatives are going to call your sources 'tainted' unless they are slanted right, so just give up on trying to satisfy them. I rarely watch or listen to news. I prefer to read it. Newspapers tend to be far less opinionated (except of course, the Op/Ed page), although the Spokane newspaper I used to read when I lived there was certainly laughable (consistently in the top ten of conservative newspapers nationally). Still, there is far greater detail in written news, and you can sift/discard until you reduce the story to the facts.

[island911]

Originally posted by Superman
Conservatives are going to call your sources 'tainted' unless they are slanted right, so just give up on trying to satisfy them. I rarely watch or listen to news. I prefer to read it. Newspapers tend to be far less opinionated . .

C'mon, it's all 'tainted'. . . .Drudge, Fox, CNN, ABC, AP . .. .
Don't go and try to spin "non- slanted right" as somehow neutral. People are responsible for what get put out as "news". People will put out what they think will be interesting, or compelling. . .. .all based on their opinion.

There is no one netural news source. If a conservative tells you "ya know, CNN has a liberal agenda" they are telling you the direction of the 'taint' and for you to use some critical thinking.

[pwd72s]

All sources of food for thought are tainted with the seasoning of political propaganda...That's a semi-quote. I forget who said it, but it makes sense to me.