credible sources?

[redblack]

hey, there, west side neighbors.

i was just wondering which news and information sources other WSB posters consider credible when posting, reading, or responding in these fora. furthermore, by what criteria do you set that standard?

my highest standards are funding sources and commercialism; objectivity; and accuracy. the latter standards always seem to be inversely proportional to the amount of money thrown at a given news or information outlet.

for example, i was just looking at factcheck.org and politifact.com. both have transparent funding sources and neither one seems politically bent. there’s also minimal obtrusive or obnoxious advertising.

(kudos to WSB, there.)

there’s also c-span, which seems dead-center objective, and is funded by everyone who subscribes to cable or satellite tee vee – to the tune of $.01 per month per subscriber. cheap! but also pretty tech-savvy.

thoughts?

and do the sites i’ve named seem partisan to you? if so, why?

• This topic was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by redblack.

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[WSB]

One of my fellow Poynter Institute Sensemaking Fellows in 2009/2010 was Angie D. Holan, editor of Politifact, who’s been with it since it launched in 2007:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/staff/

Our group of fellows – assembled by invitation, not application! – was an eclectic group, not all in media.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/05/prweb3967624.htm

Anyway, I remember Angie as a very ethical, sharp person, talking about her then-nascent work.

Overall, opinion/advocacy is more in style in news media than ever these days, which saddens me as I believe this industry should do less of it, not more of it. I don’t believe that news organizations have any business endorsing, reviewing, opining. Our opinions matter not one whit more than yours, and the time it takes for someone even to write editorials/endorsements/etc. should be spent on more diving into the facts. Which I’m going back to!

-TR

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[JTB]

It’s very much like healthcare; unless you have the interest, education or experience to assess the volume of input, you’re susceptible to being misinformed or misled. Perhaps the biggest problem facing liberal democracies is that people have ceded power to the political class without retaining accountability. I believe the greatest prerequisite is a critical faculty so that even when you are dealing with material beyond your expertise you have reliable resources to help you sort through the information. Sadly, we are at a point where people largely want easy solutions to complex problems and are disinclined to do the admittedly tedious work of sorting through it themselves or scrutinize the assessment of the experts to whom they turn. My sense is that absent a real political revolution, one in which people are engaged in finding solutions rather than simply inflamed or enraged and turning to demagogues, we’re in for difficult times.

Some of the sources I use for political news and analysis:
NYTimes
WSB
Talking Points Memo.com
Nakedcapitalism.com
HuffingtonPost.com (leads to articles in multiple sources as well as opinion writers)
Arts and Letters Daily, aldaily.com (Mulitiple essays, articles and book reviews
BBC.com

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by JTB.

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