The American news media is a joke so I hardly watch any of it on TV and try desparately to aviod reading American mainstream news online as well. I pretty much rely on most of my news gathering through BBCnews.com/americas. Where do you guys go for informative news without scare tactics and Britney Spears updates? Does anyone out there actually still get a newspaper?
news.google.com
digg.com
Google news does tend to sugar coat things a little, but they get the meat of the story, and I havent experienced Digg yet, but im going to now
Fox news and Yahoo news. (i expect some very negative comments to follow now)
You people forgot about --->
http://www.chess.com/news
I struggle to watch Fox because they are so hypocritical (IMHO). They claim to be fair and balanced but in the end they are just one of the few news sources that give the other end of the liberal / conservative spectrum. I guess you could argue that they are trying to balance an overly liberal TV media by being overly conservative. Speaking for myself, I don't want liberal or conservative news coverage, I just want news coverage. But in the end, my problem with the American news media really isn't because of a network's biast liberal or conservative coverage. My problem is that everything is sensationalized and genuine news stories don't get covered because Britney Spears shaved her head. Darfur gets little to know coverage in the US but everyone knows when there is a car chase happening in another state, we know about two lost teenage hikers who survived two whole days in the wilderness without food and limited water. It's frustrating.
I'm intrigued by the system of news in America. Can you tell me how different the system is over there? In England the main news channel is the BBC, but ITV (channel 3) also supply news. Furthermore we get American news channels (sky, fox etc) but those are much less watched unless we are after news from America like election figures.
The newspapers here have a much bigger range. There are tabloids (which cover celebraty gossip and suchforth) and they are basically glorified magazines. Broadsheets are the proper political news and there are loads of them. Generally they are either left-wing (democrat to you, lib dem to us) or right-wing (republican to you, conservative to us) and write with only slight bias. They are generally quite realiably because there are so many that if one tried to "change the truth" then they would be compared to others and would be found out. I know several people who buy more than one paper for exactly this purpose (generally one left-wing and one right-wing).
Of course we have local papers as well, but because they are free, they are full of adverts. Also you can generally find a picture of the local mayor shaking hands with someone on every page; congratulating them on growing a giant pumpkin and the like. It is hardly "shake the world" news and most people don't bother to read it.
Is this simular to the US system? You always here about all the spin the American government puts on news, but I'm not sure on what basis this is founded on and I'm sure we are just as corrupt.
Me too. (It's funny though how nobody defends them in the name of free speech.) In any case, I always consider the source of the news story when making my own decisions.
That's fair criticism regarding Fox News. And I wholeheartedly agree about tabloid news getting more media attention than legitimate news stories. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, O.J. Simpson..........who cares??
Oh, come on, don't come up with that free speech, people attack Fox on the fact that they are very biased and are basically the white house channel, not that they don't have the right to say things, just that what they say is completely biased. Of course, not that I really watch Fow News myself, our state news channel (Radio-Canada) here is pretty good in general, although here is some worthless stuff sometimes.
I'm sorry, every massively publicized news agency is bought by now. When I really need to get some information I rely on first hand informants. Sometimes one country has better information over another. For example, when I was in New York I used to call my home and talk to some people who would let me know I little better about what was going on at the time...
I used to listen to AM Talk Radio shows all the time. AM Radio is the opposite of TV in that most of the shows are very conservative. The real problem with taking news from Talk Radio is that it's almost always biased. It's the point of the Talk Radio show. They explain something that happened to so and so over the weekend and then they take their stance, but there isn't a host out there that doesn't play a little with the delivery with the news. They put some kind of spin on it in order to create a reaction and get people to call in. Nothing wrong with it, as long as you understand that it can be, and most likely is, presented with biased. I think that is the reason why Fox News gets such a bad rap. People see Hannity and Combs and they call it news. It's not news, it's a show that debates the news and it really only covers what they choose to cover.
Something to consider when looking at Amercian news versus UK news is that we are a very large country and because of that our Local news dominates any newscast. We really don't know much about what is happening anywhere else in the world because we spend 20 out of the 28 minutes of news time hearing about the big news stories from across America. For some reason, our news media thinks that we have to hear about kidnappings, Britney Spears' loosing custody of her kids, murders, car chases, near-mis airline crashes, forrest fires, large building demolitions, and escaped fugitives before we ever hear about how Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has nationalized key sectors of Venezuela's economy. I'm willing to bet that 90% of Americans don't even know who Chavez is, or that he hates America and is trying to create a new form of socialism. Unfortunately, no one will hear anything about any real news tomorrow over the din of Britney Spears.
I know. Plus, the comment to which he objected was uttered tongue-in-cheek. Guess I'll have to be more careful of what I say (type) from now on. Sorry...
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