The debate over credible sources... (1 Viewer)

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    Andrus

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    This should be interesting. I see lot's of arguing about the credibility of sources on this board. It would nice if we could have some consensus about what sources could be cited without being dismissed as not being credible by one side or the other. I realize that isn't going to happen, but we could strive for some common ground, right?

    While bias creeps into just about everything to some extent, and no news source is perfect, being as I have to post up daily news compilations on the home page I've created my own guide over the past couple of months that I reference when linking to news, which I will post below. By now I pretty much know this list by heart.

    Perhaps we can develop an approved source list out of this and squelch at least some of the "not a credible source" citing from the discussions.

    These are not ranked, but random, and they include my own "note to self" notations. So below is my list. Post your thoughts, disagreements, or your own list.

    Most reliable/Least biased/Most factual:
    1. Reuters
    2. CBS News
    3. The Hill
    4. AP
    5. NPR
    6. Politico
    7. ABC News
    8. Forbes
    9. BBC
    10. PBS
    11. USA Today
    12. Business Insider
    13. CNN (News, not opinion)
    14. Fox (News, not opinion)
    15. Bloomberg (News, not opinion)
    16. CNN (News, not opinion)
    17. NBC (News, not opinion *Read article before posting)
    18. CNBC (News, not opinion)
    19. Buzzfeed (News only *Read article before posting)
    20. ALJazeera
    21. Axios (Not much content)

    *WSJ *Pay site. Do not tease.
    *The Economist * Pay site. Do not tease.
    *New York Times (News, not opinion) * Pay site. Do not tease.
    *Washington Post (News, not opinion) * Pay Site. Do not tease.

    Somewhat reliable. Note: Be skeptical of deceptive and misleading partisan narratives, titles, content, and loaded phrases. Be cautious about linking to articles from these sources:


    1. Reason.com (Can be iffy, so read before posting)
    2. Washington Examiner (News, not opinion, read before posting)
    3. Huffington Post (News, not opinion. Still, read before posting)
    4. Vice , (read first before posting)
    5. Washington Times (News, not opinion, read before posting)
    6. The Intercept (Read before posting)
    7. Vox (Not always - Read before posting)
    8. MSNBC News (Read before posting)
    9. RealClearPolitics (All over the map - Read before posting)


    Biased & agenda driven, very often loaded with false & misleading political propaganda, and twisting of facts in order to fit their narratives/agenda (Avoid all):

    • FOX/CNN/MSNBC,etc. - (Opinion)
    • Mother Jones
    • The Nation
    • Jacobin
    • Daily Wire
    • New York Post
    • Newsmax
    • OAN
    • Democracy Now
    • Washington Examiner (opinion)
    • The Federalist
    • The Intercept
    • The Daily Caller
    • Palmer Report
    • Brietbart
    • New York Times (opinion)
    • Washington Post (opinion)
    • National Review
    • Daily KOS
    • Bipartisan Report
    • Huffington Post (Opinion)
    • Washington Times (opinion)
    • The Daily Beast
    • Daily Mail
    • Infowars
    • GP
    • Shareblue
    • News Punch
    • The Western Journal
     
    I greatly appreciate what you are trying to do, which is find a common ground where people can agree upon basic facts and argue from them, sources people can agree have credibility, I think it is something that‘s erosion has led to a greater and greater fractionalizing in our greater body politic and society writ large.



    And I’ll help where I can, but I do think eventually we are going to confront a hard truth(and it is already seeping through in this thread), which is that if you look at your list, the majority of sources a significant faction of society consider(rightfully) as amongst the most objective aggregators of our nation’s news, are equally considered invalid by a equally large fraction that then uses that to default to mostly partisan and factually dubious sources, but because they allign with their politics continue to default and rely upon them to inform their opinions. And that amongst the partisan outlets, there also isn’t an equal distribution or regard for presenting intellectually honest arguments. Which presents a problem if we are trying to be objective about what opinion outlets deserve consideration. Democracy Now is unapologetically activist and left-wing, Vox is a perfect encapsulation of center-left liberalism, but I would place their journalistic credibility up against Fox News and BreitBart any day(After all, studies show that consuming Fox News actually makes you more factually ignorant than not consuming any news). But I suspect there will be a pull to claim Fox News’ normal reporting is valid somehow, but even the most objective aggregators of the news like Reuter’s or the AP are of equal footing(they aren’t), even outright invalid to some. Which is symptomatic of the larger root problem here.


    ....that this issue of source credibility and an erosion of shared facts is not equally distributed, and because of that it will make finding common ground near impossible. Because in fact the problem is highly concentrated to one faction. And how we move forward after that becomes abundantly clear is not my decision to make, but pretending it isn’t a root of the problem won’t fix it. The below chart is old, but it still broadly rings true, just replace The Daily Show with John Oliver, Glen Beck with Tucker etc.

    PJ_14.10.21_mediaPolarization-01.png


    Moderately to highly conservative Americans put their trust largely into propaganda outlets. And even a page into this thread we see posters angling toward justifying things like dismissing Reuter’s for bias or falsely equivocating and demanding a balance between the list the right informs themselves with with the list the left does. Which by any objective metric is not of equal factual or journalistic weight. Breitbart and Fox News are not the journalistic equivalent of the NY Times or PBS. Tucker is not of the same intellectual honesty that John Oliver operates with. The Blaze does not adhere to the same journalistic standards Vox does. Fact checkers are not liberally compromised. The sides of the divide aren’t equal, and the problem of misinformation is not equally distributed, and so I think without reconciling that it is going to be very difficult to find a common ground of facts and sources when one side is fundamentally at odds with them and doing so would require them to largely concede that most of their sources do not fit the bill.
     
    Can you please link to some heavily biased Reuters articles, because this strikes me as incredibly unlikely.
    Yea, I’m having a hard time with this, too. Can you post a biased Reuters article so we can see what you mean?
    I doubt that is what Andrus intends here and you can do your own homework.

    If you are not intellectually curious enough to look at Reuters articles from a fresh perspective and, possibly, compare them to pieces on the same subject by other organizations with a probable different idealogical slant, nothing I do will change your mind.

    Here is a simple test. If you always agree or always disagree with the carefully crafted language used in the first paragraph of a news article, you are reading a biased source.

    Reuters is a prime example of this when it comes to US politics.
     
    I doubt that is what Andrus intends here and you can do your own homework.

    If you are not intellectually curious enough to look at Reuters articles from a fresh perspective and, possibly, compare them to pieces on the same subject by other organizations with a probable different idealogical slant, nothing I do will change your mind.

    Here is a simple test. If you always agree or always disagree with the carefully crafted language used in the first paragraph of a news article, you are reading a biased source.

    Reuters is a prime example of this when it comes to US politics.
    The burden of proof is on no one but yourself to qualify and support the assertions and claims you make.

    It is not the job of the other person to prove your argument for you, let alone claim they are lacking for not doing so, let alone if they fail to draw the conclusion you want them. The burden of proof is on the accuser. And typically, if someone can’t prove their case, it gets dismissed.
     
    I don't know much about the process of publishing articles, but I believe the main problem lies with weak editors allowing opinion to pass through the gates.

    I did a project 2 years go and used a news aggregator program to feed articles to myself from all of the sources mentioned. I removed all sources that posted an article that used overly sensational verbs and adjectives, or told me how to think about the subject. At the end of my project I had blocked every source.

    My conclusion was that journalism is now largely conducted by sub-contracted bloggers with potent agendas. Not fully an agenda of topic, but one of scoring the next article job. Their jobs are largely judged by the amount of clicks they generate. The rare few with full-time journalism jobs have become soldiers of the righteous, ordered to only create content to support or discredit other sources. In-between, the facts are lost in the fight to push the reader to a certain thought process and or generate clicks.

    By-in-large I think we quibble over national and world news that doesn't affect our day-to-day lives very much. I think we'd be better served focusing on local politics, actual policy that matters more to us. I'm guilty of that. i know next to nothing about my local area and government, but can chat hours about the macro.
     
    I doubt that is what Andrus intends here and you can do your own homework.

    If you are not intellectually curious enough to look at Reuters articles from a fresh perspective and, possibly, compare them to pieces on the same subject by other organizations with a probable different idealogical slant, nothing I do will change your mind.

    Here is a simple test. If you always agree or always disagree with the carefully crafted language used in the first paragraph of a news article, you are reading a biased source.

    Reuters is a prime example of this when it comes to US politics.

    Let's pretend like you are 100% right and my bias prevents me from seeing it. Show me what I am missing so I can better filter my news sources.
     
    All I hope is that the Twitter bloggers are no longer taken as written by the hand of God some make it out to be here. That stuff is just silly. Everything has a reason. All news to some extent is to make money no matter what you say but some are just blatantly pandering with half truths or out and out lies that cater to the base.

    I assume most already have their scale of good or bad and what they will even open and some just don't seem to care.
     
    To attack Reuter’s is laughable. They are the gold standard for ethical reporting. I would understand why someone who supports Trump would not like a publication so dedicated to truth.

    But in case those who don’t know:

    Reuter’s is part of the Thomson Reuter’s foundation started duringWW2. It was designed specifically to report honest news without government or special interest involvement. Reuter’s.com is primarily a financial publication and isn’t even based in the US. Here is their Trust principles from their website. I recommend checking out their Board of Trustees too.

    seriously, knocking Reuter’s as biased really underlines the subconscious(?) bias in the individual who stated it.

     
    I am a headline reader of AP, Reuters, Fox, CBS and CNN. I take a "grain of salt" outlook with just about everything the media posts if I decide to read an article. To me the media is worse than politicians. Most of what they do is push their opinions on to us. I am also a firm believer of "opinions are like a**holes everyone has one".
     
    Just a note related to the OP. For all of those pay sites you said not to link, most give you a certain number of free articles a week or month and once you reach your limit, you can right click the link to open it in an incognito/InPrivate/whatever your browser calls it window and read the articles you'd be blocked from.
     
    Last edited:
    To attack Reuter’s is laughable. They are the gold standard for ethical reporting. I would understand why someone who supports Trump would not like a publication so dedicated to truth.

    But in case those who don’t know:

    Reuter’s is part of the Thomson Reuter’s foundation started duringWW2. It was designed specifically to report honest news without government or special interest involvement. Reuter’s.com is primarily a financial publication and isn’t even based in the US. Here is their Trust principles from their website. I recommend checking out their Board of Trustees too.

    seriously, knocking Reuter’s as biased really underlines the subconscious(?) bias in the individual who stated it.

    Reuters is a bad joke. It was secretly funded by the British government in the 1960s and 1970s, a fact that wasn't revealed until 2019.
    It's now owned by a Canadian conglomerate.

    As for it's policies . . .

    Reuters has a policy of taking a "value-neutral approach," which extends to not using the word "terrorist" in its stories, a practice which attracted criticism following the September 11 attacks.[24] Reuters' editorial policy states: "Reuters may refer without attribution to terrorism and counterterrorism in general, but do not refer to specific events as terrorism. Nor does Reuters use the word terrorist without attribution to qualify specific individuals, groups or events."[25] By contrast, the Associated Press does use the term "terrorist" in reference to non-governmental organizations who carry out attacks on civilian populations.[24]

     
    Oh come on. One of the most respected sites for neutral information from virtually every political persuasion is a joke? What site on the entire internet is a reliable source of information then? You only seem to have opinions on those you don't trust and even have cute little stories to go with why they shouldn't be trusted.
     
    That's one of those things that should be a baseline for conversation here. If you genuinely think Reuters and/or the AP are heavily biased or a bad joke, I see no way to believe that you have a well informed informed opinion. Your ability to process reality is heavily flawed.
     
    That's one of those things that should be a baseline for conversation here. If you genuinely think Reuters and/or the AP are heavily biased or a bad joke, I see no way to believe that you have a well informed informed opinion. Your ability to process reality is heavily flawed.
    I agree. Those two are pretty much the go-to or standard used for sourcing by local newspapers and such. Lots of times they just print/post the AP or Reuters story and give them the credit for it. That happens in publications all over the political spectrum.

    If they're a joke then there is no form of media fit for DD's consumption. It's all lies.
     
    Oh come on. One of the most respected sites for neutral information from virtually every political persuasion is a joke? What site on the entire internet is a reliable source of information then? You only seem to have opinions on those you don't trust and even have cute little stories to go with why they shouldn't be trusted.
    It wasn't respected when it was parroting the British Socialist Party, which was footing its bills.
    We covered it in depth in Journalism school.
    Gannett News Service cautioned us against directly attributing anything to Reuters due to its questionable politics.

    That's one of those things that should be a baseline for conversation here. If you genuinely think Reuters and/or the AP are heavily biased or a bad joke, I see no way to believe that you have a well informed informed opinion. Your ability to process reality is heavily flawed.
    Always trying to submit baselines for everybody else's behaviors.
    One of us actually grew up in newspapers and has been a newspaper reporter.
    One of us hasn't.
    I agree. Those two are pretty much the go-to or standard used for sourcing by local newspapers and such. Lots of times they just print/post the AP or Reuters story and give them the credit for it. That happens in publications all over the political spectrum.

    If they're a joke then there is no form of media fit for DD's consumption. It's all lies.
    Did you just call me a liar?
    I hope not.
     
    Always trying to submit baselines for everybody else's behaviors.
    One of us actually grew up in newspapers and has been a newspaper reporter.
    One of us hasn't.

    The only baselines I have advocated for on this board are "stick to the posting rules" and now "acknowledge reality". The sad part is that someone has to advocate for them in the first place. Doesn't take a newspaper background to see that.
     
    The only baselines I have advocated for on this board are "stick to the posting rules" and now "acknowledge reality". The sad part is that someone has to advocate for them in the first place. Doesn't take a newspaper background to see that.
    Logging off. Enjoy the board all to yourself.
     
    It wasn't respected when it was parroting the British Socialist Party, which was footing its bills.
    We covered it in depth in Journalism school.
    Gannett News Service cautioned us against directly attributing anything to Reuters due to its questionable politics.


    Always trying to submit baselines for everybody else's behaviors.
    One of us actually grew up in newspapers and has been a newspaper reporter.
    One of us hasn't.

    Did you just call me a liar?
    I hope not.
    For a former journalist, you're comprehension is lacking. It's obvious I'm saying that if you can't trust Reuters and the AP that there is nothing you can trust, hence, it's all lies to you.
     

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