General

I think you answered your own question.

"The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance"

- Carl Sagan (1995)

Be cautious of your "news" source. Nearly all aren't worth the 10 seconds...

Know how to perform your own research and don’t depend on “underground” fringe BS either.

I typically listen to NPR hourly news while in the shower. It's only a few minutes long and typically seems to cover the highlights / lowlights from the day.

Yes. Unless you like fear mongering and scripted bias.

My main issue is that I can't find something (as far as news goes) to just have on in the background when I'm getting ready in the morning. I mean, I just want something to get caught up on what is going on in the world -- without too much fluff -- that isn't too biased.

I used to watch HLN in the morning and it wasn't too bad. Got the headlines quickly. Not too much fluff (or, when they had it, the people were watchable most of the time, at least). And didn't seem too biased.

In any case, CNN killed it recently. No more live stuff on HLN.

So, now I'm not sure what to watch where I can just "turn it on in the morning" and leave it go. It isn't a situation where I can read through anything -- I just need a live broadcast of current headlines.

I've switched to ABC for now -- which is Good Morning America in the morning. And if it was just headlines, fine, but there is SO much fluff. Every day recently has been Royal Family crap that I couldn't care much less about...

theJaw wrote:

While I agree with this concept in general, I tend to find that most people who go "I do my own research" are so incredibly biased that it isn't funny. Seriously, most of the "I do my own research" people that I've spoken with in person have been anti-vax and/or other conspiracy theorist people. Granted, I get that you added "don't depend on underground fringe BS", but so many of the "do your own research" people don't THINK it is based on "underground fringe BS" either.

So, yes, "do your own research", but I tend to see that as looking at other people's DECENT research. For example, when trying to find less biased news sources, I tend to look at something like the AllSides Media Bias charts (the U of Central Oaklahoma one is decent also). No one wants to admit that their media source is biased. So, relying on the research of others often makes more sense -- provided that the "others" have been fairly well vetted.

It doesn't even have to be as extreme as anti-vax or conspiracy theories. In my experience, most of the "I do my own research" people just follow a bunch of far right/left political figures/Facebook pages/etc that are all extremely biased. Their research is just reading everything these people/pages post and accepting it as fact.

I tend to skim through news sites during my morning coffee. I find it somewhat useful for local news, sports, entertainment, and random global information...excluding basically anything political.

I like going around to various sites I know are leaning left and leaning right to see the difference. A lot of times you would think you are living on two different worlds. Both sides report their stories with a spin by omitting key info that goes against the message they are trying to push. Unless there is something very very major going on, the left and right have completely different headlines.

@John "Do your own research" doesn't mean "make up your own crap" or "rely on a political standing". As you suggested, part of researching IS relying on other people's "DECENT research", because some people are smarter than us - OR other people's research/experiences add to helpful statistics. I would never suggest otherwise, because finding information from other people literally IS part of one doing their own research. My point was that folks should know their sources and where their information is coming from, and then form an opinion from that. Don't rely on outlier fringe garbage, or the news that caters directly to your own sensibilities, if the news story in question isn't one you want to hear (or even if it is). Do the research.

Two independent thoughts: Do your own research. Don't depend on fringe bullcrap. Differentiate the two, and the person doing so will have a leg up. We're arguing the same thing here - don't depend on fringe outliers and DO RESEARCH, the way you do with the website you touted.

Scott wrote:

To be fair, these are examples of people who don't ACTUALLY do their own research and rely on fringe bullcrap that caters to what they want to hear, which is what I was suggesting one not do initially. The phrase "do your own research" shouldn't be scoffed at solely because some folks claim to without actually doing so. It's still valid to suggest people look into things for themselves if they're doing so in earnest.

Yeah. My post wasn't meant to be against what you said. I agree that people should do their own research, but still believe that most who say they do, really aren't.

theJaw wrote:

Yes, I know. Relax. I didn't mean you in particular. It's just a common thing for the far-right or far-left nutballs to go "DO yOuR oWn ReSeaRcH!!*&!&^!*!".


Yes, I know. I'm not sure you knew.

@Scott Yah I mean, can't dispute that unfortunately.

@John I'm relaxed...? I typed roughly as much as you did, but whatev. I knew, don't you worry!

It's fine. I thought you were defending yourself when I didn't mean it that way. Your reply directly to me started off with:

"Do your own research" doesn't mean "make up your own crap" or "rely on a political standing"

Um, yes, of course. If you knew that we were both "arguing the same thing", then you wouldn't feel the need to explain that to me. Because it was indeed the same thing that I agree with already.

Sorry for any confusion there. Not a big deal.

Not necessarily defending myself, just making myself more clear because your reply directly to ME seemed to misconstrue my point, but that may have been user error on my part. Hence the "we're arguing the same thing" line to ensure you that we were on the same page. But not a big deal indeed, world keeps on a-turnin'.

John wrote:

Do you have any local news channels? Down here we have a couple of TV channels that livestream the news in the morning, then repeat it over the course of the day, switching to the latest newscast whenever it comes out. Just make sure the station isn't owned by a company that forces local newscasters to air crap.

I stopped watching the evening news 6+ years ago. I mostly don't look at news websites either.

I am somewhat uninformed, but it's basically impossible not to hear about news from other people or from the few websites I do check once a week.

I use Wikipedia fairly often (mostly just random stuff I'm curious about). So, I may go read about a recent event there if I'm curious. Wikipedia has a recent events page that I check weekly as well.

I think it's better for my mental health. Or, more precisely, my inner thoughts are less polluted with various stressful narratives that mostly don't actually matter that much.

It's fine. I prefer it. Your mileage may vary. I'm sure it's not for everyone, just thought I'd mention it.

I do like using Google News to scan headlines every day or two.

I like it because you can tell it not to show the ultra-biased sites, the crap "gotcha" stories, sites I have zero interest in, etc. So no Fox News/National Review no Vox/Huffpost, no crapty celebrity gossip sites, and so on.

The only downside is even for sites with content that I might occasionally enjoy, some of them often post really obvious/terrible clickbait headlines that are in no way news (something like "I'm a middle aged mom, and I wore Axe body spray for two months to see what it was like" or "Tiktok trend has people shoving cans of pringles up their butts. We've tried it with Lays Stax and here's the difference") or the actual story is literally a sentence long but they want you to click to their site for that sentence when they could just has easily have provided it in the headline (something like "New Zelda game release date finally announced." It's May 12. It takes less time to type that than the word announced. I get you want clicks so people see your ads but C'MON).

Some of the best actual news stories I've read recently have from Al-Jazeera.

"I did my own research" usually means "I searched for information to support what I want to believe".

Most of us don't have time to study complex problems in depth. We have to rely on experts to break it down for us. Unfortunately, there is no control over who gets to present themselves as an "expert".

I've frequently had to calm my wife down about something she has heard or read and often it is with the question "are they trying to sell you something?"

Foxhack wrote:

Hmmm... I mean, almost all "local news channels" are going to be network affiliates (ABC, NBC, CBS, or FOX). So, basically, ALL of them are "owned by a company that forces local newscasters to air" what they want. Plus, in the morning, pretty much all network affiliates rebroadcast the main feed for that network. (For example, all ABC "local" channels are going to be broadcasting ABC's national Good Morning America program.)

Or am I missing something?

bill wrote:

I don't watch the evening stuff at all. I just want something in the morning to get caught up on world happenings, I guess.

That being said, I do have r/news and r/worldnews in my Reddit feed -- that actually gives me most of the happenings. I tend to read that in the morning on the can. :)

But, yeah, just wish I had something on TV to half-watch/half-listen to when getting shaved/dressed/ready in the morning...

John wrote:

I don't mean the networks, I meant the corporate station owners.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/02...

The article is four years old, but afaik, this still happens from time to time.

Foxhack wrote:

Yeah, I got ya. But I guess my point is that I think that happens with almost ALL network stations. I mean, like I said, most of them are just re-broadcasting the national feed for news shows. So, yes, your local ABC affiliate probably has evening actually-local news. But, in the morning, they likely just rebroadcast Good Morning America like all the rest of the ABC channels. So, my point was that it would be near-impossible to avoid owner influence -- because they are able to influence at the national level before it even gets to the local news.

Those clips are all likely evening news -- where the local station does the show and their owners (Sinclair) can direct what they do. Which, I agree, is bad. I'm just saying that, in the morning, the local channels have very little influence when they are just playing the national morning feed anyhow.

Agreed on Al-Jazeera. They're one of my favorite news sources.

benstylus wrote:

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:

Ah! Yes -- I forgot about that. We had it as a channel for a while, but then it got dropped, I think. I should check again -- maybe it is back and that would be a good alternative.

Bah -- Dish no longer offers it.

I wonder if I can stream it from somewhere. I get that I can go to the website, but I'd love to just stream it to my TV...

Don't they have a streaming app?

America has become increasingly divided and so has the news in general. I have a tough time finding an impartial news outlet that is actually interesting to watch. NPR and PBS have some solid reporting but there's just no fun there. I veer liberal but can't watch CNN because they're so aggressively anti-conservative and can't present an opposing view without being demeaning.

Even if I'm being manipulated I like google news the best. I can customize the topics and types of things I'm interested in, and each story has multiple links so that it's easy to tell by the titles what is garbage or clickbait.

It’s funny, because I don’t like CNN either, but for a different reason—I find it too accepting of mainstream moderate Democratic arguments. My parents derisively refer to it as the Clinton News Network, because they associate it with a Democratic lean (and they watch pretty much only Fox), but I get annoyed at how often CNN anchors prop up anti-progressive standpoints.

Anxiouz wrote:

I don't watch anything live anymore besides a few random sporting events and election results, so I'm a bit out of date on what's decent to watch.

However, when I lived in Taiwan, I got used to having BBC news on in the background as it was one of the few English stations I got out there. I usually just zoned out when they talked UK politics but they didn't really seem too biased when talking about international (and US) news.

Now I'm in the same boat with Google News articles, I feel like sitting through all the filler of watching live news and ads isn't worth it when I can read everything that's relevant in a few minutes.

I don't watch any news. I prefer to read it. I scan the news pages for headlines that look important or interesting.

"the news pages"

That's kinda the point of this thread -- what are your "news pages"?

I would gladly pay for good unbiased journalism from sources that spend the time to get the truth and hold off on publishing until things like who are the involved parties, what's the motive, and what are the potential impacts are fleshed out well enough. There are certain things that I'd certainly want to know sooner, like a rapidly spreading illness or waves of violence. However, things like bills being voted on or scandals that happening need a ton more context than what I typically hear. Because of this, I rarely watch news and anything I read is given a healthy dose of scrutiny.

If anyone finds something worth paying for, let me know.

bill wrote:


I'm kinda in the same boat on this. If there is a significant news story, I'm going to hear about through my coworkers and family. Same thing for the weather news! That seems to be everyone's favorite subject to talk about. If it's gonna hot, cold, rainy, or if there is even a 1% chance of snow, people can't wait to share that info.


A few presidential elections ago, I had finally had enough with all of the noise. I stopped clicking on news stories, watching any news programs, and listening to any news radio on my commute to work. I realized that knowledge of what is going on around the world is a relatively new situation in the history of humanity. We've managed to do quite well for thousands of years with little to no information about the outside world. I believe that less than 99% of what is considered news is insignificant to how I go about living my life. In my attempt to simplify my life, cutting out most news has been a key component in doing so.

If I was inclined to find out more about a certain an international news story that I have heard about, I might be more inclined to look at foreign news sources. Here in America, many news sources present conflicting information from one another, some of which, I am sure had some level of political bias attached to. I think it may be helpful in a lot of situations to look at the world news perspective in order to get a view of the news that is at least devoid of American politics. That isn't to say that international sources can't be skewed, but an overall viewpoint, one that takes into consideration news sources from various regions of the world, could be more helpful in getting a clearer picture of what is really going on in the world.

citizen_zane wrote:

I've been working on this myself and it is good.