I want the news, I need sources...

[Guardian-Angel]

Well after a year of following politics, I started slacking off because as everyone in these forums should know (except for the people with no souls), politics gets depressing. But it's a drug, and I wanna get back on it (plus I'm tired of not being in the know-how).

What I wanna do this time while following politics though is have 3 sources to check daily: one unbiased, neutral news site, a liberal news site and a conservative news site. I think it'd be interested to see the daily news through three different perspectives, and it would just make the news more interesting for myself as well.

So with that said, if anyone could recommend me any excellent unbiased, liberal or conservative news sites that actually all consist of facts and statistics and aren't just tabloids, it would be very appreciated. Thank you all

[Warforger]

Google. Usually biased/racist sources are easy to spot. Wikipedia is also a good source. I tend to not follow news stations, Firefox has this "Latest Headlines" button i use to look at the lesser known stories.

But in terms of trying to understand someone like say Osama Bin Laden, it's best to read their messages directly to get the most unbiased perspective. That's what I did with Karl Marx and OBL and really I've grown to try to understand rather then to immediately hate.

[Camarohusky]

Yahoo front page is my main news source. The articles are about as deep as a rainy day puddle, but they tend to be fairly flat when it comes to bias... well, usually.

Other than that I use a strong ability to glean and the occasional google search to find the news. It kind of boggles me to see a couple recent posts asking where to get the news as if it was hard to find. It really is everywhere. I also find that it is easy to throw away any bias if you identify and acknowledge it quickly.

[SadisticMonkey]

not a news site per se, but rather just articles about recent events and so forth: mises.org

its very 'biased', though they're both anti-liberal and anti-conservative on most things, so that can help mix things up a bit for you I guess, give you a broader perspective

[Der-Lowe]

For Economics, I read Krugman, Mankiw, Freakonomics, Marginal Revolution , I follow the Economist on twitter, and I read several other blogs in Spanish.
Oddly enough, the Esquire has a nice Politics blog.

Don't read the Wall Street Journal.

[SadisticMonkey]

At 5/21/11 12:46 PM, Der-Lowe wrote: For Economics, I read Krugman,

lol he contradicts himself from article to article

"the banks have been too imprudent with their loaning and caused a crisis, we need more regulation!"

"The banks are greedy and too strict with their lending criteria and won't lend to minorites and poor people so that they stay poor!"

Freakonomics

The daytime television of economics

[LordZeebmork]

if you're just looking for political news, politico and realclearpolitics are probably all you'll need. RCP is an aggregator, so you'll get pretty much the most diverse selection you can get from the mainstream news. (ignore everything on the Washington Post, NY Times, and WSJ though; they're all idiots, especially WaPo)

you should also read vdare, especially if you're in america; they claim to be just about immigration, but they cover a lot of news that, for obvious reasons, nobody else would touch with a ten-foot pole. and before anyone goes where I know someone's going to go, the SPLC is a scam and Morris Dees is a failed spammer who built a multi-million-dollar career out of scaring liberals, so they can all go fuck themselves with a rusty swastika. Jared Taylor is still an idiot though, and he sounds like a gay William Shatner trying to play that one Looney Tunes chicken, Lockjaw Slackdick or whatever

you'll probably also want to read alternet or something, although most of their opinion pieces have more gaping holes than a pack of japanese schoolgirls. hell, most mainstream partisan sites tend to link to a lot of news stories that'd get buried otherwise.

At 5/20/11 11:53 PM, Warforger wrote: I tend to not follow news stations, Firefox has this "Latest Headlines" button i use to look at the lesser known stories.

unless they've changed it recently, that's just the BBC's RSS feed, so that's not exactly lesser known

[Chris-V2]

If you're using one source you're doing it wrong. Try and pick a few extremes - my three are Russia Today, Al Jazeera and BBC/RTE. Sometimes I'll use CCTV if it's an Asian event/issue. The idea is that certain bodies inevitably lie via omission to convey a certain viewpoint.

For instance on the Georgian war a few years ago most of my peers were convinced of Russian evilness despite Georgia actually being a very cruel, totalitarian state. Russian media talked of valiant defense. Al Jazeera weighed in and said although Russia were using it as abit of a PR campaign/ attack on the Georgian government that they ultimately were in the right in defending Ossetia from government attacks.

Also, be aware that due to the exhaustive amount of information involved in this that it pays to only concentrate on a few events at a time. Otherwise your brain will explode.

[Camarohusky]

I have strongly disagree with most people here. Not only is one source enough, I suggest a much more simplistic and minimalist approach. You don't need to read more than a couple news sources to get all of the news. All you get by reading more news sources is opinion, and if you're looknig to broaden your ability to find and interpret the world, other people's opinions are actually counterproductive.

Just stick to the AP and BBC newswires and only venture beyond that when an issue strikes a cord with you. If you don't feel about an issue extra reading will do nothing more than either confuse you, or implangt the opinion of another in you. Also, I would ignore any blogs, or any openly biased places. They carry terrible stories. They are usually so biased they miss the forest through the tree or miss key factors through blindness or intentional ignorance.

In the end, to really get into politics all you need are the facts. Everything else should be your opinion, and yours alone. Once you have made your opinion, then and only then, should you venture into bias land. That way you have examined the facts enough to see through the massive bais.

[morefngdbs]

I like Al Jazeera -English, the BBC & Reuters.
Because I have family in South Korea, I read a local paper there which is in English The Korean Hearld.

HTere is also an english paper in Brazil called the Gringo times, I like these local papers to get access to local stories not carried by the first 3 that I mentioned.

[Earfetish]

I'm a journo.

You want original news, trace it back to the original press release or exclusive comment or interview. I gotta do that shit every day.

[Earfetish]

Oh and everything is biased, or everyone thinks everything is biased apart from what they agree with. I write shit all the time like 'social networking is bad for employee productivity' but the people who did the study are designing some social network thing to counter this, or someone will do a study on heath but it'll be an insurance company, that kinda thing, all the time. Pretty much every 'study' you read about was just a poll, too, on a website.

Like I don't think it's all about finding non-biased sources, it's about finding the original comment so you can ascertain the ulterior motives yourself. My favourites are like The Chambers of Commerce or The Federation of Small Businesses because they're full of people who know what they're talking about and their bias is clear right from the start.

If you're interested in a news story, like some legislation, imagine you're a journo and consider which organisations will have something to say about the legislation, and then see if they've put anything in the press section of their website or commented to a sympathetic news source. Then find someone with the exact opposite view and see what they have to say.

The only non-biased sources are like the Office for National Statistics, and you can't really get much 'news' out of them. The 'news' is people's reactions to proposed legislation or new statistics, not the actual statistics themselves. Places like the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors do statistical analysis but they comment on it with their own viewpoints about why the market is how it is and what the future looks like and how pissed off everyone is and how the government should do something differently.

Insert American equivalent organisations wherever necessary.

[LordZeebmork]

At 5/24/11 06:51 PM, Camarohusky wrote: In the end, to really get into politics all you need are the facts.

Yeah, but you can't get all the facts from the AP.

[Camarohusky]

At 5/27/11 06:42 AM, LordZeebmork wrote: Yeah, but you can't get all the facts from the AP.

You can get enough to make informed decisions though. Not focusing on race when race is irrelevant, and not focusing on a small semi-legal paramilitary group does not make the AP full of holes.