this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Everyone has an agenda; if this makes you uncomfortable, strengthen your critical thinking skills.
The desire for a neutral source is a desire to stop thinking critically about the information you consume.
Well said and yea if you find a "unbiased source" for news, you've only fallen for their bias.
Be critical even of what interests you, and read things you don't like as well.
This is just wrong as a general statement.
Across the world there are a lot of news sources that give their best to be neutral and objective.
After reading all the comments here I'm starting to realize that Lemmy is very jaded. Explains why things are such a mess maybe.
Name one.
Reuters & Associated Press
They focus on America, as such have a broadly Western bias. Are they less biased than others? Probably. But you cannot report the news without some form of bias. The act of looking at an event and deciding what facts to include and what to leave out introduces some level of bias. As it is impossible to include every detail of an event, especially in text form, you’ll end up with a biased retelling
Almost all of the news sources around the world have news sites. I cannot keep up unless I only read those sites that have excellent reputations for being factual. Al Jazerra, BBC, The Guardian, the Independent, LeMonde, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washinton Post are on my political list. (Yes, it leans left). Credibility problem has made it harder to find right sources that I can trust.
My favorite lists are for STEM subjects. Facts, science and economics will shape how our world looks. Facts are the focus in this realm. If I only looked at Pulitzer Prize winners, I would have a good list
FWIW, my bias is our environment. Screwing that up makes most other biases moot.
You listed a bunch of neoliberal ideology reinforcing news sources and then said you lean left. If those are your news sources you're on the right my friend.
I was about to say the same thing. Imagine thinking that for example the cops and Israel apologists at NYT who used to have a regular column by BARI WEISS is left-leaning, let alone the WSJ! 🤦
The only one on their list that leans even slightly left is The Guardian and even they go full neoliberal sometimes.
My news sources have their slant, but are relatively factual and properly vetted. Pulitzer prizes and awards for journalistic excellence convince me of their quest for reporting truth. My quest is to find truth. My education was STEM and economics. I draw my own conclusions after seeing facts, but the blind spots in what I read are glaring. Even the better news sources largely miss reporting what is most important. The GINI index, global warming, why Farmers insurance quit Florida and parts of California, and absolute cluelessness of what we are doing in those policies are completely off their radar.
There is an adage that if you look at a person's spending, you see an honest picture of what their actual values are. I apply that as my strategy to cut through ideological BS.
Good on you sounds like you know where you're biased which is probably the best we can all hope for ourselves.
And the BBC (though I know there are some concerns about their UK coverage)
Ground news is pretty good.
I love ground news. But they just give you information on the bias of their sources, they aren’t unbiased themselves. You get a better picture but you are still getting it from biased sources
True. It’s interesting to read a right leaning perspective and a left leaning one of the same story though.
the theory that neutrality is objective is fucking mind numbing. the right wing reactionary perspective is never, has never been, and will never be grounded in anything resembling facts. they consistently disregard actual evidence to promote bigotry and divide the working class.
There’s a perfect example of that on my ground news widget today. It’s shows “blind spots” stories that the left and the right are under reporting. Todays under reported story by the left is “Tucker Carlson interviews Andrew Tate”. Of course the left aren’t reporting on these two cretins spreading their hatred. It’s not news, and it doesn’t deserve attention.
Second for ground news!
Tagesschau.de
That's something that a lot of people miss, though: in many cases you can't be both neutral and objective. If one assessment of an issue is objectively true and the other is preposterous, neutrality itself is a subjective bias.
Non-exhaustive list of topics where a false equivalence neutrality actually distorts reality: climate change, evolution of the species; poverty and the roots thereof; racism and other discrimination; crime and the "justice" system in general.