For me the ultimate criterion is the degree of quality investigative journalism.
Congruent with that is the avoidance of sound bites.
Where can I get unbiased news?
21–30 of 50 posts
Re: Where can I get unbiased news?
#22There is no such thing as unbiased news. What you want instead is the Hunter S. Thompson model where the journalist makes their opinion clear and upfront. Then, you can judge the rest of their reporting yourself. A lot of journalism majors I know try to pretend their unbiased, but that isn't how humans work. Say it upfront like programmers do ("First of all I have to admit I use Lisp/Python/Whatever but here is what I don't like about Ruby 1.9 blah blah")
edit: typos
Re: Where can I get unbiased news?
#23Really? There are no unbiased media sources. Bill Gates of all people should recognize that every publication he mentioned is biased and be aware of, and mention, their perspective. I read some of these publications, but I'm at least cognizant of their leanings and know where to go for an alternative point of view. The Economist is great if you want the Keynesian perspective on economics and not much else. Per wikipe…
How is the economist Keynesian?
Re: Where can I get unbiased news?
#24One of the features we offer at Broadersheet that I'm really proud of is that we can offer "all the sides" of an article to our readers. We can show you the same article from a number of sources. It's live right now, and I've been sketching up some pretty mad stuff influenced partly by what ^joshu worked on: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/10/delicious-upcoming-foun...
Really interested in what people think of this feat. Useful?
Re: Where can I get unbiased news?
#25In my opinion: The Daily Show and/or Colbert Report. I guess you could say their only bias is toward comedic pessimism. Is it sad to say that a comedy network has become what I believe to be the least biased news? Or is it just our modern evolution of what has always been the place of good satire: to criticize, under the guise of comedy, that which "serious" outlets dare not discuss?
Perhaps, then, this whole discussion is moot, for as Stephen Colbert would have it, "reality has a well-known liberal bias."
Re: Where can I get unbiased news?
#26I always thought people who were looking for unbiased news were actually look for news that matched their own bias. I know I read certain publications/sites because I am more likely to read an article that presents a series of facts couched in a (tone|bias|opinion) that agrees with mine.
Plus "unbiased" is really hard. It's been in the 40's (F) in San Francisco today, the online paper (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/as/qr?scope=term&sourc...) has had headlines talking about how cold and rainy its been. In this case "cold and rainy" is biased, many people would consider our weather recently pleasant and balmy. That makes the chronicle biased, but not necessarily not worth reading.
Re: Where can I get unbiased news?
#27There is no such thing as unbiased news. What you want instead is the Hunter S. Thompson model where the journalist makes their opinion clear and upfront. Then, you can judge the rest of their reporting yourself. A lot of journalism majors I know try to pretend their unbiased, but that isn't how humans work. Say it upfront like programmers do ("First of all I have to admit I use Lisp/Python/Whatever but here is what…
Actually, before Sulzberger took over the NYT, the Times was the gold standard in objective reporting. I loved it back then.
Re: Where can I get unbiased news?
#28Does not exist as a single source. Try news sites with diametrically opposed points of view and draw your own conclusions.
Of course - trying to line up in the middle of two viewpoints can have issues itself. ( http://xkcd.com/690/ )
Possibly the trick is to discard the outliers first.
Re: Where can I get unbiased news?
#29I always thought people who were looking for unbiased news were actually look for news that matched their own bias. I know I read certain publications/sites because I am more likely to read an article that presents a series of facts couched in a (tone|bias|opinion) that agrees with mine. Plus "unbiased" is really hard. It's been in the 40's (F) in San Francisco today, the online paper ( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…
See, I'm not the only one who thinks weather news in the Chronicle is biased - http://bayarea.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/what-kind-of-wea...
Re: Where can I get unbiased news?
#30You should read biased news sources, only they should include those that espouse the opposite of your preferred bias. If you're left-leaning, keeping up to date with Fox News is like doing unit testing on your belief system. Likewise if you're right leaning but can put up with Jon Stewart (yeah, I'll go there and call him a news source).