Where do you all get your news from? How do you work to avoid echo chambers and propaganda?
I've been thinking a lot lately about the prevalence of echo chambers in basically every corner of the internet, and how they manipulate our opinions of things in both obvious and incredibly subtle ways.
Having spent a lot of time on Reddit, it's really easy after a while to see all the different echo chambers that different folks live in. Obviously the big conservative subs just have a completely different news cycle compared to the liberal ones, but even the liberal ones all form obvious biases and fairly large blind spots. All sides have the problem of just reading the headline and coming to a conclusion, regardless of the content of the article or who the authors are; the number of times I've seen the Irish Star, well known in Ireland as being a complete fucking rag notable only for celebrity gossip and nude photos on page 3, being posted to big subreddits as if it's real news, is absurd.
And when you pay attention you can easily spot when the propaganda machines start to accelerate, especially during and after election season. I'll always remember before the 2020 US election primaries when all of Reddit was supportive of Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, while deriding Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren as being centrist career politician dinosaurs, and the second that Biden was chosen as the Democratic nominee the entire site opinion shifted to "Biden is the best candidate and we all support him 100%". And then the moment the election finishes and all the botnets go back into hibernation, it's right back to "should have been Bernie". And that was just the first time I noticed it. Once you notice it happening in your own circles, it's impossible to miss afterward because it happens for every single political discussion. It was the exact same thing in the 2024 election too with Harris. I'm sure some of it is just people showing solidarity when it matters, but so much of it is clearly artificial too, and I don't like that.
The thing that worries me the most is all the propaganda and manipulation I don't see, the stuff that's subtle enough to fly under my radar and successfully manipulate me as a result. I'd be an idiot to pretend like I'm 100% capable of spotting it all.
Anyways, with all that stated, I wanted to see where the users of Tildes get their news from. It's really difficult to find unbiased news, that much is a given, so I'd rather not rely on any one source.
Personally I try to get my news from the Associated Press as much as I can. Don't think much needs to be said about AP that hasn't already been said, it's kinda just the gold standard for journalism.
The Guardian is a reputable news site in the UK (and fairly popular outside of the UK too from what I've seen online), though one that has a definite left-wing bias. All news is biased news of course, and there is an argument to be made that reality itself has a left-wing bias, so I think it's fine overall for my use case. But I do worry that I'm only making that call because I myself am somewhat left-wing, and having news that reinforces my existing opinions is comforting and rewarding. And I don't think that's at all how we should be choosing which news to read and believe.
Have been considering a subscription to the New York Times as well, more for the cooking, puzzles, and classical music discussion than the news itself honestly. But I've seen a fair amount of discourse around the NYT; how much of that is reactionary Redditors reacting I am not certain of however. Their Wikipedia list of controversies is pretty long whatever the case. Plus there's that whole Boycott USA, buy EU movement going on that I should probably consider as a European (sorry yanks I know you guys are cool but you know how it is). I don't know honestly, anyone more media-literate than I am is welcome to weigh in.
There are probably loads of smaller, independent, and less Anglosphere-centric options I should be considering also, but I'm no expert in this stuff. If anyone has suggestions I'd very much appreciate them.
Generally I try to not read too much news since so much of it amounts to "everything is fucked and your life is going to get worse and worse forever because of things outside of your control good luck", which is generally not good for, y'know, trying to be happy. But I also think it's the duty of a citizen in a democratic society to not just have opinions of things, but to have informed opinions. Who am I to vote for X politician because they're pro-Palestine if I have never done my own research on the Israel-Palestine conflict outside of things I've seen on Instagram, and have hardly even researched the politician in the first place? I think far too many people are comfortable forming opinions based on vibes and news they find comfortable that already conforms to their pre-existing opinions.
Anyways, that's my big wall of text for the day. If anyone has recommendations for places to find news and/or sites worthy of my subscription money, or just general tips on how to stay properly informed in the disinformation world, please post them below.
EDIT: Just stumbled upon this post by DefinitelyNotAFae a few hours ago asking a very similar question as what I'm asking here, so sorry if there's some repetition!
I don't see why this has to be a botnet. Regardless of the fact that there absolutely are conservatives on Reddit, it makes sense for people to back the candidate who was selected after primaries even if it wasn't their first choice. Then, once that less favored candidate is elected, people go back to supporting their actually preferred politics. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Biden was the most progressive president since Carter.
I still would have preferred Sanders, and voted for him in the caucus.
Botnets are used to explain away waaaay too much, and often it's "oh my side can't be doing something this stupid, must be a botnet.".
They exist, sure, but they aren't nearly in the numbers people think. More importantly the point of a botnet is to influence people, so once you get a small group of people convinced, they'll carry it forward to a MUCH larger group, which still makes the position a "valid" one, in that yes people believe this, think this way, and will pivot on a dime. It's not just conservatives who are just ignoring past arguments or behaviors in favor of following the trend and "winning"
In this thread I'm assuming botnet is being used as shorthand? Apologies in advance for the semantics...
Usually the term botnet refers to a collection of bots, usually in the form of personal computers compromised by malware, that can be used to do (usually nefarious) work. You can employ a botnet to do a DDoS attack, send spam, roam the internet testing for vulnerabilities, make forum posts for link spam, all sorts of things.
But you can't really use one to run misinformation campaigns. You can use bots to pilot dummy accounts that can upvote your misinformation, but you still need people to craft the misinformation, and to make the dummy accounts look real. Though in less sophisticated cases there isn't much effort put into believability.
At this point we have a solid picture of what large scale social manipulation looks like from things that have come out about Russia's well funded and large scale campaigns. There's definitely automation involved, and employing botnets as needed isn't off the table, but it's largely run by people.
I don't know if clarifying that is useful or not, but I think there's value in understanding how misinformation works. One interesting bit about Russia's strategy is that they don't only focus on distributing misinformation, instead they put a lot of resources into finding and magnifying anything that creates conflict, regardless of who created the content.
Returning to the topic... I agree that some of what OP attributes to bots is likely more organic than not. But if it was controversial, Russian (and possibly Chinese) contractors were probably adding fuel to the fire.
And of course state actors aren't the only players, any reasonably successful company, or person, can afford to buy sophisticated misinformation campaigns these days.
I agree with your assessment and believe I have the same view?
I think it's important to distinguish that these aren't "millions of fake accounts posting views crafted by my enemies" so much as "some fake accounts enhancing the messaging of the things they want", and that still takes real humans not just to enact, but to believe it.
I see a lot of people acting like "their side" would never act so immature or fall for such things or be such hypocrites, so it must ALL be bots posting those messages or brigading or whatever. It's really not.
No argument, your post just happened to be the last one in thread where the term botnet was being used
It also doesn’t take a genius to realize that if you prefer Bernie to Biden, you should be in abject terror of any kind of behaviour that might sway votes to Trump.
As for the NYT, I have a free subscription to them through my job but I won't pay for them anymore because of their coverage of trans issues. They continually platform the "skeptic" or "whistleblower" and discount both the medical professionals doing the work of gender affirming care and trans voices. It's persistent and incredibly harmful to an already marginalized and demonized community
I'm non-binary, and while I don't receive (or need) gender affirming care beyond contraception, I just cannot support the paper as long as it continues.
Just to keep my thoughts in a single thread, I have been trying to seek out individual writers as well - Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Reich, Timothy Snyder, Erin Reed (@ErinintheMorning, specifically for trans issues). They tend to be historians focused on politics, or say specifically fascism.
I look to understand the bias of the folks I am reading more than I deliberately read things from say far right media. I challenge myself with further left media because I don't always agree but sometimes I think I should. I don't worry about my social media being an "echo chamber" because that's not what I use social media for. I also think it's worth analyzing who is writing things, even when you agree with it.
There are shitty people who say things I agree with, and sometimes they're still right about that thing (or my view is still reasonable) and sometimes I have to question why their writing sounded so appealing and maybe actually I don't want to be in agreement with them, so it's time to peel back some assumptions and reevaluate my thoughts. I find that a lot of incredibly harmful arguments can be made under the cover of "being reasonable" or worse IMO, "being rational."
That's more philosophy for me. I'm looking for more depth in my international news coverage than I'm getting now, hence the post I made.
Also please boycott us, it's fine, we deserve it as a nation. Maybe it's just the millennial in me but "we're trash" is a pretty standard vibe for the American left. (We could be better we keep not being better)
Yeah, I see this as the inevitable direction for... all other countries basically. Even Canada and Mexico. What I anticipate happening in the mid- to long-term future is a new global trade reorganization that is, as a global community, exclusionary to the USA. Countries and companies are scrambling to maintain what they can with the USA... for the short term. In the long term, none of them want to deal with this crap and will absolutely be looking to set up trade relations and agreements that step away from the putrid fount of destructive chaos being shat out from the current US leadership.
As a side-note, Putin is really, Really getting his return on investment on this one.
I'm gonna throw in a recommendation for Ground News. I've used the app for a few years now. It's a news aggregator that collects stories on the same topic from across the political spectrum. So for an example, this story:
European Union to put countermeasures to U.S. tariffs on hold for 90 days
There are 181 sources covering this story, and they're split along the political bias spectrum, and you can click through and see what AP is reporting vs. say, The Daily Wire.
They also track "blind spots" -- stories that one side is reporting on, but the other side isn't (or one side is reporting heavily on while there's spotty coverage on the other).
You can't avoid bias entirely. But being aware of it, and actively seeking out multiple POVs is the best way to get an idea of the whole picture in my opinion.
The one thing to keep in mind with Ground News is that it uses Ad Fontes, AllSides, and MediaBiasFactCheck to determine the lean of every news org. But those three are all American media ratings companies, and so they're a bit biased themselves, IMO... I suspect due to the Overton window in the US having gradually moved so far to the right. So while they may be relatively accurate for rating the lean of news orgs from an American's perspective, they're not all that accurate for rating the lean of those same news orgs for anyone living outside the US.
E.g. They rate the majority of mainstream Canadian news sources as "Left leaning" or outright "Left" despite most of them (like CTV, CityTV, CBC) being considered largely "Centrist" media by Canadian standards. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, Ad Fontes rates the National Post as "Centrist", which is hilariously inaccurate. AllSides and MBFC at least have National Post as "Leans Right" but even that is not entirely accurate, IMO. National Post are basically the Fox News of Canada, and 100% openly, unashamedly, full-on Right wing, and even regularly cross into "Far Right" territory when it comes to their op-eds in particular.
MediaFactBiasCheck has to say about the Associated Press. I personally don't find the analysis to be trustworthy based on this alone.
Fact checking a conservative is a form of bias? I would argue the opposite, that not fact checking them is a form of bias. If they wanted to argue they don't fact check liberals as a form of bias that would be a valid logical argument at least.
Yes, all true. They talk about their rating system here: https://ground.news/rating-system
The problem with ground news for me is that it relies far too heavily on a simplistic left-right scale tailored to the United States specifically. The notion of what a story is also gets complicated for more complex issues. Works well for specific singular events (bank robbery on day X in town Y) but much less for more systemic issues, long term development or comprehensive analysis and how everything is framed (relationship between country A and B deteriorating).
I agree with the criticisms other people have already posted in response to this comment, but I wanted to also add a link to this video by friendlyjordies, an Australian journalist, criticizing Ground News for the same reasons and elaborating on how to assess the motivations and biases behind journalism yourself.
Financial Times is definitely a good news source although it's weaker on the financial side than it used to be. This is my personal favourite source in the UK. Expect biases towards the status quo.
As you said BBC tends to tow the line of whichever government is in power. A good example of this lately is its negative coverage of disability support claimants right as the government plan to heavily cut financial support. Otherwise its biases tend to be toward the status quo although far less pronounced than most papers. The quality of reporting has dropped off a cliff in the last year or so though with regular misreporting and tabloid style journalism.
Unfortunately the credibility of the Guardian has gone down a lot over the years. I wouldn't trust them for balanced news coverage. They're similarly misleading in their reporting to other political papers such as the telegraph, independent and the times. Their podcast is very good though and something that is worth checking out.
I'm definitely open to suggestions for other news sources in the UK. I'm aware of Private Eye but sadly it's print only.
I'll just add that learning to find PRIMARY sources is huge.
Whatever story is being talked about, it's probably some slant on whatever was originally said, and living in the modern age it doesn't take tracking down the reporter who witnessed the speech to quickly find exactly what was actually said and claimed.
Any half decent reporting should include sources, ideally with links to it (and yes my definition does exclude a vast majority of reporting from being half decent). This can allow you to dig for what the fuck actually happened as opposed to everyone's ...heavily... ....edited.... ....view... ...of... ....things....
Reporting that does NOT include links or sources should be treated instantly as suspect.
I've divested my attention from NYT and WaPo over the last year. NYT has always had an inclination towards aggressively bothsiding in the name of clicks, as portrayed in the amazing Op-Ed sketch by Michelle Wolf. But their continual sanewashing of Trump's increasingly erratic behavior over the election finally did it for me, especially given that they had published something close to 100 op-eds critical of Biden's debate performance and questioning his faculties in the two weeks following his disastrous debate. And given Jeff Bezos' recent inclinations to treat WaPo as his personal blog, I've got no interest of relying on that as a primary outlet much either.
So, I've mainly switched to Associated Press and Reuters. It's dry, it's straightforward, it's neutral, and it tends to shy away from clickbait.
The main recommendation I have is to do that research. If you aren't certain about how to feel about what's happening with, to use your example, Palestine, then your best option is to learn about it - documentaries, books, even just reading the Wikipedia pages on the topic. It'll give you a grounding that helps to interpret news articles from any source and help you spot what a given article omits from its story.
My other suggestion is to read articles you disagree with. Tildes is good for that imo, every day there's more USAmerican news that I dislike, and I think it's valuable to analyse it - what parts of a story they focus on, what details they leave out, etc.
I don’t think it’s necessary to avoid ideological publications altogether if they sometimes post good links. But you do want to get more perspective.
One thing I recommend is, rather than sharing the first article you find about some event, doing a Google News search to see what else has been written about the same subject. There are some stories that mainstream news won’t touch, and others that every news publication covers. It’s useful to think about why that’s the case. If it would be big news and only disreputable news publications are picking it up, that’s a bit suspicious to me. It’s often useful to pick a better article than the one you saw originally, and it might be worth waiting a bit to see if any more news comes out.
Another thing to be wary of is the difference between sharing evidence and telling the reader what to think. What sources are they using? Evidence has to come from somewhere. On social media, people usually skip telling you what happened and go directly to reacting to it, so you need to do a news search to find out what happened.
As far as academic writers are concerned, one thing I like to see is that they should tell you what the consensus among scholars is, how it’s changed over time, and when they are disagreeing with it.
@crissequeira I started writing a response to your comment and accidentally pressed send before I was ready, then panicked and deleted it seconds later. Now I can no longer comment or edit directly so I'll have to write here. As such sadly this will now be an abridged version of my larger thoughts.
You seem to make being Christian a large part of your identity. I really appreciate your willingness to venture out and seek contrarian views but still find it odd how defensive you seem to be about perceived attacks on Christianity.
I try my best to consume a wide diet of news and also supplement with a Ground News subscription (which has its own issues as described elsewhere in this thread). I very much agree about the hate directed to the left, but haven't actually noticed any hate directed at Christians from the left or otherwise. I want to confirm that you're referring specifically to mainstream news here (as is the theme in this thread)? Christianity being the dominant religion in America, I've seen virtually no anti-Christian views expressed anywhere in media. Now if you're talking about small or independent operations, public opinion or online discourse then yes I've seen plenty of it there.
It's obviously not true that every Christian is homophobic, transphobic, sexist or Nazis. I've known many wonderful Christians who were thoughtful and empathetic and accepting (same for Muslims, Jews, atheists etc). But if you point to someone who IS homophobic, transphobic, sexist or a Nazi, you can almost guarantee they are a Christian (at least in America where, again, Christianity is the dominant religion).
For me, this doesn't directly speak to who you are as a Christian person (I'm sure you're wonderful) but more to where the culture is moving to more generally. If you care about these negative and valid perceptions then it's on the good ones to advocate for good and to push back on the bad within the group, otherwise it feels like complicity.
This was exemplified perfectly for me by the recent Surrounded video with Sam Seder. The blonde Christian nationalist girl says the quiet part out loud. She may not speak for you, but I haven't heard an outspoken alternative to that narrative.
As an ex-evangelical Christian, there's a big problem with Christians in the US, especially fundamentalists, having a persecution complex despite being privileged over other religious and non-religious groups due to their position of cultural hegemony. Ironically enough, this tends to result from being in echo chambers composed almost entirely of members of the same handful of conservative Christian denominations and having very little contact with or understanding of members of actual religious minorities. That plus a heaping helping of "When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
I'm going to push back on this one. Even leaving aside the question of "what is a Christian," there are lots of folks who are definitely not Christian who are all kinds of these negative things. Islam and Hindu are growing religions (in terms of numbers in the west), and proportionally are more homo/trans phobic and sexist. That new Hindu temple in NJ, the largest outside Asia, won't let female guests show too much skin, for example. (For more on that temple, (see here, via NBC news)[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/largest-hindu-temple-asia-opens-new-jersey-built-12500-volunteers-rcna119085]). Many Nazis are embracing paganism, as the originals did. Pretty sure LaVey was homophobic and sexist. Orthodox (and beyond) Judaism is very anti-queer and pro-gender roles.
So while your point may stand based on sheer numbers (and a very wide circle of what is "Christian"), it's a mischaracterization to say Christians are primarily the ones coming out against queer and women's issues.
I'd like to push back here, you quoted them stating "you can almost guarantee they're a Christian, at least in America..."
Hindus are less than 1% of the US population and the link you shared while demonstrating other human rights issues doesn't indicate a gender difference in modesty in the temple (rarely are the men's rules on modesty in places of worship highlighted but it's not typical that they can have shoulders out but women can't.) but does highlight women being included in the project in ways not typical.
The Jewish population in America is about 2.4% but the Orthodox only make up 9-11% of that (and we're talking all Orthodox not Ultra Orthodox vs Modern Orthodox, etc), so we're taking more like .24% of the US population. There are about 20k self identified "heathens" in the US, a term for Germanic neo-pagans with Asatru being one of those specific forms of heathenry and with only one branch of that one being specifically racist. But let's say all of them are the Nazis, that's .0059%. let's say all Hindus and Orthodox Jews share bigoted beliefs and act on them. We're under 1.25% of the US population.
In what world is even this worst case painting of multiple religions change the fact that it's almost certain the people we meet espousing these beliefs are identifying as Christian and not Hindu or as Orthodox?
Christian is a broad term but it's also self-appointed. Never mind that the majority of us were raised Christian so very logically the religious trauma we do have is statistically likely to be from Christians/Christian churches. Because we're culturally Christian, not Hindu or Jewish, statistically, and therefore those are the bad experiences we're most likely to have.
I'll never say that all Christians hate queer people or are misogynistic or whatever, but I'm exhausted by the response to those discussions being "what about tiny percentage of other people" instead of "those Christians are wrong and engaged in sinful behavior based on their actions.". In the US it is primarily Christians who say these things and are in power and use their Christianity as a reason, in government office, to harm others.
I wonder what we can agree on? I bet we can certainly agree that singling people out for characteristics that are not based on their choices is wrong. I bet we can agree that far too many people are doing this. Can we agree that every religious group has members that do this, and also members who do not? Can we agree that many people doing bad things in the name of, or under the banner of, religious profession is wrong? Can we agree that those people neither define the religion, and that we should not assume that any other person associated with that religions shares those same wrong views? Can we agree that a person singled out for views they don't hold, simply because they make a similar sounding confession, might share some of the same emotional experiences as those singled out for their sexual identities?
I am a victim of Christian religious abuse, and other abuse at the hands of Christians, I understand the fear and rage. And I consider active members of the Christian faith who stood by and did nothing to take responsibility for that abuse to be accountable to me (and every other victim) and God. But that still doesn't impugn Christianity, or Christ for that matter. People are capable of great evil, and will misuse trust, and shroud themselves in the clothes of the respectable, all to perpetrate great atrocity. Those of us who have an impulse toward good will best be served by reaching across any denomination which might divide us, join together to stop, prevent, and ameliorate the evil in the world.
If you'd like to pivot to things we agree on and away from the original point, we can, I suppose, but you responded to this:
By redirecting blame to other faiths and then I feel like you're now changing it again. Acknowledging that there's harm caused is worthwhile, and that the people in power in the US who are promoting these bigotries are predominantly Christian are more useful IMO than deflection. And neither causes division IMO, certainly not more than the initial harm (it's a bit like saying that pointing out racism is the real problem IMO) And I don't see the point in changing the subject.
I am friends with and "reach across" to many Christians. That's not in contradiction with acknowledgement of the harm Christianity by "virtue" of its members, has done past and present. I had to assume all of the members of the denominations you listed were hateful to even reach 1.25% of the American population. By the same metric, if I assume all Christians are hateful we're at something like 2/3 of the US population. I don't assume that but it's why I think your choices here were worse than anything anyone said about Christianity in this whole thread. Others' wrongs don't excuse our own, certainly not the wrongs of people who believe they have the correct faith as determined by their God.
Personally:
It's just wild to me to say "but they, the Hindus and the pagans and the Orthodox Jews, are also bad" as a response. And I can't get over that. It's like the least "Christ-like" thing to and did nothing to make me feel like actually "Christians" aren't the problem.
While there was a weird fascination with Norse myth and occultism among many Nazi leaders, claiming the Nazis "embraced paganism" is enough of an overstatement that it's simply wrong. Nazi Germany was overwhelmingly Christian, and while there was hostility towards religion from many in higher positions of leadership and persecution of Christian churches by the Nazis when they were in power, this was mostly due to the church's position as a powerful entity independent from the state, and opposition to the Christian church among Nazi leaders was principally coming from opposition to religion in general as being unscientific. The vast majority of members of the Nazi party were Christians and paid church tax, and most former members of the Nazi party who were in the Bundestag after the war were members of the two Christian democratic political parties (CDU and CSU). Even among the higher leadership there was nothing approaching an embrace of traditional Norse paganism as actual religious practice like modern neo-pagans. If there was a separate non-Christian religion that the Nazis could be said to have embraced, it would be Nazism itself as a quasi-religious cult.
Agreed I generalized a little too much, mostly in the service of brevity. There are different interpretations of terms like Christian or Nazi. Nazi can be meant literally or more generally as neo-Nazi or even fascist.
For example while I wouldn't call people in support of Trump's immigration policy of sending Americans without due process to a concentration camp in another country as Nazi's, it certainly is fascist and straight out of Hitler's playbook. For many people it's a distinction without a difference.
Likewise Christian is often seen more broadly as representing white religiosity in America. Westborough Baptist Church or Mega churches can easily represent Christians, whether you feel it's an unfair characterization or not. At the end of the day, to the uninitiated, it feels like there are more similarities than differences, and your personal feelings on the prosperity gospel are not likely to affect your views on gays.
I didn't intend to pick on Christianity specifically other than responding to a comment, and I do recognize other religions have equally troubling views. I've known many people from different religions and have seen their tolerance for acceptance be generally tied to their level of education and material conditions. I don't find it useful to compare the religions of impoverished third world countries with Americans living in the richest country on earth; they haven't had the same privilege of caring about social issues when they struggle to feed their families. But I do agree, the larger issue seems to be religious conservatism more than Christianity individually.
It brings me back to a conversation I had with a very friendly and thoughtful coworker who was surprised to hear I wasn't a proud Christian. He seemed flabbergasted that I didn't believe in his exact beliefs, and questioned my source of morality. He asked what was to stop me from raping and murdering if not the fear of eternal damnation. I simply answered empathy, but the thought seemed to escape him. It was sad to witness, and felt very much like a self-report; that the only thing keeping him moral was his religion.
This made me laugh. lol Thanks for that.
Well, I don’t know, to be honest. But all the “influencers” swear on their mothers’ graves that Ground News is the service that will help you to sort out where the blind spots are, by giving you a list of who is reporting on what. I never used the service, so I can’t vouch for it, but I have always wanted to. Maybe one day, when I can afford it.
As a Christian, it is difficult for me to stay informed. I want to, because I do believe that it is a civic duty to be somewhat informed about what’s happening around us, locally as well as globally. But having the beliefs that I do, I also struggle to find outlets that don’t either only insult me, or only repeat my thoughts back to me.
Of course, I will always have a tendency to lean towards a right-wing bubble when I seek outlets to follow, due to the Culture Wars™ revolving so much around social issues where, because of my beliefs, I mostly find myself on the “socially conservative side” (and I mean “find myself”, because I didn’t ask politicians, media, or society to conflate my religious beliefs with politics). Knowing that I have this tendency, and in order for me not to become just another angry person who “wants the other team to lose”, I have, over the years, intentionally sought out left-leaning outlets, just to get a different perspective.
Result? I couldn’t handle it, and I will admit why: It already gave me a headache to follow right-leaning outlets, because of all the negativity and the hate (directed at the other side). Now imagine me reading all the same negativity and hate, but I, a Christian, am the target of it, because allegedly, all Christians are homophobic, transphobic, sexist, and Nazis by default. I’m exaggerating for comedic effect, but the overt insults occur often enough, that it makes it just too difficult to not take it personally.
Honestly, I don’t understand why news outlets need to report on the news and include their opinions at all, or why they need to strategically omit certain details to spin a narrative. If they have an opinion and want to share it, then more power to them, but then why not have a separate section for opinions? If there was one, then I would even want to read it on occasion! But when I am seeking information, then I want just that: information. I want to stay informed about what happened, when it happened, how it happened, and who was involved in it. I don’t care to know what X, Y, or Z thinks about those matters. it distracts and confuses me. How I interpret events is for me to study and make up my own mind about.
So, I have yet to find an outlet that just informs, and nothing else. I kid you not, when a major event takes place that I want to know more about, I immediately go check Wikipedia. Often there will already be an article that lists the facts of the matter. But that’s not a very convenient way to stay informed. Sometimes I also check AP (which has been mentioned here already), which the only outlet that never gave me the impression that it is trying to do more than to just inform me. I still don’t find it the most convenient way to stay informed.
In late 2023, I got so fed up with social media that I made a New Year’s resolution for 2024 to delete all of it (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, 9gag, and others that I’m forgetting about). I have stuck to it. I’ve been very happy with this “new life” of mine. That change also cut out almost all the news that I was consuming because it was mostly coming from those platforms. I recently also reduced the number of YouTube channels that I am a subscriber of to just 10, none of which have anything to do with news (let alone politics).
In the meantime, I found other ways to stay informed in a manner that is not necessarily “convenient”, but is at least more fun and helps me to avoid falling into some bubble and getting radicalized without noticing it.
The main way I do this is by “going into” left-leaning communities.
So, for example, I started using bearblog.dev (highly recommended). So far, all the blogs that I have been reading on there, are run by left-leaning authors. They will often write about current events, so I get an idea about what is going on that way, and if I want to know more about a certain event, then I go out and do some research. Sometimes it’s hard to read even some of my favorite bloggers (I follow them via RSS), because, running their own blog, they probably feel safe and will spew hate at Christians on occasion. It is what it is. What I like about it though, is that I’m getting personal takes from “real people”, do you know what I mean? Folks who are working class and struggle to make ends meet as much as I do. They often have interesting opinions about why the world is as chaotic as it is, and what can be done about it. And because they are writers, they also tend to be the kinds of people who make a little extra effort to do the research.
I also managed to start a Discord server that seven authors from bearblog.dev have joined so far. All of them firmly support the political left. They know that I am a Christian. We still get along and often have very good conversations. It is also on Discord that I am a member at a server that I joined many years ago, which has close to 1,000 members now. Only around 20 to 30 of those (including me) participate on a daily basis, and we often discuss current events. It just so happens that I, again, am the only Christian. I’m actually not very welcome there (though I have a very good relationship with a few of them), just because of the label “Christian” being tied to me. However, almost right in the beginning, I figured out that I can avoid getting insulted or accidentally start drama, by simply staying quiet around certain topics. If we’re discussing something that I agree with them with on, then I’ll go say so and add my opinion to the mix. If not, then I stay quiet. I try to be careful with what I give pushback on, and only do it mildly, mostly in the form of thought-provoking questions. It’s another way for me to stay in the know about current events (some of which I later look up more on), and get an “opposite opinion” of the one that I’m used to hearing in my social circle in real life, which is almost entirely made up of Christians.
Part of the reason why I was eager to join Tildes after I was made aware of it by one of the bearblog.dev authors, was exactly because this seemed to me like a better alternative to Reddit, where I would also be able to read opinions about current events that lean on the opposite side of the political spectrum of my social bubble. Thankfully, I have found that people here are even more careful to do their research (case in thread), so not only do I read more nuanced takes, but I also haven’t gotten any hate for being a Christian yet.
So, for me, I gave up on staying informed by avoiding biased sources, and instead, just sought out the people who have a bias that is opposite to mine, and that has kept me up to date on what is really on the minds of the masses, as well as mentally stimulated and enriched me.
C-SPAN. They are dry, un-interpretive, and you're not likely to find anyone putting together concise summaries for you, but they are a very high standard for neutrality in my opinion.
Edit: also, on the general topic of the intertwining of anger / hate / division / polarizing cultural issues with Left and Right leaning news media... this is one of the tools of political power. Tapping into anger, hatred, resentment etc... is a means of solidifying a hold on a voting base and retaining political sway with that base through the approach of cementing the impossibility of 'switching sides' for members of that base. Such tactics are seen with many political entities / parties / nations through history, because unfortunately they work. These tactics are not conducive to a healthy society or fair governance, but as a tool that works, it is all but guaranteed to get used. This does not excuse the act of using this tool of course, but it does explain it.
The way to fight against such tactics isn't fast or easy. The way to fight it is widespread education from a young age on the history of such things, of critical thinking and understanding of such tactics and how governments / political parties / advertising / etc... seek to influence or control what people think and believe, so they see it happening and aren't so easily swayed. THIS TAKES DECADES. THIS TAKES GENERATIONS. As such it is a very vulnerable process. This is also why autocratic regimes seek to destroy educational institutions - the educated citizen is the enemy of the autocratic regime.
I make an effort to consume a diverse media diet. Since I barely ever spend time on social media, this is what I do with my phone time instead.
The Register, https://www.theregister.com/: IT news
Pluralistic/Cory Doctorow, https://pluralistic.net/: Blogger, blue
Drudge Report/Matt Drudge, https://drudgereport.com/: Mentioned upthread, very republican but anti Trump
El País, https://elpais.com/america/: Spanish language
American Prospect, https://prospect.org/: Also very blue
STAT, https://www.statnews.com/: Biotech/pharma
First Round Review, https://review.firstround.com/: SF vibes
UnHerd, https://unherd.com/us/: UK based, kinda culture heavy
Jacobin, https://jacobin.com/: Socialist
Plus a few random substacks (a favorite is Casey Lewis) and TL;DR on youtube. I also try to keep track of some of the mainstream media. The papers I like are WSJ and FT mostly and for magazines its NY Mag and the Atlantic.
And NYC is lucky to have local media too:
Gothamist, https://gothamist.com/
Streetsblog, https://nyc.streetsblog.org/: Transit/infrastructure
Hell Gate, https://hellgatenyc.com/all-posts/
NYFocus, https://nysfocus.com/
Brick Underground, https://www.brickunderground.com/
EV Grieve, https://evgrieve.com/?m=1
It's so interesting to see the same stories from different media lenses. Take the tariffs and their reversal yesterday
I don’t automatically buy your assertions about botnets. I would need to see more evidence before I grant that this is happening.
There are certainly instances where evidence of manipulation has come out. I’m specifically thinking of this story about a smear campaign against Blake Lively, reported by The New York Times in December. It’s wild and shocking.
I think a lot of the ways discourse changes over time could be shaped by psychological and social psychological dynamics. For example, who feels compelled to speak when on political candidate selection. Or people who are somewhat on the fence or somewhat open-minded looking on the bright side when someone other than their top pick for candidate is chosen. Or the way that enthusiasm for a candidate can be contagious and build momentum over time. And so on.
For example, I have no reason to think the enthusiasm that built for Kamala Harris after took over the presidential campaign from Joe Biden was anything other than primarily organic. Of course the campaign was trying to generate enthusiasm, but they only wish they could generate enthusiasm like that for whatever candidate they want. It’s more a complex, subtle thing than people just being manipulated by the media or political elite, or by propaganda campaigns.
A lot of my exposure to different political ideas has happened through my own research and poking around papers, books, and podcasts, rather than just following a mainstream news source (or any news source). For example, when I was in university, and I was much more enamoured with the ideas of socialism and anti-capitalism than I am today, I looked up and read papers about socialist economics because I had heard enough general theorizing and wanted to see some concrete proposals for how a socialist economy would be run.
This was one of the biggest factors in my turn away from socialism. Not reading proponents of capitalism make convincing arguments. But reading socialist economics papers and finding them lacking. Feeling like the proponents of socialism had a real lack of good ideas.
Also, reading Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which was such a contrast to works like Karl Marx’s Capital, which I had read in school. It turns out 150 years of progress in economics really makes a difference. Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century reads like a work of social science, whereas Marx’s Capital has sections where the digs into the price of corn or whatever, but also has long sections where he waxes about inscrutable Hegelian philosophy or discusses 19th century misconceptions about ancient human history and anthropology.
This made me open up further to the idea that 21st economics could take seriously problems like wealth/income equality and examine them rigorously, “scientifically” based on things like 100 years of French tax records or whatever.
The main (sole?) policy Piketty advocates in that book is a wealth tax. He advocates starting with a small wealth tax, which will allow economists to have more data about wealth, upon which further research and policy can be based. This made its way to Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign platform. One of Piketty’s graduate students was on her policy team.
In Piketty’s subsequent book, Capital and Ideology, he advocates for some radical political and economic reforms, but he approaches the topic with a level of intellectual humility and acknowledging uncertainty that I find refreshing. I don’t know if he’s right and he doesn’t know if he’s right, but it’s an interesting jumping off point.
So, that’s a brief story about a major political “conversion” I had, which maybe, hopefully, can tell you a little something about being exposed to new ideas.
Nowadays, I really like The Ezra Klein Show. I don’t listen to most of the political episodes because politics is stressful and I need to take it low doses.
A pretty cool thing about Ezra is he’s willing to entertain ideas that differ significantly from what he already thinks. This includes ideas from people across the political aisle, but also ideas that aren’t currently part of mainstream partisan political discourse at all. For example, I remember him saying at one point that he thinks about the stories he might be missing as a reporter, that would seem important in retrospect when looking back on the current era but that aren’t on his radar (or most reporters’ radar). The example he gave was CRISPR.
On his podcast, he also discusses topics like psychology, psychedelics, loneliness, polyamory, and other things that have importance for the world but aren’t really part of the news or mainstream political debates. I find that refreshing and it also gives me a chance to engage with the podcast and not be stressed out by news or politics.
Someone linked it here a few months ago and I've really enjoyed it since: News Minimalist
Basically AI reads a shit ton of news stories and grades them on things like significance and reliability. You can subscribe for a fee, but I just follow the free RSS feed and every couple days I receive a list of like the top 3-6 headlines around the world. It's not perfect, but it helps a lot in keeping things tight and subjective in a world that's constantly vying for your eyeballs and clicks. The feature that really exemplifies this is that there are days when it just won't send you an update, because there wasn't anything that scored significantly enough that day. So it's not just sending you stuff for the sake of sending you stuff, but only when the news is significant enough to warrant it.
There have been tweaks made to the algorithm over the last year or so. It's still not perfect in my opinion, but getting a lot better than what it was a few months back. Definitely check it out!
I have advice for you that is not directly related to getting more news sources.
The comment is that I think you already are doing enough. I get the impression you feel deeply responsible to know what you don't know, and give everyone a fair chance, and understand the opinions of people you may not agree with. I think this is admirable, and it's clear you already do this.
I would advise you pick a few that you want to follow for some period of time, like 3 months, and just focus on those. It is not possible to know everything, everywhere, all at once ;) This will allow you to kind of go deeper and limit your scope. You'll get to know the paper better, so to speak.
Then, decide if you want to try a couple new ones on your next cycle. Or keep some of the ones you already have, it's all up to you.
My last piece of advice that is probably unorthodox, is to get information from real people in your life. I don't mean use them as sources of factual news, but if someone in your life says something confusing to you or that you don't agree with, you can often look that up later or genuinely ask, "where did you get this information so I can read/see it for myself?". This also encourages you to seek out alternatives opinions, if you realize you are in an echo chamber, which may lead to you meeting people you otherwise would not know or understand.
There are two parts to your question, but I'll start with the second.
As you have already identified, you shouldn't rely primarily on news aggregators. I don't think it's really possible to avoid group-think -- to some extent, it's probably built into our DNA -- but you can at least avoid algorithm-driven group-think by finding articles directly from the paper's website. The most important articles will generally be the most visible.
I would also advise people to give approximately zero weight to anecdotes on social media. I don't think people appreciate enough that journalists, especially those at preeminent papers, are experts in their field; they will generally do a much better job at summarizing a complex issue than, say, some anonymous redditor. That does not mean that journalists are faultless or unbiased. But they at least sign their names to the articles they write and can be held accountable for their words. Most social media users are just parroting information from an article anyway, so you may as well just skip the game of telephone.
Finally, consider visiting the primary source if it's available. Supreme Court decisions, for instance, are often surprisingly readable.
I like the The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. I realize people complain about the first two (for valid reasons), but they're both considered newspapers of record, and their editorial boards are considerably less obnoxious than The Wall Street Journal's. That said, of the three papers I read regularly, I would say that The Atlantic has the most thought-provoking articles; it just doesn't publish as frequently as the other two. (I realize that it sounds a bit expensive to subscribe to three newspapers, but I will let you in on a secret: you can access virtually all of The Atlantic's articles for free via their RSS feed.) I also supplement my media diet with my Google news feed, predominantly for local news coverage.
I left Reddit the morning of the election due to echo chamber effects and haven't gone back. I don't miss it. Tildes is my new reddit, which is far healthier and less time consuming.
I don't get news from anywhere anymore. I'm not proud of it and it's not healthy, buy I don't know how to cope with the parent or future outlook. I have kids and I care about the future immensely, but I feel like there's not much that news does to change my behavior or outlook.
These two sites are considered center right by media fact check. I check them out occasionally but I largely avoid regular “conservative” pro trump sources like Fox and talk radio.
The Bulwark
If you look at this site in the last few months you might think it is liberal but it absolutely is not. It’s just that trump is that bad.
The Drudge Report
This site has a very odd tabloid visual appearance and headline style that makes it seem disreputable but it has a lot of breaking stories that are proven correct.
I’ve been loving sarah Longwell (bulwark founder) podcast Focus Groups. She’s soliciting real peoe opinions across the spectrum, and many is it enlightening.
Also I had no idea Drudge Report was still cooking. It has an interesting perspective.
You already said this in your post, but there is no perfect news outlet, and there is no such thing as unbiased reporting. Don't get caught up in this idea that there is an ultimate truth that exists somewhere in the middle. It's better to understand the perspective of each source and get your information from a variety of sources. And keep your critical thinking cap on at all times! Quick sidenote: I'm American, and despite your line about being European, this post is pretty America-centric, so pretty much everything I say will be from that perspective.
I think it's important to stay up to date via reputable mainstream outlets. As others have mentioned, NYT, WaPo, WSJ, The Guardian, AP all have good daily reporting and they're going to give you a solid idea of what is going on. More importantly, they'll give you a good idea of what most sane people are thinking. Having said that, they also have major biases, especially when it comes to foreign policy. The framing is never going to stray far from the US State Department's perspective. The last 18 months of reporting on Israel and Palestine have made that very clear. So keep that in mind.
IMO, the best sources that challenge the mainstream/liberal/capitalist framework that dominates those outlets are: Democracy Now!, Drop Site News, and The Intercept. For long-form, investigative magazines, The Nation and Mother Jones pair well with their mainstream counterparts like The Atlantic, The Economist, and The New Yorker. A lot of people have a tendency to write those off as biased and therefore untrustworthy, but they rely on solid reporting and feature interviews with experts who are well versed on the issues they are covering. There's a big difference between that and something like Fox & Friends, which somehow gets a similar rating on The Chart. (click here for a good explanation on the many problems with 'The Chart')
I think the best/easiest combo is to subscribe to one of the papers of record and listen to Democracy Now. Then check in with the magazines at your leisure for the big stuff, and drop in on one of the big right-wing media machines to understand the talking points behind your conservative friend's/family's views and every unhinged instagram/twitter comment you encounter in the wild.
You're already doing the most important thing which is to read from multiple sources. Personally I care less so about bias than about accuracy, factual reporting and expertise. I think Democracy Now is a good example of a publication with an arguable bias but (as far as I can tell) good journalistic work and they cite/reference their work. Ie their bias comes from the issues and events that they choose to cover primarily and not from misleading or manipulative langage. I'm fine with that.
For getting an overview of what happened recently I appreciate digests // press reviews and can vouch for the German Presseschau which selects and summarizes different voices from reputable news papers on topical issues. They also include an audio recording of the whole ordeal by a professional speaker.
Now if someone can recommend other press reviews like this, ideally in English, I'm a happy taker.
I signed up during a $1/week promotion, and every time I get to the end and try to cancel, they keep renewing it. I mainly like the crosswords and having the Wordle bot to evaluate my play.
I don't think it's important to keep up with the news, per se, but instead read/listen to trusted commentary on current events (... a rose by any other name?) Well, on that note, I prefer to listen... and, so, my recommendations (generally left-leaning to straight-out leftist, for what it's worth):
In order from least-leftist to most?
Well, this is very USofA-centric (besides, ironically, American Prestige, as they really delve into world news), but I think can give a good overview of the going's on in the news in a more focused and informed way than what a reporter might present. I don't think I can really see myself getting news from traditional outlets these days because, try as they might, I think journalists often miss the trees for the forest.