Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and militias in Iraq and Syria.

Whenever western media outlets speak of these groups they seem to prefix the term Iranian-Backed.

I'm starting to raise my eyebrows a bit at how universally the term is being used. It feels almost mandated. My understanding is these are indeed supported financially and materially by Iran, but they also very much operate independently. So the extent of the relationship is unknown or at least debated.

Does this strike anyone else as odd or suspicious? Is this use fair and justified?

My mind can't help but wander to the laying of a propaganda foundation for direct conflict with Iran.

Every few months I get the itch to support journalism and expand my news from the low quality high fluff news sources that tend to be free and subscribe to some long-form sources of news, opinion, and investigative journalism, but every time I go through the same process of pricing subscriptions, struggling to decide which one, and then finally just giving up and not subscribing to any of them.

If money was no object I'd probably subscribe right now to:

• The Atlantic
• The New Yorker
• Harpers
• The Economist
• National Review
• WSJ
• NYT

(trying to focus on a variety of political leanings, but mostly from generally high-factuality sources)

I like Apple News+ in concept, and the price is decent, but after a trial subscription I felt like the UI was difficult to navigate, difficult to search and filter, and the news sources were still a subset of the entire publications. I also have to wonder whether the journalists are sufficiently compensated by Apple or whether they get pennies compared to a direct subscription.

So, I come here seeking recommendations -- perhaps somebody here has found a good solution to this problem?

There used to be a time some decades ago when media was often touted as a separate pillar of democracy, as in it was supposed to keep checks on the govt of the day. Mass Journalism was a professional branch of study or course in universities (probably still is?) and it used to be highly principled. In fact, being principled was often thought of as a quality of journalism more than anything else!

But in today's world, I see that changing a lot. Most media houses across the world are state controlled media, you can see it from the kind of stories they come up with, etc. More than that, media has directly become a function of electoral politics, you'll hardly find any content which relates to society or the ordinary working class human, as separate from electoral politics.

You'll hardly find any media house vehemently or openly criticizing its own country's govt (though funnily, each will be criticizing other countries' govts and/or based on ideology!). Even when the criticism is there, it's in a very controlled and nuanced form. It's not so difficult to make 2+2 equals 4 here?

This didn't used to happen in earlier decades. When I grew up watching Doordarshan TV, there was hardly any news at all in India - except for that one 9:00 PM news show which came once every day, that was in fact a quiet and peaceful world to live in! This constant bombardment of political news has become a problem. I think, we need news which is people centric and talks about the issues of working class citizens. Do you think such a kind of media will ever evolve?

I was nervous to post this in ~news, because it's more of a question than a story, but here goes.

I'm looking to turn down the temperature, pace, and volume of my news consumption habits, as well as limit how much time I stare at a screen (I do that enough professionally). I've recently experimented with subscribing to fewer, higher-quality news sources and getting them delivered via RSS*. This works pretty well, but I'm still left looking for something even slower. Something like a weekly news publication, which is delivered once a week in a print format that I can read away from a screen.

I've subscribed to Sunday papers in the past, but it's too much and there's a lot in it - I think I'm looking for a little .. less. A slimmer publication, fewer pages. Almost as if someone selected the top five to seven stories covered on the Wikipedia current events page in the week, then wrote a few thousand words apiece on each. Something I can make it through with my coffee on Sunday mornings in a few hours.

Does anyone do this or have recommendations? If so, what do you read and how would you assess that publication? I think I've tried a fair number in the past, but I will take anyone's suggestions. Thank you so much in advance.

--
*I use Reeder for macOS / iOS - which is great btw, and it's shocking how much of the modern web still supports RSS. Highly recommend folks reconsider RSS in general.

Here in Brazil we have:

Globo, the generic "centrist"/neoliberal TV news outlet. Used subtle methods of backing a right-wing candidate in the 90s who then ruined the Brazilian economy and (apparently) massively exaggerated the Car Wash operation, even if Lula did something wrong.

Record, which is owned by the largest evangelical Church here and I'd imagine is often a mouthpiece for them.

Cultura, which is the only traditional news outlet here that can actually be called left-leaning, and I don't think they are as ostensibly "moderate" as the American news outlets, which is good.

Band, which is the one all about showing all the crime all the time, presumably to justify the law and order policies as opposed to welfare to it's viewers.

From here we have various (mostly but not entirely) right-wing and religious 'news' channels.

Online there are news outlets like Nexo, El País (for Brazil) and the international news outlets which will occasionally cover the big Brazilian news stories, but I don't think most of them are very popular, at least among most people who, for how divided we are, aren't that political, especially if you aren't a Bolsonarist or Leftist.

I've recently gotten into paying the wall rather than jumping it.
Until recently my only paid subscription was The Correspondent, before it unfortunately passed away.

I'm now subscribed to:

• The New Yorker
  A publication I've long wanted to subscribe to, but never did. It lives up to its reputation, only wish it had an Android app.
• The New York Times
  This one I started on the basic subscription, but upgraded to All Access for the crosswords and bonus subscription. I've found the Cooking subscription included to be quite interesting too.
• The Wall Street Journal
  I subscribed to this one to provide me another perspective apart from NYT. I also have known them to uncover many stories in the past, and would like to have access whenever that does happen.
• The Washington Post
  This one I'm not sure how I feel, I don't feel right giving Bezos money, or rather trusting him as a news source—but I got a pretty good deal on it for the year. I know The Washington Post rates highly in terms of credibility, but I can't help but be skeptical.
• The Information
  This one I started before all the ones listed above, I've enjoyed it, it provides tech news, but I think I'm going to cancel it as soon as my billing period is over. They make quality articles and such, but they're a bit pricey for my taste.

Anyway, I'd like to know what publications y'all subscribe to. Do you get paper or are you all-digital? And are there any credible conservative sources to broaden the perspectives I see?

Asked because I like the idea of reading about the past and feel unsatisfied by r/history and r/askhistorians mainly because reddit's search isn't that great and those subs have a much wider scope than most news archives.

I'm gonna do this on a Q&A format. Note that "old news" doesn't need to be news articles, it can be blogs for example.

If you read old news/articles, where do you get them from/find them?

What kind of "old news" do you read?

What historical period do you tend to read about?

If you're reading an article about a historical event you remember, how does your memory tend to compare to those articles?

How often do you do it?

What do you think about subreddits like r/twentyyearsago, since they're basically trawling through those news archives?

Tl;dr typical news sources tend to prioritize political and governmental events and the things that surround them, like economics and social issues, even if they cover everything, and by covering everything they probably stretch themselves thinly among what they don't prioritize. (At least that's how it feels.)

A few examples of what I'm thinking of are:

Foreign Affairs, who focus specifically on geopolitics

The Scientific American, which focuses specifically on... science.

Aeon, which seems to focus on "the humanities". (vaaague.)

So... what are your examples of news sources/publications like this that you follow?

It always bothers me that I know American politics presumably pretty well but my own nation's politics on a nearly surface level so I guess I'll ask this, but this can be for practically any country that isn't the US or maybe Britain.

Since this is specifically for your countries the sources can be limited to your country's language.

One source of Brazilian (my nation's) news I've heard of that isn't a from a large cable channel like CNN is Nexo, although the paywall makes serious consumption inviable simply because my parents wouldn't pay for me to read news of all things, but if you can, do it, the charts are great and the rest seems pretty good.

I find this to be a pretty important question when news organizations like Fox News are literally aiming to help the Republican Party to stay on power, CNN and MSNBC promote centrist candidates and media aggregators ranging from r/the_donald to r/chapotraphouse banning anyone who opposes them. Thing is, these are the most well known examples. How could we tell faulty media sources and aggregators apart from good ones in mass? Do you think that's possible?

I’m down to just Hacker News and Tildes for my daily digest. I think using link aggregators is a great way to gain exposure to outside perspectives.

Occasionally, I check the Wikipedia main page for juicy world news and featured articles.

I see a lot of posts referencing NY Times articles.

NY Times is behind a paywall.

Are there a large number of folks paying to subscribe to NY Times? Are there other more nefarious methods for reading the occasional article?

Oof Grandma... Get your head out of your ass woman.(This is in Jest, Grandma knows and thought it was funny. ya'll chill)* Where are you getting your news lately because I just sent you an article from our national news organization and you just told me you can't believe it... Why?

We live and love in the beautiful free country of Canada and despite any individual political leader, we can find comfort in the fact that we have many elected officials that listen to their constituents and ultimately intend to better the lives for our nation. Canada is a mighty developed country and she has designated important bodies to help protect us from the wolves that prey on the weak. We have the CBC a nationally funded non profit organization that has authorship and integrity to the journalists they hire and a long history of helping the truth and redacting and outright dismissing disinformation (now more commonly called fake news). In this article I've sent you, it has sources directly involved in the measles outbreak, including doctors who are licensed through a board that verifies their integrity and ethics and authority in medicine. Also sourced is the CDC; another body that was appointed by Canada herself to keep her citizens healthy and safe, these are not groups of scientists with a vested interest to lie to anyone as that would jeopardize the safety to our entire nature... Yet these highly educated and well funded scientists are refuting your hypothesis grandma.

I think in order to understand what is happening here we need to both step back and ground ourselves in a neutral territory towards a scholarly pursuit and work towards the advancement of our society. To do this we need to frame our perspective to that of a scholar to which I think you and I both agree we are proud to call ourselves anyway. Me, a university student and you an independent researcher: truth be told, as a student of an organization like Ryerson, I have access to a wider breadth of knowledge in our online resources and databases of peer reviewed articles that I can search through with ease, but our goal will be the same and can be achieved only if you think critically with everything you read - you seem well versed in this regard so kudos let's proceed.

As a critical thinker and scholar we are nothing without our authority which is provided through our knowledge-base in factual information. I don't need to be an expert in biology, medicine, or even journalism to be able to have confidence in reading the news article I sent you; but as a scholar I have the ability to verify the authority to the people making the claims in the article. Every person involved in a professionally investigated article are sourced and cited and provide proof to their authority. It's why the CBC discloses their journalists and is also why they'll happily fire them if they fuck up - their integrity is on the line - same with every scientist working for the CDC. Canada does not have a vested interest in the perpetuation of fake news and disinformation, this isn't fucking Russia! (or the U.S. for that matter - Fox news is GOP run television FYI).

This is critical thinking and needs to be understood before you assume authority to the Facebook posts you read. Think of the platform you are getting your news from - Facebook: an American company with a vested interest in advertising to its users. They are NOT a news agency and have zero regulation in verifying the authority of authorship. Anyone can write any shit they like, and the more clicks they get, the more money Facebook makes. In-fact they will happily sell any message you like so long as you're willing to pay for it. I can post just about anything under the guise of "free speech" so long as it does not contain "hate speech" (technically a crime in Canada) and then pay Facebook a couple hundreds of dollars to get that post higher up on my friend's walls. It's how their platform works and regardless of whether a post has been promoted by Facebook themselves or not they are in the business of clicks. In this age of terrorism and fear mongering, the posts, articles, links, and videos that induce the most controversy and fear will gain the most clicks - this is human nature! Facebook doesn't care, they got their money as they are now one of the largest messaging services in the world, second only to WeChat which is a government controlled chinese messaging app linked to their social credit system meant to repress their citizens... hmm...

As Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said in his thesis Understanding Media, “For any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary… But the greatest aid to this end is simply in knowing that the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as in the first bars of a melody.” unfortunately the advent of social media has only perpetuated the scaling of the media, the importance of the messages, and the shallow knowledge-base of its users to apply the unwary en masse.

To quote a larger bit of McLuhan to drive this point home:

“The American stake in literacy as a technology or uniformity applied to every level of education, government, industry, and social life is totally threatened by the electric technology. The threat of Stalin or Hitler was external. The electric technology is within the gates, and we are numb, deaf, blind, and mute about its encounter with the Gutenberg technology, on and through which the American way of life was formed. It is, however, no time to suggest strategies when the threat has not even been acknowledged to exist. I am in the position of Louis Pasteur telling doctors that their greatest enemy was quite invisible, and quite unrecognized by them.” (McLuhan was a man before his time., this was written in 1954) “For the “content” of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. The effect of the medium is made strong and intense just because it is given another medium as “content.” The content of a movie is a novel or a play or an opera.
The effect of the movie form is not related to its program content. The “content” of writing or print is speech, but the reader is almost entirely unaware either of print or of speech.”

Do not kid yourself, social media is no different than any other media. The content of the message is NOT the message. Who is posting the dribble and fake news and WHY? understand the author and their authority and you will begin to think critically again. You wouldn't pick up a history book without knowing who authored it would you? Facts are facts, and fake-news is disinformation by another name.

Now to return to our CBC article about measles and your claim that there is a connection to the MMR vaccine which has the potential to cause autism (despite how fucking stupid this shit is, I'll entertain your hypothesis for a moment).

1. Where are your critical sources and statistics to prove any semblance to propose such an outlandish hypothesis? Because I can't seem to find any real ones in my databases here and every time I've asked you for your proof you've failed to provide any.

2. If the vaccine were to cause autism you accept that there is a chance this vaccine may put a child at harms risk. The reality is you are saying you'd rather risk your child potentially getting a deadly disease and potentially becoming maimed and permanently injured through contact with the disease and worse contaminating others and spreading the harmful pathogens to others just out of fear of potentially could get autism... again, supported without any fact or evidence? Janet's post from Antivax-moms facebook group is non an authority of fact and no medical body has rightfully confirmed a case of autism to the MMR vaccine... so where is our proof again? Big-vaccine is out to give autism to our children?

3. By not immunizing your children you are immorally upholding your child's life over that of your nations and against those you interact with on a day to day basis. You are no longer in a small town - we are a massive country with very loose borders so we can invite friends and family to visit. But when we don't protect our basecamp, the wolves will get in. That goes for fake news just as much as it goes for measles. We already have guards on duty to protect our children, our sick, our immune deficient elders and infants from harmful diseases. These treatments work and you and I are the proof in the pudding. Where is this form of tribalism coming from where you would rather "protect" from autism but not measles, mumps, and rubella? These are the wolves we must fight, and we can't let our guard down just because a post of Facebook has a few thousand clicks.

We are in the age of disinformation and globalization, whether we like it or not there are a select few who are controlling the messages we perpetuate online. Unfortunately it's the confusion and lack of authority to the messages that has guided us towards a harmful future that is now killing children all over the world.
https://medium.com/the-method/anti-vaccination-is-killing-children-in-europe-658415c54a04

stop spreading misinformation and think critically. You are better than that... you are a scholar!

I love you, and I hope you take this to heart.

EDIT*
Seeing that the post was more appropriately moved to ~talk I'm hoping I can start a bit more of a dialogue that has unraveled from talking with the rest of my family. I told my internal family about my conversation with Grandma which we've all had by now, we bring fact, she still isn't sure there isn't a bigger picture that she isn't seeing. She's been fed too many stories to really believe the true ones. How are we meant to respond to this? My dad kinda pissed me off, he said it's like pushing on rope and said it wasn't even worth the effort - especially since someone like my Grandmother doesn't intend to have anymore children and all her family members are well ingrained in the Ontario health system... despite his position, we get issues where families are believing information and causing significant harm to our society... what do?

My bad argument style aside, has anyone else felt like they've been pushing on rope lately?

I came across a site about Chinese tech and video gaming and found it very Buzzfeed-y with its headlines and writing. It made me wonder what are the websites that curate a standard of thoughtful articles, essays, discussion, etc. and aren't part of the American internet scene.

I don't care what language it's in, what it's about, what country specifically it's centered on, if it's community-centric or not. If you have a suggestion, let's hear it.

Edit: An example I have is The Blizzard. It's really a subscription-model digital magazine (about soccer) but you can read various articles online.

There was a brief (an oh-so-brief) period in youtube history where all types of non-corporate content thrived. I'm referring, if memory serves, to the timespan from around 2011 - late 2014.

This was after youtube initially got big, but before Google decided that it wanted to step in and maintain the cultural status quo rather than redefine it. Ad revenue paid creators fairly-ish in most cases, and the talk of the town was machinima assfucking it's segment of poor souls that signed into it, rather than youtube pulling the same moves universally as it did a few years later.

(Suffice to say I have no love for the platform).

It's important to note that at this time, Youtube was a bit like a small-scale television enterprise, before it dreamed of deliberately becoming one. Youtube had everything from animations to product reviews, news to reality programming to VFX extravaganzas.

One of the most incredibly important innovations of the time, and one that's been all-but-lost, was the birth (and subsequent heat-death) of youtube news channels.

These channels mirrored cable news, but without the influence of corporate sponsors getting in the way, and without the ravenous need to appease political parties and harebrained cable tv viewers. They were biased - good god were some of them biased - and they weren't perfect, but they were set up in such a way that, had youtube not fucked it up (sigh...) they might've someday dethroned CNN, MSNBC and Fox.

With the next election coming up and shaping up to be a small-scale repeat of 2018s (you're kidding yourself if we're every going to go any other direction than further down at this point - after all, it works!) it's important to remember that there was, for a beautiful gleaming moment, a chance for not a corporation, but a community, to rise up and redefine the way people received news in a way that hadn't been seen since the conception of the newspaper.

Instead, youtube squandered it. Real events and engaging content don't generate views. People can't sit and watch hours of current events like they do for whatever-the-hell youtube trends nowadays (list videos and toy openings, I guess?), and why would they? If you get on youtube to watch today's news, you're not going to stick around for yesterday's. So youtube's 'algorythm', a word I've come to absolutely detest, doesn't favor them just like it doesn't favor basically anything else that once made youtube great.

The icing on the cake: rather than embrace even a tertiary aspect of the community, they went for the safe option and the ad revenue. No Phillip Defranco for you, we'll show you Jimmy Kimmel. No TYT, we'll fill trending with clips of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. The only real survivor of the era was infowars.

Here's to you, youtube news. Dead and gone, but not forgotten.