the ask@AAR: How do you get your news?
I do not watch and never have watched the news on TV. I’ve never watched 60 Minutes, The Daily Show, or the nightly news. This isn’t because I think it’s evil but rather because it’s not a good way for me personally to learn. I am a reading learner–hearing things just isn’t as successful for me as reading them. I’m also addicted to getting more than one take on an issue and it’s more time efficient for me to read the headlines in four different newspapers–The NYT, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate–than it is for me to listen to one channel for an hour. Sometimes, if there’s a hurricane or a national disaster–I am forever grateful a friend called me at 8:50am on September 11, 2001 and said “TURN ON YOUR TV RIGHT NOW.”–but those times are very far and few in between. This no TV news thing often makes me feel like a weirdo–it feels to me as though everybody who is interested in the news watches the news.
How about you? How do you get your news? Are there sources you trust implicitly or, at least, more than others? How important is it to you to get the news on a daily basis?
I just posted a related musing that I was writing when this question came up:
http://www.ccrsdodona.org/markmuse/philosophy/trust.html
Thanks, Mark. That was an interesting read.
I think where you get your news in terms of TV, internet, print is less important than how you read/watch it. When I was being taught to read, “subjective” reading was deeply frowned upon and would lower your grade. The teacher wanted us to be able to point out what the writer’s opinion was and why they held that opinion without being swayed by our own thoughts. Nearly impossible to do perfectly of course but you can be taught to do it well. We were also taught that various pieces of a newspaper/news report had stylistic differences (editorials, medical journals, front page news and reviews all have unique styles for a reason.) and how to recognize them. I can’t tell you how many people point to Op-Ed or editorials as news or worse, news programs with deep commentary are seen as “watching the news”. It’s appalling. We were also taught to watch for trigger words – alleged, possible, conceivable, – which saves a writer from law suits and protects them in terms of legal action when they are spreading disinformation. I have been flabbergasted by the sheer numbers of Americans who were never taught these basics of information gathering.
People also seem to struggle with knowing what type of publication they are quoting. I’ve seen a lot of people claim to know xyz from medical journals and not realize that they were not looking at a peer reviewed publication at all (most of those are behind expensive paywalls). Many folks don’t understand what a double blind placebo study even is but they tout stuff from an anecdotal advertisement like its fact. (“Most of our customers say they see improvement in five days” turns into “this is proven to fix the problem” in the mouths of those who don’t understand that personal testimony and scientific fact are two different things.) Some folks seem to struggle A LOT with that difference and will ask a question like “Do you know anyone who has died of COVID, I don’t” like that proves something. I’ve never known someone who died in a plane crash, does that mean they never happen? Is lung cancer not real because I don’t know anyone who has it? Significant numbers of people can die of a disease and me not know them personally. That’s not how science works. I think we’ve made too much of a god of personal experience/personal opinion and as a result, we’ve lost an important learning skill.
I was talking with a friend about the actual risks of the vaccinated dying of COVID. She said, the problem is no one wants to be the anecdote. It seems to me that most of us now make decisions based on anecdotes rather than actual peer reviewed research. That has been ruinous for our health and for our nation in my opinion.
I much prefer radio to TV news and like Caz, get much of my news from BBC Radio 4 and I listen to various of their current events programs with my favourite being From Our Own Correspondent hosted by Kate Adie. I am an early riser so I sometimes listen to the BBC World Service. We take the Daily Telegraph at home and I also read, on line, articles from right across the political spectrum although the Independent and the Guardian constantly asks for money (annoying) and often you can’t read complete articles or the complete output. TBH, the main attraction to newspapers for me are the columnists rather than “news”. For US news, I read the LA Times on line and the Orange County Register every now and then just because it’s where I grew up. My sister sends me things from the Washington Post but, as mentioned elsewhere here, it and the NY Times are behind paywalls and it gets complicated dealing in different currencies, etc. I don’t read blogs or sites like Huffpost because I don’t feel they are “news” per se. When in the US I listen to NPR. When I worked in Kiev I had a shortwave radio to pick up Voice of America and the BBC World Service but you could only get it when the satellite was overhead in the right position so it was just short blasts before losing it. When working in China for short periods, everything was hugely curtailed and restricted and the BBC news on TV in my hotel room was nothing like what was available elsewhere; interesting experience.
I used to be a real news junkie. I kept MSNBC on the tv all day.
No more. (Switched to @CreateTV all day).
I watch the 4-5 pm hour of the local tv news, for weather and local happenings.
I hit Twitter in the am and pm for WaPo, NPR, AP headlines, and a few other newsy accounts.
I get the local San Diego Union Tribune on Sundays and online weekdays.
Too much news became upsetting to me.
I’m happier with much less of it in my life.
The BBC, the Guardian and The Independent, mostly. I used to watch CNN when it came with my TV package, but now it’s gone behind a paywall, I don’t bother any more. I do miss Anderson Cooper, though. But CNN is more an opinion channel than a news reporting network.
I make sure I catch up a couple of times a day, usually the BBC Radio 4 news reports. I don’t trust any news source implicitly. But the media bias chart is handy, because it tells you the bias and how far left or right the publication or network leans. If you want the more accurate stuff, you look at top middle. https://adfontesmedia.com/
I don’t like watching news. NYT (online) is the only paper I subscribe to, so I read the headlines, articles that interest me, and their daily email of the top news stories. I check the WRAL app for local news (written) once or twice a day. Otherwise I skim articles from The Guardian, Washington Post (when it’s not behind a paywall) and other sources that come through my Google news feed if they look interesting. I don’t watch any TV anymore, so I don’t get my news there. When I’m in the car I’ll tune in to NPR sometimes, but generally I’m listening to audiobooks or music.
I read the Los Angeles Times newspaper, skimming a lot more than I used to, catch snippets of NPR on the radio in the hour after the alarm goes off, and don’t watch any TV news.
When I was getting up in the mornings to actually go out to work, my alarm was set to BBC Radio 4, and sometimes I’d listen to PM or the 6 o’Clock news on the way home. I might have watched one of the evening news bulletins on either the BBC or Channel 4 in the evening if I had been watching something before or after it. After last year, when the news became an even more exhausting round of speculation after speculation, I pretty much stopped any watching and listening and I generally check the BBC and the Guardian via their apps. The Times and The Telegraph are both behind paywalls anyway (and given my views don’t generally align with the Torygraph I probably wouldn’t read it much anyway) so I rarely read them.
The late Lindsay Anderson, left wing film maker used to take the Telegraph. He said it was good for his heart, because he was supposed to disagree with its opinions!
I don’t watch much television these days, and I haven’t watched tv news since days of the Macneil-Lehrer Report. I prefer newspapers, though I generally read them online. Since everything is so wildly partisan these days, I check the New York Times but also the New York Post, the Washington Post but also the Washington Times, and the BBC to see what’s happening in the rest of the world.
I also like the RealClearPolitics site, which has links to opinion pieces, paired off to give both sides of an issue. You don’t really have to read most of them—the title tells the story.
I get my news from various sources on the Internet: certain international sources, selected independent journalists whose reporting has proven to be pretty reliable in the past (these folks are becoming harder to find), plus independent organizations and special interest groups that make it their business to keep up with the research I can’t (for example, regarding Covid or the vaccines).
My research and experience has shown that most mainstream news sources in the U.S.–all the popular ones, which I myself followed until mid-2020–are compromised in the sense that they are like the Borg and are basically interchangeable. (Read the old (2001) Bernard Goldberg book “Bias”. You think you’re reading or watching news sourced from various places, when it turns out much of the news you read or hear is sourced from just a couple of news organizations, such as the NYT and WaPo.)
I’ve actually seen independent, “boots on the ground” film footage from multiple sources, where the unedited footage reveals exactly what transpired during this or that event in the U.S. in the past year. When I see the same event reported by MSM or on social media later, it’s been edited to make the event tell an entirely different narrative.
For example, in the unedited footage, you might see people at a protest march attack a police officer–trying to spray mace or to blind the officer with a laser light, even getting in his/her face threateningly as a gang. In response, the officer (who is just trying to do his job and keep people from, say, bashing in some store windows), defends himself/herself by pushing back with a billy club. When you see the same event on MSM, or on social media, it has been edited so that you only see “the evil police officer” striking out at “peaceful protesters” for no apparent reason. You are not shown what provoked the officer.
Reporting on MSM and SM continues to be done in this fashion. That’s why I no longer use MSM or any popular social media for my news.
NPR was asked late last year why it withheld information about how Hunter Biden (in concert with daddy Joe) did favors, in exchange for millions, for our non-friends Ukraine and China, since U.S. voters would have wanted to have this info as they went to the polls. NPR responded that they felt the information was “non-news. Our readers do not want non-news.” (I screenshot that little gem, BTW. NPR posting that the revelation that presidential candidate Joe was compromised was “non-news”.)
You want the truth about COVID treatment and vaccines? Go to FLCCC.net. Read up. The truth will set you free.
Well, I think it’s safe to say my politics are vastly different than your own. Which is fine.
But, as someone who reads medical journals and who has close friends working in COVID ICUs, I cannot agree with almost anything that comes from FLCCC.net. It’s misinformation is well-documented by all sorts of non-governmental agencies.
I think one of the problems today is that news media have all turned partisan and people read only the media that confirm their prejudices/preconceptions.
Lil, you have hit the nail on the head.
There is pretty much no objective news anymore. I read a number of different news sources everyday, look for video footage if possible and try to suss out what actually happened without hyperbole and someone’s opinion.
I cannot abide a lot of what passes as “news” these days which seems to be a person with a very strong opinion one way or the other loudly haranguing the viewer.
It’s one thing to see an event and have it described by a left-leaning news organization one way and then described by a right-leaning news organization a different way. So I might analyze an event and describe it–and what it means or represents–according my conservative world view. Someone else might describe the same event according to what it means or represents based on their left-wing world view.
But when one side decides to no longer show the entire event, but only shows the footage from the event that they can use to support their particular narrative, we’re no longer talking about two different interpretations of the same event. We are now talking about two different events: one that actually happened and then a doctored version that only partially shows what happened, so the context is missing or skewed.
That’s where I have a problem.
BTW, I believe that, just like universities (whose research is often funded in large part by Big Pharma companies here in the U.S.), medical journals are compromised. In recent months, I’ve seen enough pushback by various doctors/medical organizations about this particular issue to believe two things. First, Big Pharma, since it funds so much of what gets researched in the first place, indirectly impacts much of what gets published. If for some reason they don’t like the science that you are reporting–even if your science is sound, even insightful–I think it is more difficult to have your study published. Second, there appears to be ongoing concern about medical journal fraud in general. Here is a 2015 quote from then-editor of the Lancet Richard Horton: “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”
Meanwhile, I’m guessing some folks must be stumped as to why Japan just added Ivermectin to its standard of care for treating COVID. Amazing how Japan read the same research available to American medical associations and concluded that IVM is safe and effective against COVID, while the U.S. and Canada concluded that it is a dangerous horse dewormer (unless you are taking it for scabies, in which case, by some strange alchemy, it becomes safe and effective for humans).
And maybe some folks are also stumped about why our U.S. Congress recently exempted themselves and their staffs (and the U.S. Judiciary and their staffs) from having to be vaxxed, while they want every other American to be vaxxed or suffer the consequences. Do members of Congress know something we common folk don’t know? Makes you wonder.
I am sorry for derailing the discussion, but it does not appear to be true that Japan fully endorses ivermectin and I don’t want to leave potentially harmful false information unaddressed.
https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/japan-has-not-approved-ivermectin-as-a-covid-treatment-and-its-still-using-the-moderna-vaccine/
https://factcheck.afp.com/http%253A%252F%252Fdoc.afp.com%252F9M48JR-1
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/sep/14/instagram-posts/japan-has-not-approved-ivermectin-covid-19-treatme/
Thanks, Jen. I’ve seen the misinformation on ivermectin posted a lot of different places and it is important to counter it. A Japanese doctor did say they would test the drug for possible use but a lot of drugs are being tested for possible use against COVID. The studies on ivermectin have not shown that usage of this particular medication is helpful but the trials are still ongoing.
My final word on this topic.
First: https://c19ivermectin.com/
https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/
How many Ivermectin studies will satisfy you? Many drugs gain full FDA approval with far fewer trials and studies. Including Ivermectin itself, which gained FDA approval years ago based on very limited trials against tropical diseases and which then went on to be included in the WHO’s Model List of Essential Medicines.
Second:
Though some of the “fact checking” services are unreliable, in my experience, I revisited the Tokyo Medical Association announcement and you are correct: In February, the chairman of this 6000-member national association stated that after looking at the results of Ivermectin use in Africa, no one can say “it isn’t effective”. He advised it should be made available to patients.
In August, in a new interview, Dr. Haruo Ozaki again urged adding Ivermectin as an available treatment option for COVID patients, again based on its apparent effectiveness elsewhere.
He also made a very perceptive observation: “Even if a doctor writes a prescription for ivermectin, there is no drug in the pharmacy.”… He contends that the fact that supply has been stopped by Merck & Co. is evidence that it does in fact work at treating COVID: “But (Merck) says that ivermectin doesn’t work, so there shouldn’t be any need to limit supply. If it doesn’t work, there’s no demand. I believe it works, so block supply. It looks like you are.”
Whether he’s right or not, it would not surprise me if Merck were throttling the supply of Ivermectin. They just got paid $356 million to develop a NEW anti-viral, Molnupiravir, plus they now have a promise of $1.2 billion from the U.S. government if Molnupiravir is either EUA or FDA approved.
Merck’s patent on Ivermectin expired years ago. It is currently generic and cannot generate for Merck the billions that their new replacement anti-viral will. Ostensibly, Molnupiravir will do what Ivermectin already does (just as well? better? worse?), but at a much higher cost.
In the meantime, if you or your loved one–vaxxed or unvaxxed–gets COVID, our western gov’ts and medical establishments are okay with you or your loved one dying, instead of being allowed to at least try Ivermectin, since you’d have nothing to lose.
After all, if Americans were allowed to try Ivermectin, and found that it was effective, by U.S. law, they would be legally entitled to opt for Ivermectin and decline the vaccines (FDA approved or not) as well as any other EUA-status products–including the new anti-virals coming up, anti-virals that are poised to reap even more taxpayer-funded billions for Big Pharma. We can’t have that now, can we?
What Dr. Ozaki is referring to is not that this has been effective in treating people but that it has been effective in laboratories. “The reason for the interest in ivermectin is that studies in the lab have shown it can block viruses from multiplying in experimental settings – i.e. in a petri dish – and so people hoped this would mean it could help treat COVID-19 in people too,” Dr. Denise McCulloch, an infectious disease specialist with the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, said in an email. “Unfortunately, the few high-quality studies that have been done to date do not demonstrate a beneficial effect of ivermectin when it is used in people with COVID-19.” We had this same issue early on when they found that in laboratory settings COVID could live on surfaces. They’ve now decided it doesn’t spread that way because the conditions outside a lab don’t let it .Ozaki is recommending essentially looking at someone seriously sick and saying, “Well, what the hell, let’s try x.” And hospitals often will do that in numerous situations with the family’s permission. However, studies where ivermectin is given to humans in isolation (with no other treatment options) find that ivermectin doesn’t cure COVID. It might, possibly, work as part of a cocktail of treatments but cocktails take a long time to test. You have to check each drug individually and figure out what combination works best. When using cocktails (like they do with cancer or asthma) years and years of testing goes into determining which drugs do the most good together. What Merck is being paid for is a drug that works on its own, and that doesn’t have to be used multiple times a day. There is no doubt ivermectin is a critical medicine in Africa and South America and parts of Asia where parasitic disease intestinal infections, rosacea, lice and a host of other problems it vert effectively treats are common. I can also see it being possible that ivermectin will be used in these countries in a cocktail to treat COVID simply because the possibility that some patients will also be suffering from those disorders in those areas will be high. But ivermectin does not prevent the spread of the illness and that is what Western doctors are concentrating on – how to stop the spread. They don’t want to have to treat a bunch of sick people, they want to keep people from being sick.
I won’t address all the mis-statements in your comment. Clearly your takeaway from your research is different from my takeaway from my research. So be it. But I will say this:
I’m still waiting for you to explain #4. Explain how this is not a red flag.
Let’s abandon this conversation, please. It’s not really relevant to romance and it’s clear you and Maggie and I see this issue so differently, I doubt we will change one another’s minds.
Thanks.
I have become very cynical, not only about politicians, but any person who holds a huge amount of money and power.
The simple truth is that the privileges and lifestyle that money/power etc. affords not only alienates people from ‘everyday life and people” it often skews their perception of things. Added to that, many of these systems are set up to keep certain people and groups in power.
Look at how the men (and it was all white men) who control social media were able to decide not only what news was allowed to be spread, but who can or cannot post it.
Can you imagine if the telephone companies were able to operate the same way? It sounds crazy when you say it like that, but a few social media Oligarchs basically shut down a newspaper founded in 1801 because they didn’t like a story. Is anyone shocked that it wasn’t really “Russian disinformation” but true?
Regarding Congress, they were the only group excluded from Obamacare provisions so I’m not surprised they exempted themselves from their rules about vaccines.
I received my vaccine shots as soon as I was eligible, but I can also recognize and call out the hypocrisy of Congress deciding what is crucial for everyone else while exempting themselves.
Everyone needs to start questioning and examining “their own side” just as thoroughly as they do “the other side” and maybe we will actually see some accountability.
Not to get too philosophical or pessimistic, but it does beg the question: has any news media ever been completely “objective” (and how do we define objectivity)? News organizations, whether print, tv, radio, or online, present a narrative and, in doing so, have to decide what narrative they are NOT going to present. All of us have our own interpretations of events, projecting our own individual political/social/economic/genderized position onto a news story. For example (not to open a can of worms, but), I think the recent Texas abortion bill is incredibly damaging to women because it essentially deputizes every male MRA/incel/misogynist/proud-boy/etc. to stalk & harass women with impunity. But, then again, I’m pro-choice politically. I’m sure someone whose politics are anti-abortion probably finds the Texas law a brilliant way to circumvent the current legal apparatus and save the unborn. Which of us is correct? And which of us is being “objective”? All of us are human and all of us are going to filter news stories, regardless of the source, through our own perceptions. As James Joyce once observed, “I can see quite clearly that there are two sides to the matter; unfortunately, I can only occupy one of them.”
Back when I was employed in print journalism, my colleagues and I made a distinct effort to present both sides of an issue as fairly as we could and save out opinions for the editorial page. The Texas abortion bill? In the news section you summarize what it actually says, what its proponents say, and what its opponents say. You put what you think into an op-ed piece. It can be done. Jim Lehrer once said that if people knew what his political opinions were, he wasn’t doing a good job as a reporter.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that by the very act of presenting a new story, a news organization has to decide how that information will be presented—and, by choosing any one way, other ways are overlooked. In the case of the Texas bill, for example, about the only way to present an “objective” view is to simply project the exact wording of the bill with no commentary or explanation, just leaving it to the viewer to provide an interpretation. Even then, my interpretation may not be the same as yours. There really is no such thing as “objective reality” because we all have our own perceptions & biases.
Well, I sort of agree. I do think there is such a thing as “objective reality”—when you are adding, two plus two is four, not twenty-two. But I also agree that there is bound to be bias in what you choose to consider news and the way you present it. And it has always been very easy to lie with pictures, even before photoshop.
I think one problem is that if you look at journalists- something like 80% or so consider themselves “liberal”.
If we can accept that every person has an inherent bias and 80% of the people creating the news are biased one way, it’s not crazy to say there is a liberal slant to most news.
We freely accept it’s wrong to have 80% of any one single group in charge of anything. That’s why you see movements like “Oscars so white” or any of the pushes for diversity that are happening now in every type of business, board, government or entity.
The idea is that our society consists of all different ethnicities, genders, religions etc. and membership in, or control of everything should reflect this mix to be balanced and fair…..you know, except in things people don’t really want to change because they like the status quo.
I’ve been a registered Independent since the day I was eligible to vote and I am that person no one ends up liking because I won’t automatically support anything one side or another does because I have to “stay loyal to my side” like a rabid sports fan does during playoffs.
All my totally liberal friends who papered the pages of Facebook every day with rants, screams and diatribes about Trump putting children in cages and his border policies have not posted one peep about the horror show Biden has been putting on since he came into office at the border. People with Covid crammed in essentially cages cheek to jowl. Reporters and media being kept out. People being moved in secret etc. etc. People being whipped when trying to cross.
Everyone who wanted to expose everything (and still do) about Trump are perfectly fine with a President now who just ignores anything he doesn’t want to answer.
I am one of those crazy people who think it’s wrong to treat people badly whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. It terrifies me how “liberals” now are espousing ideas they used to fight against before.
Why do people find it amazing that conservatives can overlook things they don’t like about politicians when liberals do it too?
What’s kind of funny is that newspapers were partisan before the late 19th century. “Objectivity” was a marketing strategy to appeal to “both sides” in order to get more readers. Now that mass audiences are no longer needed to make money, we’re back to the partisan stuff again.
(Note: I am aware that I am oversimplifying a complex historical process. Don’t @ me. :D)
I read the Washington Post, watch my local network news (I want to know what’s happening in my neighborhood), some network national news, and I check out websites for ABC, CBS, and sometimes Fox news. I sometimes watch international news from Germany, Japan, BBC, etc., because you get a different perspective on world events. I like to get news from a variety of sources so that I can see differing slants on what is happening.
What I DO NOT do is watch cable news — CNN, Fox, OAN, MSNBC, NewsMax, whatever. Back when cable news was new, CNN Headline News was good for getting brief updates, but cable news has devolved into a hot mess full of people spouting opinions. Those news sources, whether right or left leaning, pander to and exploit the political divisions plaguing this country. Some are nothing more than tin foil hatted conspiracy theorists trying to frighten their viewers in order to push unhealthy political agendas.
KarenG I do the same thing. I go down the News app on my iPad and read a bunch of news from across the board, from CNN online to Fox, MSN, Newsweek, NYT headlines, Washington Post etc etc.
Sometimes regional newspapers or international ones will be featured as well.I will also go to the sites of BBC News, Sky news, or French news sites (My French is just good enough to make out what is going on) to get an international take on what is going on here in the U.S. It’s so interesting to read what another country is really saying and not just what the news here tells us.
I’ve found the only way I can get any kind of well rounded take on a hot topic is to try to get all the information I can from a lot of sources.
I never watch tv in the mornings. I listen to NPR’s Morning Edition and the BBC World News (both on our local public radio station). The two broadcasts combined usually give me a good overview of national and world news. I scroll through the headlines of the online editions of the NYT, the Washington Post, and/or the L.A. Times and click on links that interest me. I consider myself center-left politically and I usually look at a couple of news aggregators that lean that way. I also have a group of friends who email or text links to interesting stories throughout the day. In the evenings, I try to catch a local 30-minute news broadcast to know what’s happening in my area (I live on the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain, about 45 minutes from New Orleans). I try to stay aware and informed of events, but I also try not to let myself get too wrapped up in what’s going on politically—too much anger, rage, and indignation isn’t good for the body, mind, or spirit. I’m not on any social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) either, which helps keep my blood pressure down.