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Where do you go on Lemmy for reliable news and politics? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by Ohthereyouare@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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I'm enjoying Lemmy so far, for the most part.

Everything here is pretty good save for the fact that all the news and politics I can find is dominated by the same few accounts.

Half or more of the accounts have a very clear agenda. They modify headlines. Lie. Spread disinformation. And generally are just extremely toxic groups.

It doesn't seem to be a secret here either. And moderators appear to have no interest in putting a stop to it.

So, where are you subbed to for reliable news and US/Global politics?

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[-] normalmighty@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

I would argue trying to find news on social media is the big mistake. It's absolutely bad on Lemmy, but it's not that much better on other platforms. Any story that isn't a "win" for the larger portion of people on the platform will naturally struggle to get attention.

There's a whole rabbit hole to go down in trying to find a way to get a solid, rounded and accurate view of current events, but imo step one should be to throw away social media as a news source. It's only popular because the algorithms on other platforms will tell people what they want to hear.

[-] AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Yup, especially on sites like Reddit or Lemmy where voting exists. The news you see will be the news that agrees with the majority opinion of the site. This isn't inherently negative as long as one is aware of it, but it seems too many people are unaware of their own echo chambers.

[-] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

God damn that's a great point.

News is only remotely viable when done by a professional organization that at least tries to be impartial. You don't want your news to be filtered by upvotes at the end of the day. Never really considered that.

[-] ablackcatstail@lemmy.goblackcat.com 3 points 1 year ago

More to the point: where does anybody go for any reliable news? It seems like most news is now using hyperbole to make it entertainment. We have old man Rupert to thank for basically destroying a respected profession. That's my 0.02 anyhow.

[-] zdrvr@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

While not perfect AP and Reuters are ok. The news they report is honest but their shortcoming is what they don't report.

[-] InquisitiveApathy@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

This is how I do it as well. In general, understanding the overall bias of each news organization is more important to keeping yourself informed. You can combat the echo chamber effect by knowing what the biases of each source is and using differing sourcing to try to get as complete a picture as you can.

I would add to your list to check BBC, Al Jazeera, and NPR if you're US focused.

[-] sveri@lemmy.sveri.de 0 points 1 year ago

I am curious war the bias of Reuters is?

[-] InquisitiveApathy@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

As the original comment implied, AP News and Reuters are reasonably unbiased in reliable in terms of their coverage. They do have a US focus so a lot of the pieces need to be read through that specific lens. Sometimes the omission of information is just as important and what is included.

[-] Kalkaline@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

AP and Reuters run the stories and everyone adds their opinions on top of that, or they rehash some Twitter thread. NPR tends to take those news stories and at least bring in competent analysts in to speak about them. I'd stick with those 3, for the most "fair" view of the happenings in the world.

[-] Zarxrax@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I find these two to be good for finding sources with different perspectives:

https://www.allsides.com/

https://ground.news/

After some time, you might see that there are a few specific sites that you like, and you can just start going to them directly.

[-] HailHodor@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

+1 to Ground News. I browsed them with a free account for a short time before subscribing to the middle tier. Their tools are really terrific at getting me to look at multiple sides of the same stories, and the blind spot feature is fantastic. I've been very satisfied with it and go to it multiple times a day.

[-] Capricorny90210@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I also enjoy ground news.

[-] OceanSoap@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

This is awesome, I'm going to check it out, thank you.

[-] Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi 2 points 1 year ago

I don't really use social media for that, to be honest. I just get info from my friends, but if I seek out news myself I'll usually just check the BBC, free news that has to be as impartial as possible. Maybe the Financial Times is alright too, but they paywall their articles and they're more intended for investors than the average person.

[-] utopianfiat@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Half or more of the accounts have a very clear agenda.

Everyone has an agenda; if this makes you uncomfortable, strengthen your critical thinking skills.

The desire for a neutral source is a desire to stop thinking critically about the information you consume.

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[-] Grey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

As much as I hate YouTube advertisers, I like ground news a lot as an aggregator site.

[-] howdy@thesimplecorner.org 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is what I got: Some are more active than others.

[-] _cerpin_taxt_@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

You are quite literally the only person that actually answered OPs question. Thanks for these!

[-] Master167@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

I read the Newsletters from NPR and Morning Brew. If something catches my eye, I'll look it up on ground.news then find something marked "center" to get more details.

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[-] darcy@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

no such thing as reliable news sadly, except going outside

[-] threeduck@aussie.zone 0 points 1 year ago

What about Reuters?

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[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Where did you go on Reddit? The only place back there I really trusted was AskHistorians and 20 years ago is not really breaking news. Everywhere else I had to sort through crap for myself.

~~If you really want to understand the world, you'll actually have to study it.~~

Edit: It's interesting I still got upvotes, since OP correctly points out that wasn't well worded.

What I'm trying to say is that news with no bias is pretty much a unicorn, and one you can't identify at a glance. And I don't even mean just political bias, a lot of important stuff is boring or otherwise unsuitable for the news cycle. Adding a layer of social media people on top doesn't automatically make it better.

[-] Ohthereyouare@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

What does that even mean? If I want to understand the world I need to study it?

Lol, wtf? I'm looking for current events. What level of prerequisite historical knowledge would I need where I could bipass what is happening right now all over the world?

And shit... All of Reddit is bad except askhistorians? What?

So, if I understand you correctly, your advice is that I shouldn't trust news and I should study the world? What source should I use to study? Are all sources bias? I'm fucking confused

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, okay, in hindsight that wasn't as elegant as I was hoping. More to come.

Edit:

This was about news in specific. Reddit's great if you want help with your electronics project, but for political analysis it's not so great. There's way, waaay too many people pushing something or other for reasons other than empirical correctness.

AskHistorians is moderated extremely tightly by PhDs and requires a source for everything, so it's about as good as it gets. I understand that's not what you asked for, but it's the closest thing I could think of. I'm honestly wondering what subreddit you were using for news - I feel like I've seen questionable discussion on all of them that I've encountered.

I also use things like r/UkrainianConflict for the latest news from that event - with the GIANT caveat that you have to understand the subject matter well enough to tell when OP is full of shit, or passing along shit. That one in particular is infested with people that think a nuclear first strike is a sane and justifiable tactic for NATO with no negative repercussions, which hopefully you can see is insane.

As for what you should study, pretty much all the social sciences help. If you can afford travel that's great, but that's not everyone and it's possible to fuck that up too. Occasionally knowing other sciences will help; like when someone tells you the sun is causing climate change.

News reading is just figuring out your real situation in a world full of liars both deliberate and accidental. You either dissect the lies yourself or you have to find someone you trust. Random Redditors aren't the right answer even if they can be part of the puzzle.

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[-] Braysl@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Clearly they're saying you should hop in a hot air balloon and travel around the world spotting breaking news with your own eyes.

[-] Ohthereyouare@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Honestly, this entire thread has been a bit of an eye opener for me

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this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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