Actual fair and balanced coverage

[Vareoth]

Every single news station is biased in some way or form. They are run by humans and as such it is only natural. The best way to get a relatively even and fair view of things is to watch a small variety of different news agencies from across the world and forge your own opinions from all of that information.

 

[Queen Michael]

Let's be honest here -- all news reporting is a bit iased. For instance, any reporter doing a story about a child abduction will imply that child abductions are a bad thing.

 

[Xpwn3ntial]

Yeah, just go for BBC. That's where I go for American news.
They have their biases (namely the UK/Parliament is NEVER, EVER WRONG), but to them it's foreign news and they don't seem to give a shit who looks good or bad when they report things.

The other one I use is the Wall Street Journal. Again, they don't seem to give a shit who looks bad at any given time because strictly non-business news is just an extra for them and their foreign news (when they report it) is pretty good.

 

[Weirdwolf]

I must apologise I'm afraid I double posted and so have edited this to delete it.

 

[Weirdwolf]

Probably the BBC. Al Jazeera also tends to be pretty good. Don't bother with an American news station.

Absolutely not the BBC, the BBC is Socialist organisation, it has a strong and persistent left wing bias, you can predict how it will write any story. It is wholly reliant on the State funding through an unavoidable tax to maintain its huge organisation; around £6bn a year is taken from the taxpayer. As with all large government its is

often incompetent (as reported by itself)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22651126

and at its very worst (given its sanctimonious, preachy nature, especially over tax and benefits) totally hypocritical:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9588877/BBC-complicit-in-tax-avoidance-for-household-names-say-MPs.html

The BBC is anachronism in this day and age, it competes at a huge advantage with other media outlets, it should really be moved to a subscription model so that, as with other media, those that like it can fund it. I find it quite irritating having to pay £128 a year to fund what is effectively a media arm for the Labour party.

I'm afraid you are completely and utterly wrong, quite simply you do not have to pay the license fee to get access to the BBC news services. I do not pay it and listen to the excellent news on Radio 4 and the world service, (which I recommend to anyone who wants a good news source) as well as occasionally watching some of the shows that the BBC makes. You only have to pay the license fee if you are watching the TV,(ANY television) programmes that at or shortly after the time they are being broadcast or if you are recording the programmes as they are being broadcast, so the Iplayer is a wonderful option if you are like me and don't watch much TV.
For many years the BBC's programmes have been broadcast in many languages making the British view available to people under the most repressive regimes, in essence a news broadcast espousing a free press,democracy and civil rights. It provides a system that is free from journalistic interference from the state and owner interference. You only have to look at the state of the Italian press under Berlusconi, Fox news's coverage of climate change or if you are old enough to remember the Soviet press in the worst periods of the communist regime.
I agree that the BBC is on occasion wrong, all news outlets make mistakes, but I feel that the bigger problem is that in the rush to be "fair and balanced" they tend to counter the views of people who are experts in the field with idiots,charlatans and liars who have nothing but a blog or "opinion piece" in a paper as "proof" of their expertise. This is especially prevalent when climate change/evolution/"alternative medicine"/Gay rights/Immigration and the welfare state are being discussed, however this is a problem with all media currently.
As to the BBC coverage of tax avoidance,(which costs the state much more money each year than the BBC costs by the way) and the welfare state they tend to prefer using actual figures because time and again there have been studies that show many people just do not understand the system. Of course this may be seen as leftist propaganda,(although as somebody who is disabled I laugh at this because many of the current policies were brought in by the Labour party) but I'm afraid the current government line is woefully short of anything but empty rhetoric, this is just the situation in which a free press is essential to provide the information that an educated voter requires.

 

[Angie7F]

I read my news online in various languages and from different sources. I also read things that are not written by journalists.
I really dont trust one source any more.
But maybe ignorance was bliss.

 

[Smeatza]

Read a story on BBC, then read the same story on RT news, somewhere in between those articles is the balanced version.

 

[thesilentman]

I'm going to echo multiple sources. BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera (recommended to me by this thread and other people) and Google after figuring out the main gist of the story is what I do, and I pretty much have Google on speed dial for this alone. Just use multiple sources, and you should be good.

 

[Kyrian007]

BBC's just as biased as the American news services, in it's own way. It's just a little more subtle about it. Where the American stations can and will straight-up fabricate stuff (or outright omit pertinent details, as appropriate), the BBC will simply... slant. In many ways, that's worse than outright lying. Basic fact checking will catch the media out if they lie. Slanting the news is far harder to catch and far more insidious.

Face it. Like the politicians, the media is bought and paid for. They report the news they're told to report and ignore the stuff that doesn't serve the corporate interests. "Independent" is just a label they like to stick on themselves to pretend that they're better than the competition.

Please, do tell.

This should be fun :3

Thanks Daystar, for calling out that guy. Few people will even indirectly stand up for the media these days. The truth is he CAN'T source that, it's just a baseless blanket accusation. I CAN prove his blanket statement is false (made up... pulled out of his ass... ect.) because I AM a member of the media. I work for a media outlet with stations all over the U.S.... AND I HAVE NEVER HAD ANYONE FROM CORPORATE TELL ME WHAT TO WRITE OR CHANGE THE CONTENT OF A REPORT... EVER! I've covered elections, sessions of government bodies from city level to the Statehouse, police briefings, plenty of politically charged issues. And never have I been asked (or tempted, as I am politically a moderate) to change, alter, or slant anything I've ever written.

I'm not saying irresponsible reporting does not exist... of course it does. But the paranoid "it's all manipulated to _______ (whatever brain-sick, paranoid fantasy they believe), man." Well that only exists on a "conspiracy" level in one way... and sorry everybody... but here's MY blanket statement.

It's your fault.

The reason FOX and MSNBC slant their news coverage... because there's a market for it. It gets ratings and it sells ad space. Most viewers would rather tune in to a station that voices news in a way sympathetic to them. It's easier than thinking for one's self.

See, we both see the worst in each other. You see us as information manipulators... and we see you as easily led sheep with the key to our customers' (advertisers) wallets, who bleat the loudest when they aren't hearing WHAT YOU WANT US TO TELL YOU. That's why media bias exists... because it's more profitable to tell people what they want to hear than it is to report on facts they don't want to know.

Plus, these days viewers or listeners don't understand the difference between "news" and "commentary." My station airs programs that undoubtedly have a biased POV. But our local, live show and our cut ins... there's no slant. That would take effort. Easier to take notes and summarize down to sound byte level, rather than take time to analyze how the viewer might react to it.

Or to care how they see it. I don't. I take pride in the hate mail I get. Democrats see me as part of the corporate takeover of America, and Republicans say I'm a part of the "liberal media."

And I laugh because they are both stupid and wrong.

So yeah, Fox and MSNBC slant their news. Bad and unethical individual journalists try and slant their news. But the majority of us... we're just grinding away at our jobs just like everyone else.

 

[spartan231490]

I need to start watching the news, but I keep on hearing about so-called "journalists" that would rather stay as biased as possible rather than report what's actually happening (with those same people still keeping their jobs for some reason). Granted, it's primarily Fox, but I'd heard some accounts of it happening it in CNN, MSNBC, etc. I'd like to ask if anyone would like to throw in their two cents when it comes to who they believe is, objectively, the most reputable (or, at the very least, least biased) news station out there.

Every major news network and most minor ones are biased. If you really want accurate information your best bet is to find a couple of minor internet news sources that are biased in opposite directions. That way, almost anything that happens will be covered by one of them.

 

[CriticalMiss]

I get most of my news from Feed Dump. They're horrendously biased though, they only seem to cover stories that they can make fun of. But that's journalism for you.

The BBC is ok, they're supposed to be politically neutral which is nice but they have refused to cover stories that would have made them look bad (basically anything about Jimmy Saville being a massive paedo) before everyone else was reporting on it.

 

[Callate]

NPR tends to be better than most on the American side, but I'll agree the BBC has a lot going for it. The news programs of Bill Moyers and News Hour on PBS also have a good reputation.

It seems like every major American television news source has to varying degrees succumb to a combination of "let the talking heads shout it out" anti-news, sensationalism, and a desire to give their viewership what they want (whether that accurately reflects the truth or not.) The network channels (ABC, NBC, CBS) remain somewhat better than their cable counterparts. Fox News actually leaves their viewers less informed on critical matters, according to at least a couple of studies. [link]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/23/fox-news-less-informed-new-study_n_1538914.html[/link]
[link]http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/dec10/Misinformation_Dec10_rpt.pdf[/link]

Some sources are better than others, but it's generally best not to fall back on one single source.

 

[BrotherRool]

The BBC really is a good source, to the extent that people sometimes criticise them for trying to hard to not be biased (normally these are people who believe their bias is right) like if there was a war between the baby-eating people and St Patrick the BBC might still end up giving an interview to the baby-eaters. It leads them to do some really stiff and odd things at times, like only allow politicians to speak for very precise amounts of time because they're worried about being accused of partiality. Or they host the BNP on a debate thing and lots of people feel like they're giving people a platform they don't deserve. They also have genuine on-the-scene reporters in most locations around the world, which is becoming an increasingly rare thing nowadays.

But they're still very much fallible. They fall to a big scandal once every couple of years and right-wing people argue that they've got a left-wing bias, whereas left-wing people don't say the same back. So it's probably true. But it's less pronounced than even the Telegraph's right-wing bias and is pretty much as far away from fox news Jurnalism as you can get. (seriously, I can't believe someone recommended Fox. They once drew a graph of unemployment rates under Obama, where the line went up steeply even though the actual factual numbers went down. And they drew a pi-graph of 'percentage of people who support republicans' that added up to more than 100%. They have a on the record publicised memo from high-up ordering people to only report controversies on the subject of global warming. I don't care if they're the only right wing news source in the US, because they aren't actually a news source. FOX makes the world a stupider place)

The BBC is ok, they're supposed to be politically neutral which is nice but they have refused to cover stories that would have made them look bad (basically anything about Jimmy Saville being a massive paedo) before everyone else was reporting on it.

There have been other scandals where they covered their mistakes way more often and way before the other networks picked up on it.

 

[The_Great_Galendo]

I'll echo that the BBC is pretty good. But the one that seems the most balanced to me is NPR (National Public Radio, for any non-Americans out there). They don't do TV broadcasts, but their radio and web presences are perfectly legit.

 

[CriticalMiss]

The BBC is ok, they're supposed to be politically neutral which is nice but they have refused to cover stories that would have made them look bad (basically anything about Jimmy Saville being a massive paedo) before everyone else was reporting on it.

There have been other scandals where they covered their mistakes way more often and way before the other networks picked up on it.

Scandals that involved child abuse on BBC property?

 

[Terramax]

If you're thinking of internet sites, it might be worth reading the British online paper 'The Guardian'. The Observer also. +1 for the BBC. Not completely unbiased, but as close as you're probably ever going to get.