I, personally, am a bit of a news junkie; I like to keep on top of the world's happenings and know what the important shit is and where it's happening. I think it's important to do. Having said that, however, it's even more important to be able to identify bias and separate the wheat from the chaff. Reading biased news isn't bad on its own - it's when you only read news that is biased in a particular direction that you have a problem.
Personally, on a daily basis, I read BBC World News, CBC News, and Al-Jazeera English. I might pick up a local newspaper if it's lying around, but all of the major local dailies in my town are owned by the same right-wing corporation so there's no point in subscribing - basically, I have the choice between The BC Liberal Party Revue (The Vancouver Sun) and The Ridiculous Amount of Crime Coverage Daily (The Province). My favorite newspaper is the Globe and Mail, but it doesn't have a Vancouver edition. Everybody here is right about television news - it is a barren wasteland, for a number of reasons. The closest thing to television news that I watch is 60 Minutes.
That said, the BBC is not completely impartial - no news source is. Several of the other problems that influence journalism also apply completely to the BBC, including sourcing bias (basically, you always go to the same sources for stories, who are themselves biased, giving you an incomplete view of the story). I am of the steadfast belief that any news outlet that claims to be objective is knowingly and blatantly lying, and I long for the days of the partisan press, where every ideological camp had their own newspaper and those newspapers wore their politics on their sleeve.
Personally, on a daily basis, I read BBC World News, CBC News, and Al-Jazeera English. I might pick up a local newspaper if it's lying around, but all of the major local dailies in my town are owned by the same right-wing corporation so there's no point in subscribing - basically, I have the choice between The BC Liberal Party Revue (The Vancouver Sun) and The Ridiculous Amount of Crime Coverage Daily (The Province). My favorite newspaper is the Globe and Mail, but it doesn't have a Vancouver edition. Everybody here is right about television news - it is a barren wasteland, for a number of reasons. The closest thing to television news that I watch is 60 Minutes.
The BBC is much better than most other news sources for a few reasons. First, the BBC is not nearly as dependent upon advertising revenue as other news sources; an American news channel is for instance never going to advocate for universal health care since they get too many advertising dollars from the health insurance industry. Second, the BBC is government-owned; while this may occasionally jeopardize their objectivity and reliability, it also means that they can make decisions that privilege the public interest over profitability. Third, the BBC presents their shit in a very understated manner. On American TV, there are hundreds of tickers, information boxes, flying lasers, logo treatments, theme songs, and dramatic camera angles to get in the way of the actual story; BBC just gives you a talking head and tells it like it is. Fourth, the BBC is about news, not analysis - if there is analysis, it is clearly separated from the story and labelled as such. American news outlets are infamous for disguising editorializing as news.Danny Ocean said:
That said, the BBC is not completely impartial - no news source is. Several of the other problems that influence journalism also apply completely to the BBC, including sourcing bias (basically, you always go to the same sources for stories, who are themselves biased, giving you an incomplete view of the story). I am of the steadfast belief that any news outlet that claims to be objective is knowingly and blatantly lying, and I long for the days of the partisan press, where every ideological camp had their own newspaper and those newspapers wore their politics on their sleeve.
