We are now firmly in the era of fake news and I'm curious where this board gets it's info. My daily reading consists of: Google News BBC News Fark Digg (ugh...can someone recommend a better aggregator?) Reddit TIB Dealnews sporadically for some good buys. Sometimes, I'll delve into sites like Popurls (whose API's don't work), Cracked (whose site never works), or others. Focus: What are your daily reads/feeds? Alt-focus: Help me build a better list...how do you combat the sewage that is currently reporting and news?
Cool - but lets not (directly) discuss the election or anything related to it. We have a thread for that. Discuss news sources, etc. I have a Wall Street Journal online subscription that's well worth the money. For TV news, PBS is and always has been excellent. I also occasionally spin through CNN or Fox News, but they're cesspools. Reddit is completely unusable since they "changed their algorithm."
I find that using RES on Reddit, and blocking a dozen or so of the whacked out subs, it cleans things up very nicely. No /r/politics, none of the Trump/noTrump shit, just the real entertainment. Aside from some of those already discussed, I also hit up: http://www.aljazeera.com/topics/regions/us-canada.html Rather good reporting, it seems to me.
Al Jazeera's live reporting when major things happen in the Middle East is excellent and puts most of the US networks to shame. Much of their editorials and reporting online do have a anti-western slant to them though and they dont try to hide it. As for Reddit I should get RES, I dont know if they make it for mobile though which is where most of my reading occurs. I had to create an account just to follow all the subs I care about, but even then, the politics leaks in and the mods are worthless.
Reddit is useless to me on mobile because RES doesn't exists for it. I only use mobile to view a few small subs that I follow. My workflow on Reddit is to hit up /r/all and then vote on every post. I have RES set to ignore / don't show posts that I've voted on, so I basically downvote 99% of the posts that I see, upvoting the ones that I like. This lets me get "new" content every time as it doesn't show me shit that I've already seen, unless it's reposted everywhere, or I specifically don't vote on it so I can see it again (or I save it). Using the keyboard shortcuts, I hit "X" to expand the pic/post in-line, vote up/down with A/Z, then move forward/back posts with J/K. Shift-C opens the comments in a new tab, and the same movement/vote keys work there as well. It's incredibly efficient and easy to do... makes me wish other threaded forums did the same thing. Then I have a few multi-subs that I've created that include my specific interests: racing, welding, fabrication, diy, mma, etc. I very rarely get any news from Reddit, except something major that is live that seems to permeate the site, then I'll go hit up a few specific "megathreads" or outside sites for details.
My main stream is the rising section of r/politics. Provides a pretty good flow of info on the major stories of the day before the sub's voting patterns get to them (even Breitbart shows up in there, despite it being a total trash source). Mentally I look for NYT, WaPo, WSJ, AP, Reuters, NPR, Politico, BBC, The Hill, The Atlantic, and major city newspapers like Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, etc. Most stories get posted from several sources, so it's a convenient aggregator to get a sense of how a given story is being covered across the spectrum (read the NYT's take on it, then Fox News', etc). I'll also check in on Trump's twitter on a regular basis just to see what our crazy uncle is saying directly from the ass's mouth. I also follow a rule where I try to get to the primary source as quickly as possible, often bypassing articles entirely. If the headline is "So and So wants to fuck your goat," then I immediately scan the article for the link to the video of said espousal of goat fucking, and see what was actually said (turns out they merely want to aggressively fingerbang our goats). This exercise gives a really good sense of how each source tends to spin things and to what degree, which you can internalize and use to apply healthy skepticism to later readings. This is especially useful for things like official reports. Even if you don't read the whole report, most come with an executive summary right at the front that's more informative than any article covering said report nine times out of ten (the tenth time is when there's a really good analysis piece that makes you go back to the actual body of the report to see what they're talking about). I stop into conservative subreddits regularly as well, to get a sense of what they are considering important, but the tentacles of t_d are making that exercise increasingly fruitless with each day. Edit: here's an example right from this very morning. Source: Salon Headline: “Purge leftists”: Trump supporter Rep. Steve King wants the president to root out those who oppose him Primary Source:
I generally stick to AP/Reuters and a little Al Jazeera with a couple of local sites that I use for sport and local events. I try to stay away from too much that is extreme left or right.
I get my political news from this board. I simply don't have the time during the day to check around to various places. I'll read some CNN in the evening if I truly have nothing else to do, but by and large the political thread filters for me what I need to know. Beyond that, I use Feedly. I have a slew of NBA websites, I'll check cracked every day for mindless entertainment, business insider is generally a good feed to get you started then go to the primary source. I have a bunch of psychology blogs and medical feeds on there I read because I'm interested in it. Feedly is just a good aggregation tool for me.
You have no time during the day to check news sources, but you have a "slew" of NBA websites and "check cracked every day for mindless entertainment"? Let's call it what it is: you've de-prioritized political news in your life. That's fine, but the political thread on this board is not "what [you] need to know." It's just your convenient, chosen place to get a stream of information. Please don't harbor the slightest delusion of it providing even a moderately comprehensive overview of political news. It's really no different than relying on Facebook for political news: if that's your only source, fine, but be aware of how limited and narrowly focused it is.
That's fair. I like to know where what went wrong and how we got there and what are the realistic ways to fix it, when I vote. Between then, there's not a lot I can realistically do within reason on a daily basis. I'm not in the business of fixing things. So politics is entertainment for me in two year cycles, and with that gets prioritized accordingly.
My daily reading usually consists of : NPR WSJ NYT Washington Post (mostly because it's the most comprehensive for news in my local area) WTOP (also Washington DC local) Depending how busy I am, I'll also hit up Al Jazeera CNN AP Reuters BBC I also follow Doctrine Man and John Q. Public on Facebook, both good for collated information regarding military and geopolitical news...especially DM. In fact, I'd encourage anyone to follow DM. He's also on Twitter if you prefer it over FB.
Honestly, other than the WSJ, Twitter is my primary news source. I have a pretty diverse and eclectic follow list, so I see plenty of random stuff filter through. And not that I'm getting my news directly and only from Twitter, rather that alerts me to topics, stories, and such and then I go to other sources to get more info.
For general news I don't really have any go to source. They're all pretty bad in my opinion, but I use: - Reuters - Fox news - CNN - Washington post - NYT - Time - Newsweek - WSJ - fivethirtyeight - PBS - CBS (I do think 60 minutes is still fairly decent investigative journalism) ... and so on. For political discussion I tend to watch the classically liberal anti-progressive commentators that have emerged on youtube and elsewhere. My two favorites at the moment are Sargon and the Rubin Report. Neither are really news in the traditional sense, but they tend to be much more insightful and intellectually honest than the MSM blathering heads. A lot of these people seem to do a reasonably good job sorting out the bullshit, which saves time when I want to learn about what actually happened with regards to the latest buzz.
A worrying study out of Columbia: http://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php