11 replies to this topic

[ELeFevre]

Without going into a complete tirade about certain well known US based news channels (even though I want to)...Can anyone recommend a well balanced website for World news? A great news site for North American news would be handy as well.

[GISRox]

Every news site has a bias. I really don't think a well balanced news site can exist for any one particular reader. I tend to read news from all sorts of different sources and decide where the middle ground is with most issues.

[ELeFevre]

I tend to read news from all sorts of different sources and decide where the middle ground is with most issues.

Hey Paul,
This is my approach as well. Unfortuneatly it seems like 90% of mainstream news websites regurgitate the same news with the same bias, so visiting 50 different sites covering the same story does not necessarily mean anything, and there are only 24hours in a day! I agree that every newspaper (book, song, whatever) has bias, but don't you think (or want to believe) there are some news channels that actually attempt to locate the middleground by presenting multiple perspectives on a story, and are less influenced by outside sources? That's the kind of site I was hoping for. Wishfull thinking! Erin.

[benbakelaar]

I tend to prefer to International Herald Tribune for international news, even though they are often AP stories, but generally the good ones. For interesting American news, I check out the Wall Street Journal.. there's a paper copy in the shared lunch room in my rented office space. But as far as "balanced", I don't know of any. I'll keep my eyes peeled. (Isn't that a weird expression?)

[frax]

for world news, how about BBC? Since Google News is all automated (isn't it?) and features alternative links for stories, it could be an alternative as well, but it has a heavy north american focus and I am not too keen on the interface.

I haven't really checked out wikinews, which should balance out itself bias-wise (in theory at least)...

[ELeFevre]

I tend to prefer to International Herald Tribune for international news, even though they are often AP stories, but generally the good ones. I'll keep my eyes peeled. (Isn't that a weird expression?)

I'll check out the Int. Herald Tribune. Thanks Ben. And, yes, that is a weird expression. The words "peel" and "eye" should never go together. We should start an off-topic thread of weird expressions.

for world news, how about BBC? Since Google News is all automated (isn't it?) and features alternative links for stories, it could be an alternative as well, but it has a heavy north american focus and I am not too keen on the interface.

I haven't really checked out wikinews, which should balance out itself bias-wise (in theory at least)...

I'll check out the BBC and wiki-news. Thanks Frax.

[frax]

for dead tree newspapers - when I want to read world news, I really like Financial Times - even though I am not too interested in the financial stuff, it has really good global coverage. I don't really buy it, but if I can pick it up for free, it would be one of my top choices. I don't know about their web-site though (is it pink?) - it might be good as well.

For dead trees -- I really don't like the paper version of the International HT. Old news, and basically just reprinted stories from NY Times and the other partners. And the old school layout is hideous...

[benbakelaar]

Really? I've never seen their printed paper, but I think their website layout is great. Is it that much different in print?

For dead trees -- I really don't like the paper version of the International HT. Old news, and basically just reprinted stories from NY Times and the other partners. And the old school layout is hideous...

[frax]

It has been a while since I saw it now, but we used to have it at the office. The layout is very conservative North American, like WSJ or something - everything in some old school serif font and quite crowded columns. And I don't think there were any fact boxes or sidebars to the articles.

[travelbug]

I prefer the LATimes for liberal views and WSJ for conservative ones. Don't think it's possible to have truely unbiased reporting. Checking out the BBC will help as well, especially on international news. Or just use Google news, which aggregate stories about teh same event from different channels.

[frax]

one problem with google news is that it doesn't contain the body of the stories. For major news, you have some 150 sources to choose from, and which to pick? Sometimes the default one can be a more niche one as well -- that you are not familar with...

[travelbug]

I actually quite like teh snippet summaries 'cause there aren't that many news that I really want to explore in detail.

For international news, most papers just pull the same stories from the agencies. So that should eliminate the bulk of it. After a while, one tends to get an idea of the style and creditworthyness of different news channels. If there's a major story on the Middle East, I surely would like to check out reports from Al Jazeera for comparison.