When I read the news, sites like foxnews are pro trump and other sites like CNN or NBC are pro clinton and don’t even try to hide it. Are there any mainstream media sites that just report the news without trying to take sides?
No, there aren’t.
Running a news site inevitably involves making value judgments (like what is newsworthy vs what isn’t, which of two newsworthy items is the more newsworthy) and these can only be made by appealing to some set of beliefs and priorities.
The site which appears most impartial to you will be the one which is founded on a set of beliefs and priorities which broadly accords with your own. But as you don’t say what your beliefs and priorities are, we can’t really help you identify that site.
Reuters, AFP. Al Jazeera. The BBC used to be, but not so much anymore.
Traditionally, a news organization had two parts to it, News Reporting, which was a by the numbers statement of what had happened and Editorials and Analysis, which was that organizations peculiar slant. The two were always supposed to be separate and were presented separately and thats what happened traditionally.A few yeas ago, I read a Time Magazine archive report on the D-Day landing, and was struck its matter of fact tone. It heavily used German sources (telling when they do). No “our boys are gonna kick them Kraut asses”.
Since 1990’s the wall of separation that existed has gone for the most part, nowadays news and analysis are combined. The editorial slant of the newspaper/news organisation slant is obvious at first reading.
Reuters and AFP are wire services, they typically report the news and have no analysis (usually other organizations feed off them). Al Jazeera makes no secret of its editorial slant, but makes pains to separate and delineate news and analysis/opinions. The BBC used to, they had a huge monitoring section which followed news from all over the world and reported it, but they have reduced that sharply.
American news organizations? Yeah furggit about it.
I blame Nancy Grace. CNN’s Headline News Channel was designed to be straight news. If you wanted commentary you could go to CNN and listen to the talking heads but HLN just had the facts on a 30 minute loop. I guess it wasn’t making enough money because it changed into the worst offender of partisan bickering and tabloid news.
Yes, for impartial and uncensored U.S. news, read international news on the internet like BBC (UK), or Canadian news.
(And for uncensored UK news, then read U.S. news!)
Note with this specific election, there is international distaste of Trump ever being President, so you will find plenty of anti-Trump stuff like the following from Denmark…
Anyway with international news -vs- U.S. news, the main noticeable difference is WHAT IS NOT SAID in the U.S. media with some things. Interesting that these things will be mentioned in the foreign media!
Let’s be be honest, painting Trump as unfit to be president doesn’t really require a lot of editorial slanting.
The problem isn’t that mainstream news is partial. The problem is that it adheres to an ideology of equivalence.
Any objective news source would state outright that Trump is unfit for office and would dispense with any of the usual horse race “analysis,” because the sole important objective fact is that Trump should be stopped.
Well, it was heading that way before she introduced her own obnoxious brand of crusadership. For quite a while we saw the rise of “infotainment” in regular broadcast and print - seeking to make the news more marketable to people who found “just the facts ma’am” boring. The 24hr news cycle and the need to fill space just put that on overdrive.
Print newspapers, in places with a free press, were traditionally accepted to have an editorial slant, if only muted in the actual report (but many were not above outright fabrication of things that made the other side look bad as long as nobody sued). Heck some of them had actual political party names. To this day print papers present you with hero/villain narratives: the NY Daily News will heap ridicule and loathing on Trump in its front page, and the Post will do likewise to DeBlasio and Clinton. And never mind the UK tabs.
Until a generation ago in the USA over-the-air broadcast stations, as licensed franchisees of a public good required to put on news/public affairs programming as a service, were subject to the so-called “fairness doctrine” due to the notion that it was a limited range of sources of information. When that went away it made the media a lot freer to have their programming respond to the marketplace. And the marketplace wanted drama, to know who were the good guys and the bad guys. The producers proceeded to give the people what they wanted.
I don’t have answer for the op other than to unequivocally state that it isn’t here.
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No, and there shouldn’t be. The news media should not be bound to give equal weight to analytically rational viewpoints and nut jobs.
Impartiality is not about the way the content of the news is slanted. Biased news reporting consists of the choices about what will be reported and what will not be. What will be exposed for public scrutiny and opinion-forming, and and what will not be.
I remember hearing a Fox news commentator on a round-table discussion say there are now plenty of news sources on the internet, Fox can’t cover everything and has to choose what to report. Which, of course, was tantamount to saying to choose what you decide, from Fox’s notorious slogan.
I used to think Reuters was, but some of their “fact checking” during the debates showed clear bias. I just want to read the news without any slant. If mainstream media can’t do that, are there any smaller news sites that do?
I don’t know if this is true now, or if it was even then, but about a thousand years ago, when I was in college, one of my professors (history, maybe…? I’ve allowed that part of my brain to get into a terrible state…) required everybody in his class to subscribe to the Christian Science Monitor, on the grounds that it was exceptionally impartial. I do not believe that he was a Christian Scientist. Anybody know anything about it nowadays?
A few years ago, some time in the 1990s maybe?, the church purged the real journalists from the Christian Science Monitor and killed Monitoradio. It hasn’t been considered a quality news source since then.
Well, damn, then.
There’s never been an “impartial” or “objective” news media organization, with the possible exception of one run and staffed by androids. And by their very nature, many issues cannot be coherently and accurately reported on without the reporters/editors taking a point of view. And “equal time for both sides” is a nonsensical demand when (for instance) one is reporting on science vs. pseudoscience, 9/11 conspiracy claims etc.
That said, the virtual disappearance of editorials from broadcast media (and their never having existed on online news sites) has exacerbated the tendency to interject personal opinion into news stories. In addition, a lot of people fail to distinguish between reporting and panel analysis on broadcast media and seize on the latter to claim “news bias”.
All we can ask for is that news organizations consistently make a genuine effort at fairness and report facts and opinions that conflict with their worldview. It’s mostly not going to happen, given the prevalence of people who insist that “news” equates to “tell me what to think”.*
**see post #7.
Not in the USA since the Fairness Doctrine got scuppered.
Imo, the best answer now is Twitter - create your own list of credible journalists (rather than publications) over time, being careful to avoid it being an echo chamber of your own predispositions. Some great writing out there and the writes want you to read it.
I find it great, but it takes a while to develop and hone.
The radio station was killed (I wasn’t following it then), but Wikipedia says that was because they were on the verge of bankruptcy. I’ve occasionally read articles from there (though not in several years), and I’ve not seen any big bias in the the ones I’ve read. What’s their shtick/bias now?
The “Fairness Doctrine” was nonsensical. You can’t just give equal time to both sides and call that fairness. “Today we have a representative from the Murder Children and Drink Their Blood Advocacy Group. Also a counterpoint from the Don’t Murder Children Society. Who’s right? The truth is somewhere in between”.
And note that the so-called Fairness Doctrine only applied to radio and TV, on the theory that since there were only a limited number of broadcast channels possible, every station had to give equal time to “both sides”. It never applied to print media, because that would be the very definition of government censorship.
There can never be a particular source for “news without any slant,” because, at a minimum, every source has to subjectively choose what they consider newsworthy, above all the other stories in the world.
On the other hand, objective fact-checking ought to be straightforwardly practicable in many cases. I’d be interested to hear what bias you found in Reuters there.
Right, it’s not like people benefit from hearing at least two sides of an argument.
Who needs that when you can have talk radio and Fox News. You only need ‘fact checking’ when you on,y have one voice.