I grew up in the 60s and trusted newscasters such as Walter Cronkite for unbiased news. I later expanded to all of the major US networks, such as CBS, NBC, PBS, and ABC. When I traveled, I watched CNN and the BBC for accurate news reporting.
When I discuss the news with someone who is a Trump conservative, they say that all the major networks, including CNN and MSNBC, are all heavily biased to the left, except for Fox News and a few others I have never heard of. (I consider Fox News extremely biased to the right and the current major networks mostly unbiased or slightly biased to the left.)
Does that mean that objectively there are no unbiased news sources today in the US? Should I be watching the BBC or CBC to get unbiased news, or are they just as biased as the US networks in one direction or the other?
There are pretty much no unbiased ones. Odd as it sounds, Wikipedia is generally the closest thing to a truly-neutral source/analysis that there is for current or recent events.
Since there is in reality no such thing as true objectivity when it comes to reporting current events, I believe the question needs to be, “are there news sources which put great effort and focus into being as objective as possible?”
Here, the answer is plainer: yes there are. There are also news sources that are obviously and extremely biased, and sources that are more subtly but discernibly biased.
The fascist right has a mission to destroy trust in objectively reported facts. It is of great benefit to them to create a populace which no longer has faith that there is a standard of factuality that news media attempts to adhere to. In this, they have largely succeeded.
Everyone has a point of view, no matter how hard they try to maintain objectivity. Good journalists and organizations do a better job of overcoming this problem than others. As to providing a list… I’d say it’s primarily on the consumer of news and reporting. Anyone providing such a list has their own point of view, and we’re back to the beginning.
This chart is in widespread use, and I have not found that it is inaccurate. I myself tend to read the Washington Post, which is biased a bit left, and I used to read Al Jazeera, which is excellent. What I look for is not what bias that source might have, which I can factor in, but their integrity. The sources at the top and in the middle are the best out there.
I was raised by journalists, and have worked in journalism. I am pretty aware of how journalism works, at least print media. It is simply a rightwing lie that all media sources are untrustworthy. Some are, and most of these are on the edges of the political spectrum. But leftwing media has virtually no voice these days, while extreme rightwing media is one deafening scream of lies, omissions, cherry picking, obfuscations, and lies. One of their biggest lies is that they are the only source of truth. It is a huge tragedy.
I guess it’s the middle of the chart, skewing neither left nor right, which is what I am looking for, and I see outlets such as the BBC, ABC, CBS and NPR. Those are the one I currently listen to and trust the most so it sounds like I am already looking at the best sources for unbiased news out there. Problem solved!
There is a thread around here somewhere about a paid service called Ground News. They digest news and news sources, and for each news source (not for each story, just the news outlet) they have an ideological evaluation (leans left, left, far left, center, leans right, etc.) and a factuality evaluation (high factuality, mixed factuality, or low factuality). They have a number of outlets they regard as Center and most of those are High Factuality. I’m not sure I always agree with their evaluations, but they are at least defensible.
My go-to news sources are NPR for national news, Reuters for international, and a local (formerly) independent TV station for local and state news. For breaking national news I may go to CNN or somewhere, NPR is usually taking their time, shooting for accuracy over scoops.
Theoretically it’s impossible to have a truly unbiased source because at every step in the journalistic process, even simply choosing what stories to cover, you introduce some sort of bias. However, if a news source is making a genuine good-faith attempt to be unbiased, that puts them in another category from anyone deliberately trying to skew the news.
That said, I find these charts that rank news sources from right to left to be generally wrong. First, there is almost no leftist representation whatsoever in the American political spectrum. Our left starts at center-right. So at best, you’re dividing up center-right into hard-right into “left to right” which gives a false impression. The idea that the Atlantic and Vox and MSNBC are somehow equally left as Breitbart and Fox News are right is absurd. That’s a lie the right wing media tells and a bias on our parts where we try to create false balance when there is none.
Secondly, right wing news sources have basically embraced bias and lying. They’ve lost attachment to reality. Many if not all “right wing” news sources are willfully bullshit. So, then, if a news source tends to be the opposite of that and makes an effort to be good journalism and be based on reality, it runs into obvious conflict with these sources. Which means that when a news source is simply trying to perform good journalism and accurately describe reality, that makes them seem like the opposite of right wing news, and therefore they often get labelled as left wing. The fucking AP News Feed is listed as leans left on allsides.com. It’s an indictment on how fucking twisted media landscape is in the US and how far the overton window is pushed that even a hypothetically purely unbiased, perfect journalism would be considered left wing news in the US.
To answer your question, PBS newshour is very good, NPR is usually okay (definitely a bias towards false balance and the status quo). The AP news feed is sort of like a direct news feed that is used as the basis for further stories from further outfits but just reading the source is often good and to the point.
There is NO such source ANYWHERE. There never was. It’s only that now, thanks to the Internet, we can see different accounts from various media and check them against facts.
Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true—except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.
—Knoll’s Law of Media Accuracy (Erwin Knoll, editor, “The Progressive”)
The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies—unless one counts journalists.
—George Orwell, “Homage to Catalonia” (1938)
Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward. They ain’t annything it don’t turn its hand to fr’m explainin’ th’ docthrine iv thransubstantiation to composin’ saleratus biskit.
—Finley Peter Dunne, “Newspaper Publicity” in “Observations by Mr. Dooley” (1902)
The first is where a news source’s editorial stance lies on the political spectrum. I don’t see this as big a deal as some here seem to, and I don’t see being centrist as some kind of “ideal”.
After all, center of what?
The center of the European political spectrum is quite different to the center of the US political spectrum, and it’s a matter of personal opinion where it is best for a news source to live.
Then, on the other hand, we have journalistic integrity. That means researching stories and trying to the best extent to get things factually accurate. To correct the record when things later turn out to be false. Not to just assert things baselessly.
And to report stories that go against the editorial stance. For example; let’s say a network is very pro-immigration, but (hypothetically) there was a massive spike of migrant crime…that network should run that story.
Right now the US doesn’t have a major conservative network with high integrity. But there are plenty on the (American) left and center which are reasonable in that regard.
e.g. I often disagree with CNN’s editorial take, but when I’ve been on forums trying to claim “CNN lies as much as FOX!” they have to really scrape the barrel for any examples of the former.