# Looking for a straightforward, unbiased online source of political news **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 7, 2012, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-a-straightforward-unbiased-online-source-of-political-news/612095 "2012-02-07T17:51:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-a-straightforward-unbiased-online-source-of-political-news/612095/21 "2012-02-10T04:31:08Z")
Regardless of the claims for unbiased sources in this thread, there are no such things. Check out sources across the spectrum. PBS, Bill Moyers, BBC, NY Times on the left. National Review, Fox News on the right. [Instapundit.com](http://Instapundit.com) is a good blog. From a comment on Amazon: > [@](#): > > He has a mix of views that could be classified right and left. I believe these are some of them: leftish - pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-fetal stem cell research; rightish - pro-war on terrorism, pro-2nd amendment. > > Claims of “bias” and “partisan” are completely unfounded. These come only from the left, who also are the only ones to label him a conservative, which he is not. For a different view on the BBC, see [http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/](http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/). ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-a-straightforward-unbiased-online-source-of-political-news/612095/22 "2012-02-10T04:43:48Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > Regardless of the claims for unbiased sources in this thread, there are no such things. Check out sources across the spectrum. PBS, Bill Moyers, BBC, NY Times on the left. National Review, Fox News on the right. But if you want a balance across the _world_ political spectrum you can cut off the far right-wing American sources as fringe elements, which they are in comparison. That B-BBC blog is a crock of shit by the way. I once took the time and effort to investigate one of their stronger claims about the BBC’s reporting and found a lot of conservative media had reported the same story in exactly the same way. But the blog’s contributors are so obsessive that don’t seem to do too much comparing with other sources before bitching. One of their more ridiculous claims was that a reporter pronounced “Wolfowitz” in a Germanic way and claimed it was an antisemitic dog whistle (rather than that we’re geographically and politically close to Germany and used to pronouncing German names as close to correct as possible. Unfortunately Hitchins picked up on this and ran with it…). ---
**Author:** ![C.Montgomery\_Burns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecd19e/32.png) [@C.Montgomery\_Burns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C.Montgomery_Burns)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2012, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-a-straightforward-unbiased-online-source-of-political-news/612095/23 "2012-02-11T01:10:17Z")
Christian Science Monitor is very non-sensationalistic and rather straightforward. AP is for the most part unbiased, although it depends on the writer. CNN leans a little Democrat, but is much less biased than Fox or MSNBC. ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2012, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-a-straightforward-unbiased-online-source-of-political-news/612095/24 "2012-02-12T22:31:46Z")
> [@rhubarbarin](#): > > I’m not big on news and hate most news sites, but decided recently I should stay more on top of things. So far I am enjoying [AJE](http://www.aljazeera.com/)(Al Jazeera English), on the recommendation of a friend. > > I also like the BBC World News but don’t often get a chance to listen. Should see if they have a podcast, actually. Wow. From the wiki page on Al Jazeera: “In 2011 [Salon.com](http://Salon.com) noted Al Jazeera’s coverage of the 2011 Egyptian protests as superior to that of the American news media, while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also opined that that network’s news coverage was more informative, and less opinion-driven than American journalism.” ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-a-straightforward-unbiased-online-source-of-political-news/612095/25 "2012-02-13T01:20:33Z")
I live within radio and TV range of Montreal, and listen to and watch Canadian stations quite often. Like any other news source, they have their biases, but on a different axis than the US liberal/conservative scale. Good for taking a look at things from a distance, as it were. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2012, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-a-straightforward-unbiased-online-source-of-political-news/612095/26 "2012-02-13T01:33:08Z")
There’s something else about the BBC that some of its detractors don’t seem to get: in political interviewers, it’s deliberately oppositional, and the interviewer takes the arguments of the interviewee’s opponent in order to get them to put forward their views. Some people seem to think this is the interviewer espousing those views. If you watch an anchor haranguing a right-wing politician in isolation, you will see that interviewer espousing left-wing views. However, if you watch a left-wing politician being interviewed on the same subject, you’ll see the interviewer espousing right-wing views. This is policy, and they almost always invite someone on ‘the other side of the fence’ to be interviewed. One thing that (and other) ‘biased BBC’ blog does is to show such interviews in isolation, which does indeed make the interviewers seem shockingly biased. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-a-straightforward-unbiased-online-source-of-political-news/612095.md?page=1)