Comment by bardworx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bardworx | Hacker News Reader

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> I can speak from first-hand experience that this is exactly how matters of this nature are handled.

> i.e. the heroism of the SEALS vs that our "ally" was hiding a terrorist.

Perhaps I'm a jaded New Yorker with a family member having, at one time, a "high title" in an international news corporation. They worked for many companies, this isn't a liberal/conservative or democrat/republican comment.

I do not trust what our politicians or news corporations say at face value. Nor am I naive to believe that US "allies" would tell "the whole truth and nothing but the truth". Every story is laced with certain amount of spice - this goes for news, company lines, startup elevator pitches, etc.

I'm not sure how you are framing your initial sentence: are you being fastidious or attempting to be cordial in calling straight bullshit. However, why is anyone surprised? Everyone spins the truth to their benefit.

The most eye opening experience I've ever had was being in a news room, reading a live report from Baghdad reporter while listening to an anchor a few feet away. The disparity between the two was so staggering that I renounced all news instantly and felt disgusted. I understand news companies have to make money but what they say isn't "news". In my opinion, CNN, Fox News, CNBC, and TMZ are all flavors of the same marketing machine.

News/Politicians = Convenient truth which sells ads.

edit: spelling, clarity.

Your comment was enlightening and compels me to ask: where can the public get access to live field reports such as the one you mention? If news companies transform these reports into faux-news, I'd like to bypass them directly and read/watch directly from the source. Are there any publicly-accessible resources that provide access to field reports or "real" news?

Currently, I believe social media is the best source of news; usually it is a first person account.

I was referring to a internal system which reporters and producers share which doesn't have a public feed.

If you watch some news reports, you'll notice a bunch of people at their desks with a small screen next to their larger monitors. That smaller screen is something like an IRC chat which is used to coordinate assets between reporters and producers.

http://radio.foxnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/FNCNewsr...

This is from fox news - notice those small monitors that look out of place.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8018/7405270916_7cd37ba78f_b.j...

This is from CNN, notice that most monitors have CNN as their screen saver while some, with no one sitting next to them, have block boxes.

Thanks for the insight. Are there any particular social media sources you like to use? I find that Twitter and reddit are the most real-time, but reddit can often carry its own biases as well. Twitter seems like it could be the best social media news source if field reporters released news directly through their streams (ie not tweeting as a representative of FOX or NBC). Essentially the IRC chat you mentioned above, but public-facing.

Unfortunately I won't be very helpful here as I really just stopped listening/readying/watching news actively. I'll browse a news aggregate like Hacker News and bi-weekly do a Google News browse but that's about it.

I can't find the quote now but it was from an editor of a news magazine who said something like: If you didn't read the news for a whole year, away from civilization, you probably wouldn't miss anything very important.

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