Where to find decent, unbiased news? | Hacker News Reader

Where to find decent, unbiased news?

10 pointsjc0148023 comments

Would anyone have any recommendations on where to find news that is as unbiased as reasonably possible? Modern media seems to be agenda-driven and completely compromised from an ethical perspective. US-based here and I’m looking for just the facts to be honest. I’m not even sure if this is a thing for journalism anymore (facts).

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You will never find unbiased news. What I recommend doing is trying to understand the bias of the journalists that you read/watch on a regular basis and to follow some from several different sides. You have to treat news articles almost like a court trial. The typical routine in the US is that there are two sides presenting a story, and when applicable there is evidence/data/reports/etc. It's a lot of work to review something from both sides and any supporting work (like reports, papers, pictures, statements, etc) but if you want to get down to the bedrock of a particular issue that's what you have to do. You can't do it for everything, and I don't recommend you try. Be informed on the things that matter to you.

There is also the idea (that I think is a responsible thing to do) that will have to tell people you are talking to that you may not have looked in to whatever they are bringing up and you are not really the person to expect informed conversation from. Some people will continue talking about it and it's up to you whether or not you want to try to engage in the conversation beyond the courtesy acknowledgments. However, I find it a disservice to myself and the people I am talking to to try and interject an uninformed opinion or data point.

Ultimately, focus on those things that are important to you. Do your homework on those things. Recognize when you do and don't know something and don't be afraid to stop talking when you don't know something. Be willing to stop and listen, and don't go in to a conversation that you are informed in expecting to change minds.

There are sites like this one that attempt to categorize stories according to left/right bias (of course, there's no way to label the bias of a story that isn't itself biased) https://www.improvethenews.org

It does not exist. Choose media with a consistent bias and you will rarely be surprised by lies, especially if you diversify your sources and pull from across political and economic spectra. For US news, you're better off with foreign coverage than domestic, but it might be upsetting if you are nationalistic (I would imagine that holds true everywhere).

Very glad to read that. I agree wholeheartedly.

Why would foreign coverage be better? I understand that they have generally less bias. However, usually any international coverage will will only cover the biggest items and miss a lot of smaller stories that may still be relevant to people living in the subject country. They may also be covering it from the perspective of how it impacts the reporting country, which can gloss over or miss details pertainate to the subject country, or introduce bias.

News is always biased. A more interesting question is, do you need news to be unbiased, or even, do you need any news at all?

I highly recommend reading "Avoid News" from Rolf Dobelli from 2010 [1]. This essay was published long before the problem with fake news. I stopped reading the news for 10 years now (except Hacker News and some sports) and I've never had the feeling that I missed something that was important. As a positive side effect I never have to think what kind of bias the author of the news article has, because I never read them.

[1] - https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf

First time I hear of this essay. I needed to read that, thank you!

Read as wide a selection of news sites as possible. Read US sites, Iranian sites, Russian sites, European sites, Asian sites.

They are ALL biased, but if you read widely enough and often enough, the biases begin to cancel out, and you will start to get an idea of what the actual facts behind the news are.

It takes a while, but its worth it in the long run. Sometimes the websites that are the most factual are the ones that you wouldn't have looked twice at previously.

After a while you work out which have the most 'propaganda' and which are the most neutral. With some stories, you will find that some news-agencies will try to hide them by not covering them at all - usually the stories that show that country in a bad light.

This.

I read NYT, WSJ, FoxNews. Sometimes HuffPo and Breitbart.

NYT leans left. WSJ leans right. Everyone else is closer to the extremes. I keep that in mind when I’m reading and will intuitively correct for their bias.

<grin> Those are all US sites. That news will all have US-centric views.

You need to get out more. :)

There is always bias. To do otherwise requires large numbers of us working for a sustained amount of time. That is history, not news.

Best case?

High clarity programs will differentiate fact and opinion clearly. Seek these. You will get many facts with only moderate effort.

Ideally, the people who produce high clarity programs will also make their bias clear and be truthful about it.

Anyone doing those things is a good source for news. This is true even when your preferred bias clashes with theirs.

Many focus on bias when we all would benefit much more from a focus on clarity and truth in bias.

https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news provides news stories aggregated from major news sites with the news sites ranked by their bias level: far-left, left, center, right, far-right

AllSides also has a mobile app that works fairly well.

As others have stated, there are no unbiased news sources. Seeing the takes from different sides shows the biases and helps you keep an open mind.

Rating modern BBC, NPR, TheHill and Axios(!) of all things as "center" is quite a leftist bias in itself.

As a rule of thumb you can say that if it's allowed on /r/politics then it fits neatly into the regressive left's small space of approved opinions.

If the weatherman says it's warm today, some will say too hot, some will say too cold.

There is no internationally recognised unit of left/rightness. You will always need to apply your perceived bias to anything like this. Don't expect them to match exactly what you feel.

I agree with your analogy. I too would consider my personal opinions prudent and middle-of-the-road but unlike AllSides.com I do not run a website whose mission statement allegedly is to be transparent about media bias.

https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page

P.B.S America https://www.pbs.org/ A.B.C Australia https://www.abc.net.au/ Both tend to give government independent points of view IMO.

One word: trackers

Conflict trackers are fun, but there are lots of others

Like this one: https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/prote...

Build a network of people whose expertise you trust on different topics. See what books, articles, information they recommend to you. Kind of like you’d do at work.

Don’t worry so much about day-to-day news. It’s more useful for conversation than it is actionable.

https://adfontesmedia.com might help.

unfavorable response - this is not the place to ask. HN is not as nutral as you seem to assume. The real answer, is you have to do your own research. There's no easy answer, as everyone will give something different

Idk man.

Everyone has a bias. I've been seeing a lot of rueters recently.

Does anyone think paid news would be any better?

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