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> But the quality of the news from these sources makes all corporate news look like complete garbage, because it is

I don't follow all of those, but the ones I have seen a lot from (especially Greenwald and Taibbi) seem to have abandoned even the pretense of doing news for pure commentary, and commentary that is usually pretty predictable in content from just the subject matter and the current alignment of political factions.

I can understand finding them comforting if your ideological biases align with their approach but mistaking them for quality news sources is... surprising.

For many who are just getting comfortable with the concept of media criticism more broadly, the wordiness and detail of writers like Greenwald and Taibbi can be enchanting, but that's exactly how reactionaries drive engagement -- by seeming like the heady adult in the room, despite their very predictable arguments and abandonment of "journalism" per se, toward "political commentary".

Who is a good independent journalist/blogger? (I'm not even going to ask "who are some" - I'd be happy with just a single person.)

I've also found myself disappointed by those two, even if they're not as bad as CNN/Fox or whatever. They're "independent journalists" as a profession, rather than journalists who happen to be independent.

I think independence can be greatly overrated. Real news requires resources to investigate, gather, corroborate, etc. An truly independent blogger has little ability to do that.

That’s a very condescending position, that only those with a lack of exposure would find these sources compelling because they’ve been hoodwinked by their writing style. You go on to cite Glenn Greenwald as an example of not a real journalist, who has a Pulitzer Prize and founded a gigantic news organization.

Glenn Greenwald doesn’t “seem like” the adult in the room, he is. The corporate media meanwhile almost exclusively provides commentary on stories from news wires, and where they do break stories, have many times turned out to be false, politically motivated, and never retracted.

Chris Hedges spent years of his career in active conflict zones. Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Matt Taibbi — these guys have done tons of original investigative journalism. Your criticism doesn’t land.

> You go on to cite Glenn Greenwald as an example of not a real journalist, who has a Pulitzer Prize and founded a gigantic news organization.

Greenwald clearly was a real journalist, but also fairly overtly quit real journalism specifically over journalistic integrity standards (standards which, even prior to his departure, he had, somewhat unusually, left to others when founding a “gigantic news organization”, fairly overtly because while he at the time recognized their importance to journalism, they were not what interested him about it.)

I would never accuse Greenwald of being incapable of real journalism, only as having, after building a career in it, decided his calling is in building a personal brand in ideological commentary unconstrained by the norms of journalistic integrity.

> unconstrained by the norms of journalistic integrity

I cannot imagine how you arrive at that conclusion.

He sacrificed his position and salary at the organization he founded because he was the one with integrity. He refused to have his anti-Biden article about the Hunter Biden laptop blocked by The Intercept's editor: https://nypost.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-quits-the-inte...

Which the New York Times 17 months later quietly comes out and admits was real https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-... "The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation"

What it sounds like to me -- is that you disagree with Greenwald's political positions so are attacking his integrity with no evidence.

His leaving The Intercept apparently consumed all of his "integrity" stores because he hasn't demonstrated a single bit since that departure, in my measure.

I don't lump Hedges, Blumenthal, or Mate in with Greenwald. Greenwald excised himself from that cohort by turning away from journalism and toward primetime tantrums on Fox News.

Maybe not following news or not caring so much about politics is the right approach?

It is not exactly a conspiracy theory, unfortunately, that "elites" have the last say in political decisions[1]. Having said that and gleaning over past human history, I think the oligarchs or "elites" of our "dynasty" allowed us to enjoy more freedoms than we ever had before.

I also doubt that WarnerMedia or CNN has our best interests when "reporting the news". CNN lives off of sensationalism, and it appears to be a convenient tool for a set of oligarchs to persuade folk over a political topic.

Who are these oligarchs, you say? Rich people who abuse their wealth for lobbying on any matter.

1) https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

The Economist, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair… you were saying?

> finding them comforting if your ideological biases align

Actually this group’s political positions are all over the map. The thread that connects them is a lack of influence from DC/Wall St/arms industry. So in other words the comfort is to the extent that I completely distrust those institutions. For someone who does trust those institutions, corporate media is probably fantastic.

> Actually this group’s political positions are all over the map

So?

What I said is I understand finding them comforting if your ideological biases align with their approach, not if you happen to share their exact (especially superficial) ideological position.

> The thread that connects them is a lack of influence from DC/Wall St/arms industry.

That (substantively or superficially) is certainly an angle that can appeal to a particular set of ideological biases, yes.

> What I said is I understand finding them comforting if your ideological biases align with their approach

I apologize for being argumentative, but originally you didn't say "approach" you said "ideological biases" which I interpret on its own as a synonym for political views.

> mistaking them for quality news sources is... surprising

This statement you didn't really support with anything, though of course you're not obligated to. In the absence of that I'm not sure why you would find it surprising that people with Pulitzer prizes for their work in journalism are considered quality sources. I'd be very curious what you consider a quality source to be.

> > What I said is I understand finding them comforting if your ideological biases align with their approach

> I apologize for being argumentative, but originally you didn't say "approach" you said "ideological biases" which I interpret on its own as a synonym for political views.

No, I said both (one referring the the reader and the other to the writer) the first time [0], exactly as I did the second time [1]. “I can understand finding them comforting if your ideological biases align with their approach.”

I can forgive being argumentative, but a selective quote of a partial sentence in one response followed by a straight-out lie about the same material excluded from that quote in the next is... more than just argumentative.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31599240

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31600009

oh, "you can forgive" it? what are you some royal? do you know how dumb and robotic this little "argument" sounds?

> I don't follow all of those, but the ones I have seen a lot from (especially Greenwald and Taibbi) seem to have abandoned even the pretense of doing news for pure commentary, and commentary that is usually pretty predictable in content from just the subject matter and the current alignment of political factions.

The parent post seems to be conflating punditry with news. Ironically, the very issue CNN et al are so incredibly guilty of...

Pundits can be interesting, entertaining, and at times even informative, but using them as a primary source of information seems suspect to me. Their worldviews are (usually, not subtly) skewed towards their ideologies, and they market and sell themselves to people who enjoy confirmation bias.

Parent poster may be a more informed consumer of punditry than most, but regardless this seems like an incredibly poor replacement for factual reporting.

I'm glad you have the freedom to choose your own news sources, but some of your listed sources are just as bad or worse information quality than CNN (e.g. Jimmy Dore, Viva Frei, Tucker Carlson). It's fine for all of us to have our own opinions about which news sources are reliable, but just because someone isn't on cable news doesn't mean they are reliable or free from the influence from "corrupt donors and establishment organizations".

I said Carlson on war issues. Show me where Jimmy Dore or Viva Frei have been wrong. Dore had one major mistake in years of coverage, that I’m aware of, and he posted an apology for it. In the same time span that he exposed dozens of unretracted flat-out lies and falsehoods from major media organizations.

Jimmy Dore championed Ivermectin last year, to name one. Everyone on that list is a bit of a quack, imo.

The NIH says that although it's not approved for COVID, more trials are needed for Ivermectin: https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/ant...

"[The] Panel recommends against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19, except in a clinical trial (AIIa). Additional adequately powered, well-designed, and well-conducted trials are needed to evaluate the effect of ivermectin on COVID-19"

So in other words, it has been approved for clinical trials, which are ongoing. So how does believing in its efficacy make him a "quack"? That characterization is more inline with the highly misleading, and in some cases outright false, stories about ivermectin being "horse dewormer".

All of the properly done trials have already shown no effect. That statement is them saying "It's not dangerous, so we won't recommend against trials, but you would need to do more studies to prove it's effective, because the current data shows that it's not."

I have no idea who half the people you're talking about above are, but anyone who says Ivermectin works is either being lied to or lying to you.

oh you're one of "those" people...

Carlson is a corporate establishment media host, yet you're willing to cherry-pick particular news items you find reliable from him, yet your framing doesn't offer other corporate establishment media figures the same benefit of the doubt.

I prefer not to get into the weeds on the particulars about who is exposing or responsible for "flat-out lies and falsehoods" - we won't agree, and that's ok, I'm not trying to dissuade you on that front, I am just pushing back against the rhetoric of your comment which suggests your news sources are inherently superior to those you malign, rather than they simply being a reflection of your political biases like everyone else.

If there is a corporate media figure who is reporting with integrity on even a single issue, I would be happy to hear any recommendations, and follow them if only to hear them on that issue.

At this point my standard is way below finding people I agree with. My standard is that I have some level of trust that they’re reporting things they believe to be true. Versus the opportunists we have throughout government and media who apparently have no personal beliefs or values and are willing to say or do anything to get ahead and appease the people signing their multimillion dollar checks.

why shouldn't you cherry pick the best coverage from all of them? I fail to see how that's a bad thing. A reflection of diverse and opposing political voices across and around the spectrum sounds pretty healthy, yet here you spit because of some pompous notion that the sources are worse than mainstream propaganda outlets? You are a silly person with silly opinions.

One should seek out the best coverage, my point is that the "mainstream propaganda outlet" framing is selectively applied with respect to one's political bias, not with regard to any consistent meaning for the description "mainstream propaganda".

>yet here you spit because of some pompous notion that the sources are worse than mainstream propaganda outlets? You are a silly person with silly opinions

I won't deign to judge the silliness of your opinions and I didn't attack any of the sources, just compared them to others. Ironically, your "mainstream propaganda" key phrase is actually a popular propaganda tactic meant to poison the well rather than encourage critical thinking.

IS there anyone on HN that doesn't have the freedom to choose their news sources?

Which of those people are investigative journalists? The names I know from the list are just writers of opinion pieces, even if they used to actually do their own investigative work.

They wouldn't be a source on, for example, what is happening in Ukraine at the moment (which is the kind of thing I consider "news" rather than commentary).

>They wouldn't be a source on, for example, what is happening in Ukraine at the moment

Unfortunately they pretend they are. Half of them make a living being contrarians so for the past few months they have been spewing pro-Russian lies and propaganda.

I'm not going to read these for you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges

You can look up the others if you like.

People like Jimmy Dore don't claim to be investigative journalists, fwiw. Then again, most "news" is fed to us by pretty actors, talking heads, and not active investigative journalists (who should not be judged on prime-time attractiveness).

"What's happening in Ukraine" that most people are worried about is actually the geopolitical machinations that might lead to WWIII. The situation is so messed up that Chomsky and Kissinger are both publicly advising everyone to seek peace! When did you ever think you'd see those two on the same side of anything?

>The situation is so messed up that Chomsky and Kissinger are both publicly advising everyone to seek peace! When did you ever think you'd see those two on the same side of anything?

Kissinger was a hawkish warmonger in the 60s and 70s.

But since 1982 he has been a lobbyist and his lobbying firm, Kissinger Associates, is currently owned by the U.S.-Russia Business Council.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kissinger_Associates

As for Chomsky, he will compulsively oppose whatever the West does. Is he still opposed to the Western interventions against genocidal Serbian forces in the 90s?

When America accuses some nominally left-wing tyrant of crimes against humanity, Chomsky sees fit to proclaim their innocence for no better reason than because it's the opposite of what America is saying. He's even gone as far as proclaiming Pol Pot a victim of American propaganda. Chomsky and Kissinger are both relics of the 20th century and I hope to soon drink to their demise (assuming they even can die, did these guys make pacts with devils or something?)

> They wouldn't be a source on, for example, what is happening in Ukraine at the moment

Alexander Mercouris has posted blow-by-blow updates on every battle and political move of the war once or twice a day for months. He called, for example, the Russian capture of Mariupol a month before it happened, while the entire time corporate media was running non-stop propaganda about how well the war was going for Ukraine.

"Corporate media" never said Ukraine was winning in Mariupol. It was always given as a counterpoint.

Sometimes I think people understand the mainstream narrative only through the lens of the contrarians, which is sometimes accurate and sometimes not.

> He called, for example, the Russian capture of Mariupol a month before it happened, while the entire time corporate media was running non-stop propaganda about how well the war was going for Ukraine.

This claim conflates the overall war with Mariupol. I didn't see any serious media that claimed that Mariupol would end other than it did. Everyone called it the same way, that I saw (though I don't read opinion pieces).

Many opinion writers create strawpersons; they say 'the corporate media did X' and then contrast themselves with it. When that happens look at some mainstream media (which is not one thing, but many, many independent publications) yourself and corroborate it. It's almost always false, IME.

If the war was going poorly for Ukraine, then it would be over and Russia would have won.

If the war was going so-so for Ukraine, half the country would be under Russian control.

IMO as long as Ukraine doesn't lost any substantive amount of territory over the summer and stalemates the Donbas/etc, they are winning the war and Russia will falter in the winter.

IMO strategically Ukraine is winning the war, they are getting better weapons, gaining experience, getting supplies, Putin is weakening, the World will adapt to the economic disruption, and Russian troop morale will continue to falter.

The West obviously loves Ukraine draining Putin of all his might. The risk of nuclear war is still ominous.

> He called, for example, the Russian capture of Mariupol a month before it happened, while the entire time corporate media was running non-stop propaganda about how well the war was going for Ukraine.

The entire corporate media was reporting the likely impending fall of Mariupol for long before it happened, while still covering how much Russia had been forced to pivot in their war aims, was taking enormous casualties (in general and in senior officers) by historical standards, and all kinds of other negative indicators.

You can win battles while losing the war.

Alexander Mercouris is the most blatant pro-Kremlin propagandist on your list, he always repeats what the Kremlin says - you could just get the same talking points from Lavrov or Zakharova.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-duran/

I think just the fact that Glenn regularly exposes the government spy to corporate media talking head pipeline makes him have more credibility, to me, than all those networks. These "analysts" are literally trained liars with insane conflicts of interest but instead of noting that the networks instead frame them as experts. Nothing that is spoken by the majority of their guests or contributors is in any way uninfluenced by hidden agendas and, probably, secondary government salaries.

I will also say that Tucker may or may not be good on war coverage but the rest of his show is so toxic I'll never know.

While I like a lot of the people you mentioned, I think an issue with them is they don't create enough original news and comment more on why existing news sucks. (Which it does) Greenwald might be an exception though.

Most of these people, in their current incarnations, are highly dependent on 'corporate news' to get actual news to comment on.

> I get my news from Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Kim Iversen, Jimmy Dore, Max Blumenthal, Matt Tiabbi, Katie Halper, Viva Frei, Louis Rossmann, Alexander Mercouris, among others.

My condolences.

You don't like the mainstream media so you have decided to follow contrarians and "alternative" media. Half of the people you have listed have reduced themselves to unhinged pro-Russian propagandists in the past four months. They went from claiming that Russia would not invade Ukraine to "Here is why Putin is the good guy!" grifters.

This knee-jerk slander really ought to stop. Especially here on HN.

Just because someone doesn't hold mainstream views doesn't make them whatever your version of evil or insane or ____ is.

I would hope that people here were attempting to be better informed instead of merely shouting down otherness.