I’m enjoying Lemmy so far, for the most part.
Everything here is pretty good save for the fact that all the news and politics I can find is dominated by the same few accounts.
Half or more of the accounts have a very clear agenda. They modify headlines. Lie. Spread disinformation. And generally are just extremely toxic groups.
It doesn’t seem to be a secret here either. And moderators appear to have no interest in putting a stop to it.
So, where are you subbed to for reliable news and US/Global politics?
I don’t. Lemmy seems to have the same issue as Reddit where people are towards the extremes with the only moderate people being those who don’t want to talk about politics in the first place.
I like to listen to CSPAN while at work, especially their morning show “The Washington Journal” where most of the content are regular Americans calling in to talk directly to guests or about issues they feel are important.
I don’t
I learned on Reddit not to trust any world news or political news posts. I was tricked a couple of times by fake posts. I still browse the posts, but I take everything I read with a grain of salt.
I use news apps for my news.
An interesting project here on this front is lemmy.link: https://lemmy.link/communities
They create RSS feeds from external sources and dump the feeds into lemmy communities.
So it’s an RSS aggregator native to lemmy so that we can up/down vote and comment or cross post too.
Seems like an interesting way to take the arbitrariness out of what gets posted and instead focus on actually reading, assessing and commenting on the news.
Easy. Don’t get your news from social media.
Get your news from Reuters or The AP or something. Come to social media to discuss the news but step 0 is go somewhere else.
Subscribe to a bunch of rss feeds you like on your phone
This is a lot closer to link aggregation than social media.
People post links to those places here. That’s what this person is asking.
This doesn’t ask your question, but this may be of useful to people, anyway.
I’ve just joined ground.news, a pay site. The great part about this site is that it rates news as to left, center, or right leaning, and rates the “factuality” of the sites. Filtering out non-factual knocks out a large part of the outlier’s lies, and shows who the people are, who push them. like knowing the players pushing their agenda. One caveat is that some that push lies still slide through by quoting the people who spout lies without disclaimers of the reliabilty of their false claims. One rule of thumb that I find helpful is that I mentally filter out any pleas to emotionalism. Manipulating readers/viewers emotionally is the opposite of informing. Sites that try to be centrist and ignore whether the sources are reliable about facts, end up being half lies or propagandsa. It is useful to keep in mind that blatently propaganda sites work in some truth to give themselves some plausibility. Only the highest reliable news are worth letting in to your news sphere.
This is a worldwide problem as paid propagandaists muddy the news sphere. Welcome to our cyber warfare world.
I don’t get my news from any social media platform, including lemmy, no offense to lemmy. I used to do that with reddit, but it’s just too unhinged getting your news that way.
I stick with Associated Press, Reuters, and The New York Times, in that order. I also use Google News specifically for local news, but I don’t even peek at the main world news feed there.
More generally speaking, I stick to the old school human editorial board for my news. News that’s presented to me on AP, for example, has already been filtered by a board of humans who are smarter than me and whose opinions I trust on the state of the world. Opening up your selection of news to an easily gameable social media algorithm is just more trouble than it’s worth, in my opinion.
Sorry, I have to admit that I’m not the best at keeping up with LGBTQ+ news, so I wasn’t aware of that controversy. I’ll keep an eye on that and see how it shakes out. If NYT continues to stir controversy, then I can switch. I’m not particularly attached to them. Washington Post would be a good replacement, and I saw that GLAAD article mention that WP’s LGBTQ+ coverage is better.
Try Reuters or AP. I’ve been trying out the Boring app too recently which takes the sensationalism out of articles
I don’t really use social media for that, to be honest. I just get info from my friends, but if I seek out news myself I’ll usually just check the BBC, free news that has to be as impartial as possible. Maybe the Financial Times is alright too, but they paywall their articles and they’re more intended for investors than the average person.
For international politics I watch and read news sources from India, they are somewhat biased against Pakistan (thou, I believe, even there are truthful) and for everything else looks quite neutral.
I don’t think there is any reliable source for US politics, too much interests are in play and even if someone is truthful and reliable I don’t know how to assess that. But I do take a look at Democracy Now since they don’t sound sensationalistic.
Set up an Rss feed for AP and Reuters
Lemmy and Reddit in general haven’t been good for reliable news for me. I’ve been using Artifact for the past few months to have a more personalized feed, but I much prefer picking my own RSS feeds.
The only thing that is lacking for me about RSS feeds is the ability to discuss content. If Lemmy can fill that void, I’ll gladly switch over.
I wouldn’t rely too much on lemmy for news and politics tbh, because posts can sway on way or another or even not get traction because most people don’t agree with it. Instead I think it’s better something like a RSS feed where you can pick your sources, or maybe just check a couple of less biased news outlets, so you can somehow have a more broad overview of what’s going from different perspectives.
Good luck finding reliable news anywhere, this including the major TV and News organizations.
As others have said, you have to think critically about every piece of news you read. Ask yourself what the opposite side on a story might think, or look for an alternative opinion. If you’re reading an article in The Economist, read an article in Le Monde Diplomatique on the same subject. If you’re reading something about Russia in the Washington Post, read an article in RT on the same topic. Think critically, and the truth is likely somewhere between the two opposing points.
International mass media is a form of soft power for countries to exert influence. It’s not a conspiracy it’s a tool available to governments which is why you have the BBC, CGTN, RT, PressTV, CBC, etc. That the mass media in the USA is mostly private doesn’t change that fact and make it more independent, because the USA is essentially an ogliopoly.
Did you apply your critical thinking to this answer?
If you did, I’m gonna have to advise you to take your own advice, since this answer in no way answers the question.
So, if I think critically, the truth is somewhere in the middle?
Apologies if I said something to invite your passive aggressive response. You do seem quite passively calling out a few accounts but won’t mention them, I’m curious as to your politics now. Do you think it works like your neighborhood association where if you don’t say the word that people will get it and it will protect you from revealing your bias?
You came here and explained a bunch of nonsense. That’s why you got a passive aggressive response.
Your comment is not only jaded and wrong, but it’s also not what I asked. You just came here to pontificate about your conspiracy theories about the media.
Which, for the record, is exactly sort of stuff this post was inspired by. Hyperbole and dribble. You didn’t say anything of substance. You just talked down to me and rambled on about how nobody can trust the news. And that, is nonsense.
Sorry you feel/think that way.
Replace the word “news” with “historical document” and OP is discussing how to conduct academic research.
Man, this whole thread has tried my patience. It’s as if not a single Lemmy user thinks that current events are worth following.
I’m not sure where everyone is getting their information, but this response is sorta terrifying.
Current events are certainly worth following and Lemmy could be a great place to add comments, ask questions and find additional context. A bot to scrape a relevant subreddit if content is needed.
Complaining about bias is what I was addressing. You can get unbiased media. Al-jazeera is surprisingly good for world news.
I wasn’t complaining about bias though. That’s the thing. I was asking for reliable news aggregation on Lemmy. Big difference
Nobody here seems to understand that though. Or, very few.
I know news is bias. That isn’t the point. It’s the posting of blogs, YouTube videos, altering headlines, using alts to brigade voting and push an agenda… Here, on Lemmy, not in the media.
The media is a known commodity. If I read an MSN article, I know their bias. If I read a fox news article, I definitely know their bias.
A bunch of edgy “communists” and qanon accounts manipulating the large news and politics community ON LEMMY is the point. Not the news
Isn’t Al-Jazeera a state-owned Saudi network? I’d trust them about as much as RT, Fox, CNN, or TikTok.
You didn’t say anything of substance.
He actually did but your mind is rejecting it.
Nobody can trust the news. That’s not nonsense, it’s a fact. There are no reliable news sources.
You can either deal with it or pretend that the source you find most comforting is the absolute truth and totally unbiased. But then you’d be lying to yourself, which is usually what makes people get defensive 🤔
Your definition of the word fact is seriously questionable.
What is the news? How can you arrive at a definition of what constitutes the news without introducing bias?
Okay. Fine. So, what is the solution then?
Nobody should pay attention to anything? Where should I get my information? Should I visit all the people and ask them?
How am I going to find out what happened today at the NATO Summit? Should I have gone to Lithuania and attended the summit in person?
Is it alright if I read the article on NPR that explains what legislation past the Senate in the US? Or do I need to go visit the Senate myself so I can eliminate NPR’s bias?
I’m very interested in science. Climate change and physics specifically. Where should I find out about the latest discoveries in science? Do I need to read all of the journals myself? Cuz, if so, I’m fucked. I don’t have that sort of time.
And, admittedly, even though I consider myself well informed, I’m just not up to speed on all of the equations in astrophysics. So, now, I’m really fucked. Do I need to know a physicist personally so I can ask them?
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