I like the Guardian and BBC News.

NYT, the economist and bbc.

NPR (in the car) and online it's CNN and BBC, and I even have to ration that into small doses these days.

NYT, Le Monde, the Guardian, BBC, and the NZ Herald. I pop into the Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune from time to time.

I watch news on tv in the morning and read my ipad in the evening. I've always tried to keep up, but like you, ever since Cheetohead came into the picture, I read as much as I can stomach.

I like watching the morning shows CBS offers, first world news in the morning and then the other show with Charlie Rose, Norah O'Donnell and Gayle King. I like how they stick to the facts and try to report the news the old fashioned way, facts without so much bias. Nora O'Donnell is my favorite because when interviewing people, she is not afraid to ask the hard questions to that no one else is asking. We listen to it with our Roku in the morning while we're waking up.

CNN used to be my go to spot but IMO, they just don't let go of stuff and would rather have a tit for tat match with Cheetohead; they miss reporting really important stuff as a result.

I watch Lester Holt, in the evenings, scan Politico.com and use the app Flip on my iPad which pulls information from a lot of resources. Since all this "fake" news stuff has come to light, I only read articles from well known agencies.

Have never looked at several listed here but am going to check them out. Good thread Oak!

I use Feedly (an RSS reader) to pull content from tons and tons of different websites, news and partisan sites. I skim the headlines and click on stories of interest. The sites on my list:

New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Hotair, Townhall, Ace of Spades HQ, Politico, the Hill, Mother Jones, CNN, Salon, Slate, Daily Kos and Huffington Post. I hate both MSNBC and Fox News so do not have either on my feed. I try very hard to read news from both sides of the aisle, esp. since some of the work I do tangentially requires me to be fully informed of current events.

I strongly recommend using an RSS reader and subscribing to different sites in this way as it makes it much faster to read the news and capture stories of interest.

Is there a neutral website?

No. Although some left-leaning sites will pretend to be.

Great info. I looked at Fox News a couple of times because I know a couple of their anchors are starting to sour on Trump, but it seems they are really into deflecting accusations about him.

I sometimes watch BBC News but haven't checked out their website.

Beagles, thanks for all the websites!

None really. Yahoo news headlines will pop up on my yahoo mail page and I will sometimes glance through those. On days I work, I watch the early morning news and a little of Today. Very, very rarely will watch the late local news, which of course has a bit of national news.

I read news from a number of different sites to try to get a balanced view. That said, I won't read Fox or MSNBC. My go to (in no particular order) are CBS, NBC, NPR, BBC, Washington Post, NYTimes, Boston Globe, Politico and my local paper.

Mostly NYT and the Washington Post.

Recently subscribed to NYT to support a news organization under attack by DT.

I subscribe to the NY Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. I have a feed that pulls in many others. I know it's not news but I can't resist the Daily Show, Bill Maher and John Oliver for funny commentary. I also watch some FOX News.

Breitbart, Drudge, Washington Times, National Review.

Teehee! :-)

NPR, New York Times, BBC, the Guardian. Wall Street Journal (this last one in print at my local coffee shop).

It is laughable to think any of those in the "center" on that chart are not biased towards the left. Talk about alternative facts. And the idea that places like Vox and Slate are just slanted left. Or that Vox, which thought there was an actual land bridge connecting the Gaza Strip and West Bank and which features Matt Yglesias who didn't know what the Everglades are is a reliable news source. That chart may be the funniest thing ever produced. It's an April Fools joke, right?

has to be, there is no way CNN is mainstream!

Have to admit I looked twice when I read Breitbart D_gw! Ha!

Beagles, before the last election I would have agreed with you. But you have to admit this election and its winner is an anomaly. In the past there were several news sites that were center. The thing is, it may seem that they're all left, but it's the man who's being discussed and his lack of knowledge about everything, & his crass and rude behavior, have made this country an embarrassment. It's not politics and issues. It's the man.

I heard Drudge is even coming down on him. Several lead anchors on Fox have too.

If you read what he tweeted this morning it's easy to see why he is constantly reported on in a bad light.

No they have been leaning left for a long time way way way before Trump. Now they've just gone to defcon 12 and aren't doing themselves any favors with their hysteria. The New York Times! Seriously I can't believe anyone could argue it doesn't lean left??

NPR.org is 1 of the best, & I have Huffington Post as my homepage for all the latest political news. Not too long ago, I signed up for a daily newsfeed of political items from all around my state, which is great because most of that stuff never shows up on the local TV or in our local paper. You can also find AP & Reuters online, as well as BBC.

It really is a mistake to think mainstream, politically moderate publications are left-leaning. That is the spin coming from the political right & they've been doing it for a long time. It's a.k.a. 'working the refs' & it's been quite successful, as we all can plainly see.

Here's a good assessment from 2005:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/general/news/2005/05/26/1476/think-again-working-the-refs/

*sigh* Reading the above linked article has made me realize some things that happened for the first time, seem to be happening again...

Lastly, I'd like to point out that questing for a 'perfect' non-biased news source is not the answer. You (& I) are the balance.

Here's a link to some handy guides for news consumers:

https://www.wnyc.org/story/breaking-news-consumers-handbook/

The idea that so-called "mainstream" media is not left leaning is so far from the truth it is hard to imagine. It astounds me that the bias isn't clear to everyone.

I could give a zillion examples of the way things are framed and the stories they chose to emphasize but I doubt that would change anyones mind if they don't already see what I assumed was self evident. Just look at political donations from reporters! I think it was like 98 percent to the left! And half the anchors and I think a few tv station presidents were all married to or otherwise related to people in the Obama administration. That's unbiased??

Running occasional columns by so-called token conservatives (LOL at David Brooks as a conservative) does not a conservative publication make. It's about the political leanings of all the so-called neutral editorial boards and tv execs and anchors. The people who decide what constitutes news and what angle to approach stories from.

It is about the fact that conservatives on tv and news pages are segregated as the token conservative voice while left leaners are presented as unbiased reporters.

And seriously, The Hill leans right!?! They're practically a PR shop for Chelsea Clinton. I think they've run like 70 articles on her tweets in recent months!

NY Times, Washington Post, the Guardian for UK news.

I read Google News, like Beagle's RSS feeder, Google's pulls from many sources:

https://news.google.com/

beagles, your chart is from 2012? You must be joking if you think we'd fall for the statistics from that! And, by the way, LOL at who/what you think is NOT conservative!

• Online Daily: Drudge Report, Huffington Post, Lucianne, Yahoo, the WSJ, the Jerusalem Post, and the NYT until my monthly allotment runs out. Everything online. I no longer watch any news on cable or network tv, as I can't stand it, except local headlines. Don't go to their websites, either.

At least once a week: the Guardian, Al Ahram (Egyptian news in English), YNet (Israeli news in Hebrew), Commentary.

Radio: Whatever is on when I'm working on the computer (unless I'm writing a post). No one famous! I have really tried with NPR over the years but I can't stand them. And when I heard Diane Rehm ask Bernie Sanders pejoratively about his "Israeli citizenship" and Bernie's response - "Huh?" - and Rehm tell him that she was looking at a list of U.S. Congresspeople and other politicians who had dual citizenship in Israel, I realized the truth, because there are NO Congresspeople who have dual American-Israeli citizenship. Rehm was reading a list that she received online that has been making the rounds for years; it's from an anti-semitic site (JewWatch, or something like that), and is intended to slur Jewish politicians with an accusation of dual loyalty. So that finished NPR for me as to the reliability of its sources.

TV: CSPAN every day; we receive 3 of its channels and there is a lot of interesting information, as well as being able to see Congressional hearings live and unedited. I love CSPAN!

And RT (Russia Today) - yes, it's called Russia's propaganda channel, and you have to take that into account. But for international events, including in-depth reports about the political, social, and economic realities of various countries, IMO it's the best. RT wll take on agriculture in Ethiopia, tiger-preservation in India, the devastation of Syria, Japanese love of American pop-culture, and on and on, and present an hour of wtm is fascinating reportage.

It is impossible to be unbiased, and I am not so sure I even want someone to be. Take someone like Rachel Maddow; I want her opinion. I don't always agree with it, but it interests me and I consider the source.

Not so much for political coverage per se, but as a newspaper, to me there is simply no finer source than the NYTimes. I also like WAPO, the New Yorker, the Atlantic and Huffpo. I think of John Oliver and his cohort of political comedians as a news source, though certainly biased. I read the WSJ for business purposes and they seem pretty center to me as does CNN. I read the NYPost because even though i think it is a joke , they usually get the scandal stuff right it seems.

I can't stomach too much of the right at this time; I find anyone who spins for T to be unbearable.

maddie260 I didn't post a chart.

Interesting piece I just finished reading that seems apropos to this discussion:

http://magazine.art21.org/2017/03/08/what-if-balance-was-about-process-rather-than-outcome/#.WOTo41Pyso8

"Journalists often talk about balance, and it is usually in the context of a finished piece of writing: was it “fair and balanced”? Did it consider all sides of an issue? Did it appear to take a side?

These are difficult questions, and they become even murkier when the moral and political ground is shifting underneath us. Recently I had an encounter in a newsroom where I proposed a story about a lawsuit against Donald Trump over his business conflicts. A colleague worried we already had too many stories that day that were critical of Trump—his concern was about the appearance of balance. But if the 45th president of the United States wakes up every day and makes an inflammatory comment, lies, or gets sued for an impropriety, is it my responsibility to “balance” these facts with the reality that some people trust him nonetheless?

I won that argument and did my story about the lawsuit. But the whole discussion made me uncomfortable: the appearance of balance, in this case, conflicted with the pursuit of truth. And I know for a fact that this same conflict arises constantly in news production—we are compelled to put long, dishonest statements from companies or politicians alongside the crushing stories of people whose lives they have destroyed, so that our audiences can see that we at least tried to be fair...

...I don’t believe balance is a stable place at which we can ever fully arrive, and we’d be kidding ourselves if we claimed we can disappear the lines between writer and subject, photographer and photographed, or individual and collective. In our current system, we can’t..."

Excellent point, Carol. In fact I think "balance" helped to legitimize a candidate who is wholly unfit. So i no longer think balance is the "Holy Grail". But Oakley's question is a good one. I think we all have to do our own work on it. I am a minor news junkie, but TBH I often really want the opinion of those journalists who are steeped in it, and have spent years at it.

Frankly, I just wish everyone would admit their partisan bias so we could judge the stories / info they post accordingly. It is the pretense of "unbiased" journalism that causes a lot of problems (including the false search for "balance").

I also wish that people would take their responsibilities seriously as voters in a democracy and take the time to read news from a wide variety of sources so they could form their own opinions. But that's clearly never going to happen.

I truly believe that we'd be a lot better off if voters had to be able to answer at least a few simple questions before being allowed to vote. My proposed test:

1. Name at least one senator 2. Name at least one house member 3. Name at least one Supreme Court justice.

If you can't do that, IMO, you have no business weighing in on who is going to lead the country.

Yup, Beagles.

I used to watch Fox occasionally. But all kidding and hyperbole aside, I really get too worked up when I have to see too much of Spicer or KA. It was like the only source of stress in my life! (and i have three teens!) So it was either give up news entirely, or stay away from certain sources that I knew would set me off. Hopefully I can grow out of that. Or just google a few what I think of as "normal" Republicans from time to time to hear what they say.

Mtn, there are great sources of right leaning news who are NeverTrump who you might prefer!

I wouldn't watch Fox News either, so I definitely understand that being stressful and unpleasant.

I honestly can't believe how popular Fox is, that channel is just... ugh. I guess it only goes to show how much of a desperate demand there was for cable news without a left-leaning spin. I just wish it could be provided by people who aren't horrible.

Beagles, do you have a fave source that is right-leaning and NeverT?

I won't watch anything where there is a chance I would hear Trump's voice. If I do have the news on which is extremely rare since early November (it would be CNN, MSNBC and Shepard Smith at noon on Fox), I have my remote in my hand and my finger on mute or switch so I have avoided him and his crew since October. (The new series spinoff of The Good Wife started the pilot with his swearing in at that Inauguration. I couldn't switch the channel fast enough.)

I read the NYT (new subscriber since November), LA Times and CNN Washington Post (maybe a quick look at a few others). I do read Variety and am surprised that on a daily basis they have an article on him....usually negative.

After watching SNL's McCarthy impression of Spicer, I sedated myself and watched the beginning of one of his press conferences as I had not seen the "real" Spicer before. I asked my husband if SNL preempted the news conference as I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing. I still think someone was pulling an April Fool's joke....however, it was early March.

National Review is very good. http://www.nationalreview.com

They have 2 anti-Trump articles before the fold right now :) And published an entire Against Trump issue before the election.

Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire is reasonably decent. He even has a podcast w/ a "Good Trump/ Bad Trump" theme to assess how Trump is living up to conservative principles. Shapiro is more of a social conservative than I'd prefer but smart and definitely not a Trump fan. http://www.dailywire.com [I only listen to the Podcast and I don't read anyone else at Daily Wire, so I don't attest to the quality of anyone else's articles over there. Shapiro was associated with Breitbart but resigned b/c he didn't like its direction and is not a Bannon fan so I don't hold that against him]

Reason is decent for a libertarian perspective: http://reason.com

Cato Institute is a think tank that has in-depth coverage from a libertarian perspective- https://www.cato.org

THX, Beagles. DH reads the National Review so I guess I will start there.

Yes, I find the National review good. I like some of Fox but stay away from Hannity and the like because they are two far right for me. I can only take a short time of Rachel and CNN because they are far left of me. I do skip around a lot but have never read Reason or Cato so will check them out.

Marlene, I've always liked Shepard Smith. He doesn't seem to walk the Fox party line. Boy, I'm glued to what's going to happen to Bill O'R now. So far I've seen ONE person defending him. Trump.

", but TBH I often really want the opinion of those journalists who are steeped in it, and have spent years at it." (Bolding is mine).

That is not journalism. That is commentary.

beagles, I'm sorry for associating you with that chart. I should have known better.

No problem :)

I pretty much gave up on news after this horrible election cycle. My Sunday local paper is about all I'll read now. I scan headlines at CNN but rarely read the site. I do watch PBS Newshour when I can, preferring their non-frantic pace and in-depth stories.

What I despise are the network channels such as NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. An anchor such as David Muir stands out as someone that they must pump full of caffeine and adrenaline so that every story is "breaking news!!!!!!!"

Here's an article on best practices for assessing the veracity of news & the sites that promulgate it in our digitally connected age. I realized I've come to use most of these same techniques too, over the years:

https://medium.com/@holden/how-media-literacy-gets-web-misinformation-wrong-45aa6323829d

"How “News Literacy” Gets Web Misinformation Wrong

I have a simple web literacy model. When confronted with a dubious claim:

• Check for previous fact-checking work
• Go upstream to the source
• Read laterally

That’s it. There’s a couple admonitions in there to check your emotions and think recursively, but these three things — check previous work, go upstream, read laterally — are the core process.

We call these things moves. They are generally usable intermediate goals for the fact-checker, often executed in sequence: if one stops panning out, then you go onto the next one.

The reason we present these in sequence in this way is we don’t just want to get students to the truth — we want to get them there as quickly as possible. The three-step process comes from the experience of seeing both myself and others get pulled into a lot of wasteful work — fact-checking claims that have already been extensively fact-checked, investigating meaningless intermediate sources, and wasting time analyzing things from a site that later turns out to be a known hoax site or conspiracy theory site..."

And 1 of the first things I check these days is the dateline on an article. I see so much stuff that gets circulated as if new, when it's from years ago.

FWIW, HTH

WSJ, NYTimes and local paper - all online. I rarely watch news on TV.

Did you know you can get NYTimes and Washington Post online subscriptions for free with .edu email, for anyone in education.

I also like The Guardian. I just gave them a donation, too.

We watch The Young Turks every weeknight from 6-8 p.m. live on YouTube. We have a Google Chromecast and cast it to the TV. If you are progressive leaning, you might enjoy it. We are probably the oldest viewers they have. They have a lot of millennials. Don't discount online news. They have a very large viewership including some world leaders (yikes, Assad is one of them) and have just raised over $1.5 million to hire new reporters.

We don't watch network news anymore. Gave up on MSNBC and CNN a long time ago, though we do watch Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown on CNN.

I watch the Today show in the morning getting ready for work, but it is not the show it used to be.

News is neither left- nor right-leaning if it is news (factual reporting as opposed to commentary). I think many people accuse newspapers like the NY Times of being left-leaning because the editorial staff may be. However, I would trust their reporting over many many other sources. I think it is pretty obvious to anyone who reads some of my posts on threads such as this one that I am very much a left-wing, liberal activist and have been most of my life. I think that whatever sources one chooses, one needs to check and double check with other sources as well. It is imperative to sift through the detritus on a regular basis and not take anything at face value. This is especially true today with so much lying going on almost everywhere.

oh, and in my previous response, I forgot the Christian Science Monitor. Fact checkers (Media Bias Fact Check) rate it as always factual.

One other source I trust is Bill Moyers. Here is a link to his list of investigative resources. I think it is very good.

Bill Moyers

No worries if someone disagrees. Not going to argue. You won't change my mind and I won't change yours.

News is neither left- nor right-leaning if it is news (factual reporting as opposed to commentary).

This is true. And I don't accuse the NY Times or other trusted sources of making up reports (although I think there has been some issues with some reporters, not necessarily at the Times but other trusted sources being a little too quick to jump on anything that could potentially be anti-Trump w/o doing the rigorous work to confirm the stories and with relying a little too much on conjecture).

The bias comes from what the news reporters choose to focus their investigative reports on, and the stories they choose to feature and the way those stories are framed.

Like when the NY Times hit Rubio for having a "luxury boat" which turned out to be a basic fishing boat.

Do you send out a reporter to conduct an in-depth investigation of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants or crimes committed against undocumented immigrants, for example?

[This is just a very simplistic example, I'm not saying you should do either of these things--- but you see the basic point I'm making].

In both cases, the reporting could be completely accurate, but the choice of which one to put on the front page shapes policy and public opinion.

When a scandal hits, do you report it as "Bad republican senator bad" or "Republicans at risk of overreach on scandal involving politician whose party shall remain nameless until paragraph 22."