Where do you guys get your news, and why?
Who do you trust and who don’t you trust, and why?
Thoughts on the likes of Breitbart and other Citizen Journalist?
I thought of this thread based on this: After Election 2012: WWBD -- What Would Breitbart Do?
WWBD?
What worries me is confirmation bias. The far left goes to far left websites and laps it up hardcore. The far right goes to far right websites and laps it hardcore. The other side is constantly demonized, the side one likes is constantly glorified, and every thought is confirmed over and over again. It’s a sad state of affairs and yet another reason why we should move from a two party system. Hopefully 4 more years of Obama being damn near the same as GWB will convince even more people of the limited differences between the two sides.
If I watch Tv wich is rare, I prefer NRK( Norwegian-broadcasting ) for my news. Its commercial free and
the news is more serious than its commercials counterparts. It is offcourse biased in favor of the center-left, but most new organisations in Norway are centrist, with a tilt to either the left or right.
When it comes to news papers I prefer 3 papers, Morgenbladet( more academic and have both rightwing and leftist writers ), Dagsavisen( center-left ) and Klassekampen( left ). I like them not only for their left tilt( the last two ), but because they are the only papers that invites people from both side of the isle to discuss their ideology and debate.
The more mainstream papers are more interrested in crime cases, low-carb diets and other brain dead stuff.
My Web sources are mostly this forum and whatever sources are posted here and I feel this serves as my counter-balance since most americans( both liberal and conservative ) is far to the right of me and most Norwegians.
Btw.
Klassekampen = The Class struggle in english. ( is a leftist news paper that originated as the party paper for the marxist-leninist party “The workers-communist party( Akp ML )” from the late 60s to early 2000s, today it is indipendent from a party, but are wiewed as the unofficial paper for the Red Party( rather new party formed by former members of Akp, trotskyites, “anarchists”, Left-socialists etc ) )
Dagsavisen = The Daily Paper. ( Is the old Labour party`s paper, but are today a indipendent paper, but are biased in favor of The labour party and Socialist-left-party )
MorgenBladet = The Morning paper. ( Is the old Conservative weekly issued paper, but are today non-affiliated
to any party officially or unofficaly and are more a academically and intellectual paper for both academic minded leftists and rightwingers. )
The New York Times and the Economist religiously, the Wall Street Journal several times a week. The Washington Post and Politico during election season/big political news. I catch NPR hard-news reports and/or CNN on the radio/TV screen while lifting occasionally but I prefer to read news than to listen or watch. The NY Review of Books when I want to read about something other than horse-race political coverage or breaking news.
Columnists: Keller, Brooks, Douthat, Noonan.
Guilty pleasure: I buy a couple of the men’s magazines at the airport before a flight.
[quote]smh23 wrote:
Guilty pleasure: I buy a couple of the men’s magazines at the airport before a flight.[/quote]
LOL I do the exact same thing when air traveling, its either mens health or a Weider magazine 
( also a beer or two LOL )
[quote]florelius wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:
Guilty pleasure: I buy a couple of the men’s magazines at the airport before a flight.[/quote]
LOL I do the exact same thing when air traveling, its either mens health or a Weider magazine ( also a beer or two LOL )[/quote]
haha, there is something about bad magazines that makes long flights so much more tolerable.
[quote]H factor wrote:
What worries me is confirmation bias.
[/quote]
Very much agree, and am fully aware I suffer from it from time to time.
I feel like a lot of my issue with it is being born and raised so firmly embedded in the lefty narrative that once I rejected it, I really find myself searching for validation of what I feel is right. I do have a hard time just relaxing and trusting my own brain, and have had this problem my whole life.
I’m not afraid of being wrong, just afraid of not knowing I was/am.
PArt of the reason I made this thread is someone else made a similar one on a different social media, and I wanted more opinion on who goes where. I’m hoping to squash my own confirmation bias by actually reading more diverse opinion.
[quote]smh23 wrote:
I prefer to read news than to listen or watch. [/quote]
The older I get the more this holds true with me as well. I would say now, I’m inclined to not watch the news, but rather read about it. Couple of years ago, would have been the opposite.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
I’m hoping to squash my own confirmation bias by actually reading more diverse opinion.
[/quote]
I try to do exactly the same thing, and it really does have an effect on your thought processes. I think many of our political problems would be solved if everybody went out of their to understand and perhaps even occasionally agree with the opposition. If half of us are watching MSNBC and the other half are watching FOX, the debate falls apart before it even has a chance to begin.
During this election season I’ve liked CNN, it seemed mostly unbiased towards the candidates.
I agree that confirmation bias is an issue as there is a lot of people who will only seek information from sources that confirm their own view of the world and this is a problem that is attributable to parents and teachers who are supposed to teach people to be an individual and to think critically about the material one consumes. I always thought most people go through life with a preset line of ideas and beliefs. They look at an event through that lens and their response is inpart due to the fact they are the sum of their experiences. But if critical thinking is taught there is less of a lens and the event is seen from a more panoramic view.
Cognitive dissonance is another issue in society where people wilfully ignore new information that does not conform to their view of the world because it is distressing to them and how they see, feel and do things.
The proliferation of alternative media can be an issue as there is little vetting or retraction of statements. The amount of rigour is missing in alternative media and should be looked at with skepticism.
Is it just me or are the conservative sites even more obviously biased than the “MSLM”? It seems like they try hard to be even more right wing biased to make up for the slightly left wing bias of other sites.
[quote]nickj_777 wrote:
The proliferation of alternative media can be an issue as there is little vetting or retraction of statements. The amount of rigour is missing in alternative media and should be looked at with skepticism. [/quote]
I agree, and it is one of the main reasons main stream media will use as a weapon against it.
But at the same time, the more I think, the more skepticism I see from the Three Letter Networks as well.
Another thing I do is read newsprint from another country to see how the rest of the world views your country externally. For example I had an American politics professor who made everyone read the Globe and Mail and the National Post from Canada and their coverage on American events. His belief is that for most people true self reflection is something most people ignore and would rather not do. He hoped as students of life we could be self reflective and adhere to the kaisen principle of constant never ending improvement in our ability to be critical of ourselves.
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
Is it just me or are the conservative sites even more obviously biased than the “MSLM”? It seems like they try hard to be even more right wing biased to make up for the slightly left wing bias of other sites.[/quote]
Well, the other side of that statement is that the main stream media is left enough, where of course the alternative seems like right wing bias.
Basically you’ve been conditioned to “think left”, so confronted with anything outside of that narrative is seen as a “right wing bias”.
I don’t know how true that is. I could argue it either way really.
But I do see people giving David Brock millions of dollars, and he pretty much has a war on Fox, and then sometimes a war on any other righty story. And the little bit of reading I’ve done on Brock’s history leans more suspect attention to his current activities…
[quote]nickj_777 wrote:
The proliferation of alternative media can be an issue as there is little vetting or retraction of statements. The amount of rigour is missing in alternative media and should be looked at with skepticism. [/quote]
This is a great point. Alternative media can do a fine job of breaking stories of serious consequence, but I never read something from a non-major outlet without a heightened sense of skepticism. If a news source doesn’t regularly print corrections, it is not fully legitimate.
Business Professor Roger Martin once argued that the most intelligent leaders he ever met were the ones he deemed capable of holding two different views at one time. In the Opposing Mind he believes that most people are only comfortable holding one idea of how things are and should be and those who are truly successful in business can be comfortable holding diverse opinions and ideas. He believed that those who hold diverse ideas can have a higher absorptive capacity to retain new information without disregarding that new information as bullshit. The more ideas you have the more your brain makes neural pathways between the new information which in turn can lead to hunches becoming an idea and serendipitous moments of insight.
I prefer to get all my news from The Onion it helps to laugh instead of crying. And where else can you get such pithy and true headlines like ‘Romney congratulates Obama and tells 240,000 th and final lie of campaign’
[quote]groo wrote:
I prefer to get all my news from The Onion it helps to laugh instead of crying. And where else can you get such pithy and true headlines like ‘Romney congratulates Obama and tells 240,000 th and final lie of campaign’[/quote]
I like to look over The Onion on occasion. Their Biden stuff is hilarious.
PWI
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
During this election season I’ve liked CNN, it seemed mostly unbiased towards the candidates. [/quote]
You’ve probably gotten more hard news from all of your DC comic books than from the liberal bias that CNN dishes up. But you wouldn’t recognize that would you? Noooooo…