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[How do you keep up with the news?]

How do you keep up with the news?

Television

0 (0%)

Magazine/Newspapers

0 (0%)

Internet

6 (60%)

Word of mouth/seeing it live

0 (0%)

A combination of the above

2 (20%)

I don't keep up with the news

2 (20%)

Total Members Voted: 10

In this time of crazy events, riots, a virus, continued government shenanigans and the like...unsurprisingly there's a lot of news going around.  Whether it's fabricated stuff, legitimate articles, a mix of both, some guy screaming at the camera for 30 minutes and spitting at people, there's always something being talked about in the topic of current events happening around us.

How do you keep up with the news? Do you have a main outlet that you view/read/listen to specifically for your current updates? How you do you feel about this ongoing battle of "Real versus fake news" and how has it affected you (if at all) from how you view your source?  Are there certain outlets that you'd avoid or recommend others avoid for that reason?

For me, I don't have a main source of news, though I mainly stick to the internet unless there's really nothing better on TV.  But I usually go between different sources for stories, whether it be right/left leaning to kind of get an idea how both sides are talking about the same story.  Since biases are indeed a big thing, I usually just feel like I can get more of the actual truth from looking at both sides and pulling out the common denominators, and just sort of piecing it together.

I really hate the battle between "real versus fake" because for me, the person trying to get the truth, it becomes difficult when one or both sides fabricate/exaggerate aspects, turn it more into an opinion piece over a piece telling what's going on, or a political grudge match of "the liberal media/republicans don't want to admit this" type of piece.  I don't care that you think that Republicans are going to spin the story, and I don't care that you think liberals said something stupid, I just want to know the cold hard un-polititicized truths.

Since I normally go through many various outlets, it hasn't really affected much outside of seeing more of the ridiculousness in certain publications like Fox News (which is one I'd recommend people avoiding since their bias is strong, and they're known to really exaggerate and fabricate topics...though I occasionally read their articles purely for the lolz), or CNN which can be pretty borderline on its credibility to me personally sometimes.

Outside of Fox, though, there really isn't one I'd specifically say to avoid except for the ones that outright claim they're tabloids or pride on click-baity article names that pull you in since 9/10 times the article ends up being some trashy opinion piece that gives virtually no new information on articles.  And because someone needs to hear this somewhere: The Enquirer is not credible news, and it amazes me when people treat it as such.

I guess I'd also say to avoid simply "word of mouth" hearing of news since misinformation is definitely a thing in this day and age, and just hearing it from your friends and family will give you next to none of the entire story behind something.  Get online, look it up, look at several sources if you wish for a better understanding, and get in the know that way.

My main news source is the Guardian purely because I really like their phone app. (A couple years ago, I downloaded pretty much every credible news outlet's apps, and the Guardian's was the most organized/aesthetically pleasing one to me, but please let me know if anyone has found another.) I find their news reporting is pretty accurate/unbiased for the most part, although their opinion pieces are obviously biased (usually liberal- or progressive-leaning depending on the author).

Other than that, I read articles by the New York Times every now and again (fuck their paywall and opinion pieces (and I'm counting most of their politics section as opinion)) as well as the Intercept for more investigative journalism.

On YouTube, I often watch Secular Talk with Kyle Kulinski as well as Tim Black for political news, though that's more entertainment than news as they're mostly giving their opinion/analysis (and clearly claim to be biased).

I'll also admit to getting news from Reddit and only fact-checking if it seems necessary to do so. Ain't nobody got time to fact-check everything. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Every weekday morning I get a few different newsletters that I read through, and it takes me between 15 minutes and an hour to get through them depending on how many stories there are that I want to read about in-depth on the website. I don't do that all at once though, I tend to bookmark the stories I'm most interested in and read them later. Here's a description of each one:

1440 Daily Digest: I love how this one is formatted. At the top are the major news items with a two to four paragraph summary of each, then you have other news with a one paragraph summary categorized by topic, and finally you have an Etcetera section with single-sentence for stories that aren't exactly pressing, but are interesting and fun. It's quick to go through, and gives me the option to click a link to read more about a story if I'm interested in it.

Morning Brew: It only covers a few items every day, but it goes into a good amount of detail on each one. It also has pictures and is quick to use bullet-points for formatting. The items can technically cover the spectrum, but tends to focus on business.

The New York Times: The Morning: It's just like a mini-newspaper. There's usually one big story that's almost article length, then as you go down the stories get more minor and take up less space. Then you get a few culture sections and a games section with links to games that you'd normally see in a newspaper like the mini-crossword, which I love working. On one hand, I think it's the best written of them all, but on the other you're going to run into a paywall going through a lot of the links to read more about each story.

Stacked Marketer: This is mostly news and information related to marketing. I subscribe to it because I have an interest in SEO that I'd like to explore in the future when I have more time. If you're interested in advertising, SEO, branding, or marketing, it's a good newsletter. Otherwise you won't get much out of it.

In the past, I've also gone to individual news websites, but I've tried to do that less often because I either end up wasting a lot of time doing that or I end up feeling depressed and angry, especially if it's political news. Most days, these newsletters are the only news that I expose myself to.

For domestic news news, I tend to cross-reference Bloomberg, The Times, The Post, and the WSJ. The four together tend to give a comprehensive version of the facts, even if the overall bias averages out to center-right. Their op-eds are awful, though, and none more so than the Journal.
Internationally, I don't trust them, because they largely puppet the State Department line; that's often reasonably reliable for the West, but grows increasingly more unreliable the further east you go. For the Far East I cross-reference SCMP and Japan Times; for Europe it's the Irish Times and Euro News, and in the Middle East I mostly just use Al-Jazeera because I'm too lazy to find another local source.
I also tend to use Politico, the Atlantic, The Independent, and the Guardian more generally, but always with the awareness that they're profoundly liberal (by which I don't mean 'progressive', but rather the actual meaning of the word, 'centrist, devoted to capitalism, and proposing only mild reforms instead of fundamental changes') sources.
Absolutely none of the cable news companies; their business model is terrifying you, which means they're going to spin everything in the 'NEBULOUS 'THEY' ARE COMING TO KILL YOU, RIGHT NOW' way as much as possible.

Then when I want some decent leftist op-eds I hit up Jacobin. About 30% of the time, they're bad takes (mostly of the 'too-liberal', by which, again, I mean 'too-centrist/reformist', persuasion), but by god they're leftist bad takes instead of 'we should fellate the rich as much as possible'/'what if we didn't fellate the rich quite as much (but obviously, not totally stop fellating them)' takes you get in liberal media.