I had given up newspapers and television news for Google News.  I could scroll down and find a story to read that interested me and click on it.  No more.  Now they want to add cookies or make me register or make me buy a subscription to read what they write.  And I don't know whats authentic or AI written anymore.  I long for the good old days when we got 15 minutes of new by good guys every evening and that was it.

Remember these guys?

 

John Chancellor

 

Huntlly - Brinkley

 

Dan Rather

 

Peter Jennings

 

Tom Brokaw

 

Edward R. Murrow

 

Harry Reasoner

 

Eric Sevareid

 

Howard J Smith

 

Douglas Edwards

 

Paul Harvey...."And now for the rest of the story."

 

I think I'll just stop giving a word not allowed.

 

Noel

There is no way to respond to this topic without it being political.  Welcome to the world of “if I can’t track everything you do, then you don’t get to see my information/opinion” … checkout Palantir and nVidia if you want to see where this is heading.

Try Tousi TV+

@TWSY Hey, I posted a link to that and the thread got deleted! 😄 

@birdguy you forgot Walter Cronkite. 🙂 "The most trusted man in America."  I only caught him in one lie, in mid 1969. Wasn't his fault.

I keep a list of links to channel pages I've found useful. A couple of them are local news channels. I can skim the recent video thumbnails and watch what I find useful.

I have 3 or 4 news aggregator channels I keep up with. Yours will vary depending on your interests. There are a few commentary channels in my list as well. These channels occasionally post clips from main stream news sources.

I also check a variety of information channels. There are 23 channels I check daily and about that many more I look at occasionally when I'm caught up on the others.

All of these are on YouTube. All of these were recommended by the algorithm at one point which is how I heard of them. You can get rid of advertisements with a YouTube subscription or AdBlock Plus.

My wife watches the news on TV, or used to. By the time she asks if I've heard of a story, I already saw it a couple of days earlier. She currently listens to a few podcasts during the day, mostly Christian channels. She gets the same news I do this way.

Good luck.

Hook

Edited January 14Jan 14 by LHookins

The problem is, the news used to be a public service.  Back in the early days of TV, the 3 networks had to dedicate some time to news in order to broadcast.  It wasn't clickbait or sensational.  The networks competed to see who had the best news, but was something they had to do.  They made their money the rest of the time.  The news was on at set times, with entertainment around it.  

Eventually, 24 hour news took over and suddenly, news was what was being sold to people.  News became entertainment.  Now, the news needs ratings just like any other form of entertainment.  It wasn't long before the bright red "BREAKING NEWS" banner was permanent on the screen.  

Also obviously everything moves much faster.  You used to have daily news cycles.  You might have a morning and evening edition of a newspaper, but stories were for the day at least.  They got talked about in depth.  

Today, you wake up, see a story and 2 hours later it is supplanted by another story and 1 hour later another.  There's no in depth to anything because there's no time.  This is done intentionally to make the news exhausting so that basically most of us just tune out.  

News used to be a guy in a suit, calmly telling us the news.  Now, it is a firehose of clickbait and misinformation.  It is like trying to drink from a high power fire hose.  

We have access to so much information right at our fingertips, but we're less informed than we've ever been.  

I would recommend picking your news source according to two criteria:

1) Do they employ fact checkers that also check their own articles?

2) Do they abstain from publishing obviously wrong material?

That doesn't filter out political opinions (you can do that yourself), but it makes sure that you always have reliable information and weeds out a surprisingly large amount of news providers. I am sticking with four (online) newspapers that fulfill my criteria and are all located in different countries. That served me well in getting good information that is not filtered according to national priorities. You would be surprised to learn how different the world can look from the perspective of a different country 🙂

Peter

16 hours ago, birdguy said:

Remember these guys?

I remember several of those guys.

However, some of them weren't exactly impartial and clearly leaned you-know-which-direction.  Even back in the "good old days" many Americans were bombarded with propaganda nightly.  Unfortunately there were few if any alternative news sources back then so people got fooled.

Dave

In Canada all mainstream media is the PR firm for the federal govt.

There’s plenty of news that isn’t political. Providing you keep away from politics and perhaps concentrate on your favourite newscasters or how particular non-political stories are covered things should be fine.

When a major story breaks I always switch to the BBC.

17 hours ago, birdguy said:

And I don't know whats authentic or AI written anymore. 

You’ll need to look at legal/binding court documents sources like PACER … for “public cases” … with a few exceptions, these will contain mostly accurate information and present both sides of an issue.  However, data from .gov used to be reasonably reliable but as of late it’s hit and miss and sometimes just completely missing.

Statistical data on consumer trends and markets and it’s sources vary and can be difficult to pin down and/or avoid the marketing spin.  Sadly, this often requires a pay as you go data source provider (yeah the same folks using AI, cookies, and anything else they can to obtain end user data … oh the irony) … Bloomberg, FactSet, etc.

Financial data I would look at Banks (typically large banks will have good data on how the economy is really doing as they know how people are spending vs. saving vs. investing).  Current data indicates an increase in customer (bank customer) debt … not a good sign.

Healthcare trends are VERY difficult to pin down due to patient privacy and minimal regulation within that industry on the financial side.  Mark Cuban made a very good point that I verified personally when I was “self-employed”  … paying for healthcare without insurance vs. paying for healthcare WITH insurance.  Under insurance the same procedure will cost 4X more than when one isn’t insured and pays out of pocket for entire procedure … clearly needs some formal regulation/audit process.

Just need to remind yourself that media outlets get more views/advertisers when selling “drama” … have you ever heard of a “Good News” only network?  They don’t exist because good news doesn’t sell … bad news and drama does and advertisers want viewers.  I’m honestly not sure of why humans are more drawn to bad news vs. good news?  With that said, we often have no other recourse than hope journalistic integrity is still a thing, because without them, discovery of both good and bad can be that much more difficult.  I look at the drama a media source reports as a “hint” of perhaps something worth investigating to determine fact from fiction … more a starting point and NOT a final destination.  Unfortunately many are single source and that source is their final destination.  

IMHO, it’s relatively easy to spot AI content which in itself doesn’t invalidate the content, the responsibility to determine fact from fiction is still (as it always has been) the responsibility of the viewer.  

Not going to get into the can of worms call “Freedom of speech” … probably wouldn’t be a can-o-worms if everyone followed basic fact vs. fiction discovery process … but that is time consuming and in some cases takes $$$ to get to the facts and sometimes the facts will never be discovered as those intent on obfuscation … but obfuscation is a means of hiding information so it’s probably important information.

There, ‘I think’ I avoided anything political … but who knows, just about anything can be deemed political just because someone disagrees.

2 hours ago, dbw1 said:

In Canada all mainstream media is the PR firm for the federal govt.

Let's just say that I beg to differ.

I go to AVSIM for all my informational needs. Bold, impartial and unafraid. 

34 minutes ago, qqwertz said:

Let's just say that I beg to differ.

No worries. It would be pretty boring if we all agreed on everything. I respect your opinion. All the best.

25 minutes ago, Patco Lch said:

I go to AVSIM for all my informational needs. Bold, impartial and unafraid. 

Unless, of course, it's political, international, or in any way controversial because not everyone believes the official narrative. 🙂 

Except EVs. I'm constantly surprised that the BEV topic hasn't been banned.

Some time in the late 80s or early 90s I quit watching the news, figuring anything I needed to know would eventually be discussed in some forum or chat lobby I was following. This worked well enough at the time. People were less divided back then, and generally more polite.

Today... not so much.

Hook

53 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Unless, of course, it's political, international, or in any way controversial because not everyone believes the official narrative. 🙂 

Except EVs. I'm constantly surprised that the BEV topic hasn't been banned.

Some time in the late 80s or early 90s I quit watching the news, figuring anything I needed to know would eventually be discussed in some forum or chat lobby I was following. This worked well enough at the time. People were less divided back then, and generally more polite.

Today... not so much.

Hook

Actually I should have added a LOL or 😂 to my post.