What are the best sources for news?

I'm starting my "bucket list"...one of my items will be to become more informed on world events. My issue is I don't trust most news sources at this point. Which sources would you guys recommend for the best/balanced national and international news?

I was in Egypt a few years back and I got hooked on Al Jazeera English. The opinion pieces can be a bit trite, but that's true of any news outlet. I believe the only market theh have in the states right now is Washington DC, but their websites pretty good and you can stream the broadcast. I was glued to the screen during the Egytian revolution.

english.aljazeera.net/

For me, the usual suspects:

BBC
New York Times
The Economist

If you know what their biases are, which aren't too hard to read through (Durr, Economist generally pro-business/market but not in the really absurd way the Wall Street Journal is), those three will give you great coverage. I tend to lean on the last two the most, though it has been my experience that the BBC has more correspondents in some places than the other two.

For political and world news, I tend to go with RealClearPolitics.com and RealClearWorld. Both are just clearing houses for articles, but they have a wide variety of sources from either end of the spectrum, and it's a good way to get some balance, by virtue of just getting a lot of opinions.

The BBC is pretty biased to the liberal side these days - as an example they have been piling on Prince Andrew who, as a volunteer UK Business ambassador, has mixed with a US businessman who has a criminal record for underage sex yet is giving Julian Assange a free pass even though he is wanted for alleged sex offences.

Al Jazeera English and Sky News are my 2 most trusted sources of international news, provided you want to watch your news. Sites that provide other, better, cleaner news online are...

The Economist
The Guardian UK
The Wall Street Journal
The Atlantic (more op/ed, but you get a lot of shit you would miss otherwise)

To know what's going on (and nothing else), I use cnn.com but make sure to use the INTERNATIONAL edition and not the U.S. one. Otherwise, you'll get hit with Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan headlines instead of Japanese Tsunamis and such.

I avoid reading commentary. I just want to know what's happening now.

I mean, they even had a headline that Quebec prosectors are opening an investigation into Chara's hit on Pacioretty. That's cool news, yo.

I get my news from the comments section of CNN.

They know a LOT that no one else seems to...

Black Barney wrote:

I mean, they even had a headline that Quebec prosectors are opening an investigation into Chara's hit on Pacioretty. That's cool news, yo.

Jesus I come here to get away form this topic and lo and behold...Should have given him two games and be done with it.

Al Jazeera is sometimes refreshing but all news providers have some sort of bias that is easy to see. It has been worse in the past. Papers were nothing more than political mouthpieces for ages (and still are). I'm Ok with the CBC.

At the end of the day it's all propaganda, even the Charlie Sheen bits - on drug use.

yeah I like the CBC. Newsworld is a decent news channel.

I miss that american newsguy who died who used to have the sunday morning show. I forget his name but man was that guy ever a straight shooter.

Black Barney wrote:

yeah I like the CBC. Newsworld is a decent news channel.

I miss that american newsguy who died who used to have the sunday morning show. I forget his name but man was that guy ever a straight shooter.

I presume you mean Tim Russert. His stint on Meet the Press was the best it had been in years.

Unsurprisingly, GarySax and I have the same basic list. Mine includes the Washington Post, but that's the local paper for me--and I'm one of the last people on earth, it seems, who really likes starting his day with a bit of black ink on his finger tips.

Al-Jazeera has been excellent for its boots-on-the-ground coverage of the middle east over the last 18 months or so. Having watched it since it was first started airing around here, it's also far less the absurd propaganda machine it had been, but it's still no BBC.

Following the news is my job, and I'm plugged in pretty much 24/7, I'm limited at work in the sources I can use, but this doesn't mean I can't learn what's going on wherever I like.

Now I'm an American so keep that in mind when reading the following:

For non-breaking US focused political and economic news, the best you can do for a one stop shop is to head over to WaPo and read Ezra Klein's Wonkbook I get it delivered by email every morning and I read it every day. You don't even have to read everything he links to to get a pretty good grip of what's going on.

From there, you can't go wrong with The Economist. Their blogs are fantastic too, Democracy in America and Free Exchange are the best of the best.

Al Jazeera English is great, they easily had the best Tsunami coverage. Probably the best TV news if you get the channel, you can stream it online if you don't.

Der Spiegel international is another good option

The Breaking News Twitter is somehow the fastest source for breaking news I've ever seen. They're consistently 5 to 10 minutes faster than the AP on getting their alerts out, and they use just about every source imaginable (though they're run by MSNBC)

As far as the networks are concerned I find CNN to be absolutely deplorable. Their coverage is embarrassing. They shoehorn new media into all of their programming with all the subtlety of a shopping cart being thrown down an elevator shaft. They rely on their pandering "iReports" to make up a larger and larger percentage of their coverage, they've been drifting ever rightward of late too, at least when they can free themselves from their otherwise milquetoast presentation.

Fox and MSNBC are obviously going to be the right and left slanted coverage, but I feel that claiming they're the same operation from different sides of the spectrum is a false equivalency. MSNBC makes no effort to obscure what they are, and while they have an agenda they still have a division between news and editorial content. Fox has no such division and also deliberately attempts to play down the fact that they have an agenda.

Southernman wrote:

The BBC is pretty biased to the liberal side these days - as an example they have been piling on Prince Andrew who, as a volunteer UK Business ambassador, has mixed with a US businessman who has a criminal record for underage sex yet is giving Julian Assange a free pass even though he is wanted for alleged sex offences.

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

I get all my news from America's Finest News Source .

These are very good. I actually pay for a subscription with these guys.. they are that good and ahead of the game

www.stratfor.com/