Where do you go on Lemmy for reliable news and politics?

I’m enjoying Lemmy so far, for the most part.

Everything here is pretty good save for the fact that all the news and politics I can find is dominated by the same few accounts.

Half or more of the accounts have a very clear agenda. They modify headlines. Lie. Spread disinformation. And generally are just extremely toxic groups.

It doesn’t seem to be a secret here either. And moderators appear to have no interest in putting a stop to it.

So, where are you subbed to for reliable news and US/Global politics?

ablackcatstail,
@ablackcatstail@lemmy.goblackcat.com avatar

More to the point: where does anybody go for any reliable news? It seems like most news is now using hyperbole to make it entertainment. We have old man Rupert to thank for basically destroying a respected profession. That’s my 0.02 anyhow.

zdrvr,

While not perfect AP and Reuters are ok. The news they report is honest but their shortcoming is what they don’t report.

ablackcatstail,
@ablackcatstail@lemmy.goblackcat.com avatar

Those are pretty good examples. They are still not great places to go but they certainly suck a whole lot less than the others. Hell, even the weather is now being reported as entertainment.

InquisitiveApathy,

This is how I do it as well. In general, understanding the overall bias of each news organization is more important to keeping yourself informed. You can combat the echo chamber effect by knowing what the biases of each source is and using differing sourcing to try to get as complete a picture as you can.

I would add to your list to check BBC, Al Jazeera, and NPR if you’re US focused.

PeleSpirit,

I haven’t found any issues with Reuters but AP did this which is suspect on many levels:

Migrant Boat NFT

On January 10, 2022, AP announced it would start selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of their photographs in partnership with a company named Xooa, with the proceeds being used to fund their operations.[103] One of the NFTs they promoted on Twitter on 24 February was an aerial shot depicting an overcrowded migrant boat in the Mediterranean Sea. The tweet received negative backlash from users and other journalists, with AP being accused of profiting off of human suffering and the picture choice being “dystopian” and “in extremely poor taste”. The tweet was subsequently deleted and the NFT, which was to be sold the next day, was pulled from market. Global director of media relations Lauren Easton apologized, saying “This was a poor choice of imagery for an NFT. It has not and will not be put up for auction […] AP’s NFT marketplace is a very early pilot program, and we are immediately reviewing our efforts”.[104][105]

They aren’t great when you see a lot of their stories go by at one time, it’s not consistent.

MrPear,

I wish for AP to have RSS feeds, but they don’t. I think they and Reuters are aome of the better outlets out there and I’ve been (re)discovering RSS lately, but AP is one of the few news outlets that don’t seem to support it :(

Zarxrax,

I find these two to be good for finding sources with different perspectives:

www.allsides.com

ground.news

After some time, you might see that there are a few specific sites that you like, and you can just start going to them directly.

ablackcatstail,
@ablackcatstail@lemmy.goblackcat.com avatar

I just took a look at both of them and found that I really like ground.news

clearedtoland,

The Flipside is also excellent at providing balanced views and counterpoints. It’s a newsletter rather than a site though. (Full disclosure: that’s a referral link. I figured why not).

I’m also partial to The Week which also presents a wide array of views - though it admittedly leans left.

OceanSoap,

I’ve been getting flipside emails for a while now. I really like them.

HailHodor,

+1 to Ground News. I browsed them with a free account for a short time before subscribing to the middle tier. Their tools are really terrific at getting me to look at multiple sides of the same stories, and the blind spot feature is fantastic. I’ve been very satisfied with it and go to it multiple times a day.

Capricorny90210,

I also enjoy ground news.

OceanSoap,

This is awesome, I’m going to check it out, thank you.

Kalkaline,
@Kalkaline@lemmy.one avatar

AP and Reuters run the stories and everyone adds their opinions on top of that, or they rehash some Twitter thread. NPR tends to take those news stories and at least bring in competent analysts in to speak about them. I’d stick with those 3, for the most “fair” view of the happenings in the world.

Marks,
@Marks@kbin.social avatar

I subscribe to WSJ, NYT, WAPO, and my local newspaper. You need to read all sides of a story in order to get a reliable take.

Also recommend: Memeorandum to see multiple sources to same story.

JohnOnABuffalo,

NPR and PBS, publicly funded does not mean government controlled.

Master167,

I read the Newsletters from NPR and Morning Brew. If something catches my eye, I’ll look it up on ground.news then find something marked “center” to get more details.

Ohthereyouare,

But, isn’t that sort of the point of Lemmy? Link aggregation?

I’ve been going to all the individual sites as well since leaving Reddit. But, only because the news and politics culture in Lemmy is so atrocious.

Despite its faults, Reddit did an okay job of moderation. It’s a shit show here. The posts are all either bots or edgy 8th graders from troll communities. It’s a mess.

PeleSpirit,

Someone (maybe you?) is going to have to be the place to go to as a place to trust to not alter headlines and aggregate. This issue here now is moderation, one person can’t do it all but no one wants to do it either

Ohthereyouare,

Ha, man, finally, 20 comments in and someone understands the question.

Based on all the responses so far I’m assuming a well moderated place doesn’t exist on Lemmy yet, which is disappointing. I was hoping I just hadn’t discovered it yet.

PeleSpirit,

The lemmy.world politics posts and feels like the one at Reddit but also includes all of the trolls. I’ve seen it be successful at Reddit when it’s heavily moderated but that’s a lot of work. It’s too bad that the news stations or agencies don’t get together and put up their own instance. On Mastodon they have an aggregator that posts from all of the most reliable sources but no one uses it to talk really. I think there is a solution that hasn’t been thought of yet.

Hexadecimalkink,

So you want currated news, why are you here?

Ohthereyouare,

Kind of, yes? I’ve commented on it more than once here.

This is the point you’re missing. Although, I guess I’m glad you’ve stuck around… For some reason…

A place where you have a variety of well vetted sources. A place where you don’t have to wade through a sea of “Hunter Biden’s laptop”, “lizard men” and Infowarriors.

Does news have a slant? Yes. Am I well aware of that? Yes.

The difference is, there’s no longer a “both sides”. I’m not interested in what some qanon blogger thinks about the Senate. And, here on Lemmy, that goal is achievable. And, I would argue, close.

However, the problem here is that you have bad actors operating unchecked. That is a problem of an immature platform, not an inherent problem with news in general as you’ve spent a lot of time and words intimating to me.

So, as we bring this bad boy around full circle and I put this behind me; the question is, is there a place for reliable news and politics? The answer to that question is, apparently, not yet. But, I’ll hold out hope that it happens because Lemmy is a promising platform that has a lot growing up to do.

Hexadecimalkink,

What you’re looking for doesn’t exist and will probably never exist in our lifetimes. If you want some (USA) sites that aggregate news and provide an interpretation on it; nakedCapitalism, ZeroHedge (you won’t like), The Register, Breaking Points, MintPress News, RealClearPolitics.

Ohthereyouare,

Sigh… Nevermind. Thanks for trying. You and I live in two different realities. God speed

Hexadecimalkink,

Lol you’re insufferable.

pitl,
@pitl@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Yeah, it just doesn’t really exist yet. I’m not sure a really well-moderated community for news content can exist yet on Lemmy, due to the culture that’s slowly springing up, but if it did it’d have to be on a dedicated instance, I expect - one with a very, very dedicated set of moderators with relatively strict rules regarding what is sufficiently-well-sourced content, and all other communities on the instance being held up to the same bar in their specific niches in order to encourage that kind of posting culture.

Honestly, I don’t think Reddit ever achieved a really good result either - the news subreddits were all dumpster fires to varying degrees - but Lemmy’s immaturity worsens the issue here, I think. It’s pretty appallingly obvious. I’d look elsewhere for news opinion aggregation, for the time being.

Ohthereyouare,

I think Reddit did a better job than you give them credit for. The may not have achieved eutopia, but they outperform all others who’ve tried up until this point.

Lemmy has more promise than Reddit, IMO, for well moderated news aggregation because they’ve seen the reddit model and can replicate it without the bondage of Reddit administration.

The problem, as it seems to me currently, is that Lemmy, specifically in the news and politics realm, lacks moderation of any quality. And, that’s not necessarily a shot at moderators either. They’re either new to the roll or there aren’t enough of them.

They also don’t have the benefit of year of users bitching and shaping the rules that govern a community, as Reddit has had.

puppy,

Good luck finding reliable news anywhere, this including the major TV and News organizations.

NightOwl,

RSS to get a typical feed that people have become accustomed to. Set up RSS from sources you want to see then see. You get to see more instead of what individuals cherry picked for whatever reason.

pensivepangolin,

This is the best way, for sure. And there are a lot of really great selfhosted projects for doing so!

utopianfiat,

Half or more of the accounts have a very clear agenda.

Everyone has an agenda; if this makes you uncomfortable, strengthen your critical thinking skills.

The desire for a neutral source is a desire to stop thinking critically about the information you consume.

RedCanasta,

Well said and yea if you find a “unbiased source” for news, you’ve only fallen for their bias.

Be critical even of what interests you, and read things you don’t like as well.

small44,

I don’t

ejsexton82,

I learned on Reddit not to trust any world news or political news posts. I was tricked a couple of times by fake posts. I still browse the posts, but I take everything I read with a grain of salt.

I use news apps for my news.

monobot,

For international politics I watch and read news sources from India, they are somewhat biased against Pakistan (thou, I believe, even there are truthful) and for everything else looks quite neutral.

I don’t think there is any reliable source for US politics, too much interests are in play and even if someone is truthful and reliable I don’t know how to assess that. But I do take a look at Democracy Now since they don’t sound sensationalistic.

Grey,

As much as I hate YouTube advertisers, I like ground news a lot as an aggregator site.

Feweroptions,

The Ground app

yarn,
@yarn@sopuli.xyz avatar

I don’t get my news from any social media platform, including lemmy, no offense to lemmy. I used to do that with reddit, but it’s just too unhinged getting your news that way.

I stick with Associated Press, Reuters, and The New York Times, in that order. I also use Google News specifically for local news, but I don’t even peek at the main world news feed there.

More generally speaking, I stick to the old school human editorial board for my news. News that’s presented to me on AP, for example, has already been filtered by a board of humans who are smarter than me and whose opinions I trust on the state of the world. Opening up your selection of news to an easily gameable social media algorithm is just more trouble than it’s worth, in my opinion.

spaduf, (edited )
@spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Even the NYT has been pretty shady recently. Particularly in regards to their trans coverage. Here’s the story from GLAAD and on NPR.

yarn,
@yarn@sopuli.xyz avatar

Sorry, I have to admit that I’m not the best at keeping up with LGBTQ+ news, so I wasn’t aware of that controversy. I’ll keep an eye on that and see how it shakes out. If NYT continues to stir controversy, then I can switch. I’m not particularly attached to them. Washington Post would be a good replacement, and I saw that GLAAD article mention that WP’s LGBTQ+ coverage is better.

howdy,
@howdy@thesimplecorner.org avatar

This is what I got: Some are more active than others.

Ohthereyouare,

Thanks for the list

Some of those are exactly the places I’m talking about. [email protected] is filled with accounts from troll farms. The #4 post there right now is by the worst of the group.

And, if it wasn’t bad enough that post fake and misleading stuff, they brigade the votes and manipulate the posts that way as well. It’s a disaster.

SlicingBot,

So far for me, the only place in the fediverse with news and politics communities that are okay but not great are the ones on beehaw.org.

Everywhere else I’ve checked so far has a very naked agenda. Beehaw still leans left, but not in a way that feels icky.

_cerpin_taxt_,

You are quite literally the only person that actually answered OPs question. Thanks for these!

youthinkyouknowme,

I wouldn’t rely too much on lemmy for news and politics tbh, because posts can sway on way or another or even not get traction because most people don’t agree with it. Instead I think it’s better something like a RSS feed where you can pick your sources, or maybe just check a couple of less biased news outlets, so you can somehow have a more broad overview of what’s going from different perspectives.

Kir,
@Kir@feddit.it avatar

Unbiased news is impossible. If someone is saying that he’s giving you unbiased and objective news, he’s scamming you.

colonial,
@colonial@lemmy.world avatar

This is unhelpful, but… I just don’t look at the news. If something actually important happens, I’ll hear about it indirectly and go look it up if I care, but I’ve found that not being tapped into the news (and especially political news) all day every day does wonders for my mental health.

kenbw2,

Same

If you don’t read the news, you’re uninformed. If you read the news, you’re misinformed

maegul,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

An interesting project here on this front is lemmy.link: lemmy.link/communities

They create RSS feeds from external sources and dump the feeds into lemmy communities.

So it’s an RSS aggregator native to lemmy so that we can up/down vote and comment or cross post too.

Seems like an interesting way to take the arbitrariness out of what gets posted and instead focus on actually reading, assessing and commenting on the news.

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