Mastodawn

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

https://lemmy.world/post/1299462

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

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?

Meow.tar.gz Jul 10, 2023

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.

Zarxrax Jul 10, 2023

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

www.allsides.com

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.

AllSides | Balanced news via media bias ratings for an unbiased news perspective

See issues and political news with news bias revealed. Non-partisan, crowd-sourced technology shows all sides so you can decide.

AllSides

Meow.tar.gz Jul 10, 2023

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

Ground News

Top Stories from around you and around the world. Compare how different news publishers frame the same news

Ground News

clearedtoland Jul 10, 2023

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.

The Flip Side

Your daily digest of the best op-eds and analyses from liberal and conservative media.

OceanSoap Jul 10, 2023

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

HailHodor Jul 10, 2023

+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 Jul 10, 2023

I also enjoy ground news.

OceanSoap Jul 10, 2023

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

Kalkaline Jul 10, 2023

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.

JohnOnABuffalo Jul 11, 2023

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

Master167 Jul 10, 2023

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 Jul 10, 2023

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 Jul 10, 2023

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 Jul 10, 2023

Ha, man, finally, 30 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 Jul 10, 2023

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 Jul 11, 2023

So you want currated news, why are you here?

Ohthereyouare Jul 11, 2023

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 Jul 11, 2023

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 Jul 11, 2023

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

Hexadecimalkink Jul 11, 2023

Lol you’re insufferable.

pitl Jul 11, 2023

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 Jul 11, 2023

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 Jul 10, 2023

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

NightOwl Jul 10, 2023

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 Jul 10, 2023

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

small44 Jul 10, 2023

I don’t

ejsexton82 Jul 10, 2023

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 Jul 10, 2023

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 Jul 10, 2023

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

Feweroptions Jul 10, 2023

The Ground app

yarn Jul 10, 2023

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 Jul 11, 2023

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

yarn Jul 11, 2023

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.

Rick Jul 10, 2023

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

World [email protected] [email protected] United States | News & [email protected] World News & [email protected] World [email protected]

Ohthereyouare Jul 10, 2023

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 Jul 11, 2023

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_Jul 12, 2023

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

youthinkyouknowme Jul 10, 2023

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 even less biased news outlets, so you can somehow have a more broad overview of what’s going from different perspectives.

Kir Jul 10, 2023

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

colonial Jul 10, 2023

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 Jul 10, 2023

Same

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

maegul (he/they)Jul 10, 2023

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.

Communities - Lemmy.link

lynny Jul 10, 2023

I don’t. Lemmy seems to have the same issue as Reddit where people are towards the extremes with the only moderate people being those who don’t want to talk about politics in the first place.

I like to listen to CSPAN while at work, especially their morning show “The Washington Journal” where most of the content are regular Americans calling in to talk directly to guests or about issues they feel are important.

keider Jul 10, 2023

Lemmy and Reddit in general haven’t been good for reliable news for me. I’ve been using Artifact for the past few months to have a more personalized feed, but I much prefer picking my own RSS feeds.

The only thing that is lacking for me about RSS feeds is the ability to discuss content. If Lemmy can fill that void, I’ll gladly switch over.

ezmack Jul 10, 2023

Probably not what you want to hear but I’ve been absolutely bombarded with the right wing perspective my entire life and I’m pretty glad to have a place that doesn’t try to both sides everything. Where do I get my news? Twitter mostly I come here if I want to see something discussed further

n0m4n Jul 10, 2023

This doesn’t ask your question, but this may be of useful to people, anyway.

I’ve just joined ground.news, a pay site. The great part about this site is that it rates news as to left, center, or right leaning, and rates the “factuality” of the sites. Filtering out non-factual knocks out a large part of the outlier’s lies, and shows who the people are, who push them. like knowing the players pushing their agenda. One caveat is that some that push lies still slide through by quoting the people who spout lies without disclaimers of the reliabilty of their false claims. One rule of thumb that I find helpful is that I mentally filter out any pleas to emotionalism. Manipulating readers/viewers emotionally is the opposite of informing. Sites that try to be centrist and ignore whether the sources are reliable about facts, end up being half lies or propagandsa. It is useful to keep in mind that blatently propaganda sites work in some truth to give themselves some plausibility. Only the highest reliable news are worth letting in to your news sphere.

This is a worldwide problem as paid propagandaists muddy the news sphere. Welcome to our cyber warfare world.

CanadaPlus Jul 10, 2023

Where did you go on Reddit? The only place back there I really trusted was AskHistorians and 20 years ago is not really breaking news.

If you want to understand the world you’re going to actually have to study it.

Ohthereyouare Jul 10, 2023

What does that even mean? If I want to understand the world I need to study it?

Lol, wtf? I’m looking for current events. What level of prerequisite historical knowledge would I need where I could bipass what is happening right now all over the world?

And shit… All of Reddit is bad except askhistorians? What?

So, if I understand you correctly, your advice is that I shouldn’t trust news and I should study the world? What source should I use to study? Are all sources bias? I’m fucking confused

Braysl Jul 10, 2023

Clearly they’re saying you should hop in a hot air balloon and travel around the world spotting breaking news with your own eyes.

Ohthereyouare Jul 10, 2023

Honestly, this entire thread has been a bit of an eye opener for me

Hexadecimalkink Jul 11, 2023

Oh wow hope you learned something!

CanadaPlus Jul 11, 2023

That would be lit, but my point was more like “news varies from deliberate lies to selectively curated content”. Reddit is a great way to get a mix of both with no context.

CanadaPlus Jul 11, 2023

Yeah, okay, in hindsight that wasn’t as elegant as I was hoping. More to come.

Ohthereyouare Jul 11, 2023

You should ask more questions and give less answers.

CanadaPlus Jul 11, 2023

Oh, I ask plenty, too. Check my post history.

ChickenAndRice Jul 10, 2023

Set up an Rss feed for AP and Reuters

SokathHisEyesOpen Jul 10, 2023

I do my best to avoid both.

darcy Jul 10, 2023

no such thing as reliable news sadly, except going outside

threeduck Jul 10, 2023

What about Reuters?

Hexadecimalkink Jul 11, 2023

Reuters is known as the “reluctant imperialist” news source. They use neutral language as much as possible but still back British interests. Owned by a Canadian multinational.